The land of Palestine has been called “the Piedmont of Western Asia;” being situated midway between the two great empires of Egypt and Assyria, it became the battle-field of the Orient, and it was here that the fiercest conflict was waged. But during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the Chaldean supremacy in Asia remained unshaken, for the active policy of that iron-handed ruler, with his mighty army kept all Western Asia under his control. THE FALL OF BABYLON. There are several tablets pertaining to the fall of Babylon which throw additional light upon that event. It appears from these chronicles that Belshazzar reigned in connection with his father Nabonidus, Belshazzar being the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar on the maternal side. Under the date of the ninth year of Nabonidus,[47] the record says: “Nabonidus, the king, was in the city of Teva, the son of the king (Belshazzar), the chieftains, and the soldiers were in the land of Accad (North Babylonia).... The king until the month Nisan (first month) to Babylon went not, Nebo to Babylon came not, Bel went not forth.... In the month Nisan, Cyrus, king of Persia, his army gathered, and below Arbela the river Tigris he crossed.” The chronicle is here mutilated, and it can be seen only that Cyrus, marching across the northern part of the Euphratean valley, levied tribute upon some distant king. This may have been one of the campaigns in the war against Crœsus, king of Lydia, and the rising power of the now united Medes and Persians was anxiously watched by the rulers of Babylonia. Nabonidus appears from the record to have been a weak ruler, leaving the government and command of the army largely in the hands of his son. Says Boscawen, the eminent Assyriologist: “From the seventh year[48] of his father’s reign until the fall of the empire, Belshazzar appears to have been the leading spirit and ruler of the kingdom, and this may account, in some measure, for his prominence in the book of Daniel.”[49] In the cylinder inscription of Nabonidus, found in the temple of the Moon-god at Ur, the king thus prays for his son: 1. “As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, 2. In the fullness of thy 3. Great divinity, (grant me) 4. Length of life 5. To remote days. 6. And for Belshazzar, 7. My first-born son, 8. The offspring of my heart, 9. Reverence for thy great divinity 10. Establish thou in his heart.”[50]