The siege of this important place was no easy enterprise. The walls of it were of a prodigious height, and appeared to be inaccessible, without mentioning the immense number of people within them for its defence. The city was said to be stored with sufficient provisions for twenty years. But Cyrus was not a leader to be discouraged by difficulties. Despairing of taking the city by assault, he made the Babylonians believe that he meant to reduce it by famine. To this end, he caused a line of circumvallation to be drawn quite round the city, with a wide and deep ditch, and, that his troops might not be over-fatigued, he divided his army into twelve bodies, and assigned each of them its month for guarding the trenches. The besieged, thinking themselves free from all danger on account of their fortifications and magazines, insulted Cyrus from the top of their walls, and laughed at all his attempts, and all the trouble he gave himself, as so much unprofitable labour. As soon as the ditch was completed, he began to think seriously of his vast design, which he had communicated to nobody. Providence soon furnished him with as fit an opportunity for this purpose as he could desire. He was informed that a great festival was to be celebrated in the city, and that the Babylonians, on account of that solemnity, would pass the whole night in drinking and debauchery. Belshazzar, the king, took more interest in this public rejoicing than any other person, and gave a magnificent entertainment to the chief officers of the kingdom and the ladies of the court. When flushed with wine, he ordered the gold and silver vessels which had been taken from the temple of Jerusalem to be brought out; and as an insult to the God of Israel, he, his whole court, and all his concubines, drank out of these sacred vessels. God, who was displeased at such insolence and impiety, at the instant made him sensible whom it was he offended, by a sudden apparition of a hand, writing certain characters upon the wall. The king, terribly surprised and frightened at this vision, immediately sent for all the wise men, diviners and astrologers, that they might read the writing to him, and explain the meaning of it. But they all came in vain, not one of them being able to expound the characters. The obvious reason of this was that the characters were in the Hebrew or Samaritan language, which the Babylonians did not understand. The queen-mother Nitocris, a princess of great merit, coming, upon hearing of this prodigy, into the banqueting-room, endeavoured to compose the mind of the king her son, advising him to send for Daniel, with whose abilities in such matters she was well acquainted, and whom she had employed in the government of the state.