Whatever may have been the sins of omission of Nabonidus—whether they were trivial or otherwise—there is no doubt that they made a bad impression on the people, and gave rise to all kinds of statements against him when the days of misfortune came. For the scribe who drew up Cyrus’s record after the taking of Babylon, all Nabonidus’s doings with regard to the temples and statues of the gods were to be quoted against him. The temple dues had been allowed to fail, and the gods quitted their shrines, angry at the thought that Nabonidus had brought foreign gods to Šu-anna (a part of Babylon). With regard to this last accusation, it may be remarked that a popular ruler would in all probability have been praised for bringing the gods of other places to Babylon—it would have been either a tribute to the power of Babylonia in war (a power conferred upon her, in their opinion, by her gods); or else the payment of homage by the gods of other cities to those of Babylon, acknowledging at the same time their (and her) supremacy. The fact is, Nabonidus was either the most intelligent, or one of the most intelligent, men in Babylonia. To all appearance he was not a ruler, but a learned man, full of love for his country and its institutions, and desirous of knowledge, which he obtained at all costs. Whenever he had to restore a temple, he at once excavated in its foundations for the records of early kings which he knew to be there, and he was often successful in finding what he wanted. As he always recorded what he found, his cylinder-inscriptions nearly always possess a value far beyond those of other kings of Babylon. He seems to have delighted in what he saw when engaged in this work—he not only tells you that he read the texts thus discovered, but he refers to their perfect condition, and nearly always says something about the ruler who caused them to be placed in the foundations. He, too, is worthy of a statue in every place where the language of his native land is studied. Naturally, his antiquarian researches, necessitating, as they did, the destruction of a part of the fabric of the temple under repair at the time, were not looked upon altogether with favour by the priests and the people, hence the dissatisfaction to which the scribes, who were probably of the priestly caste, afterwards gave vent. Besides this, was it not necessary that they should justify themselves for accepting a foreign ruler, of a different religion from their own?