Nabonidus gives no hint in his inscriptions that he was aware of any dissatisfaction at what he was doing. In all probability he was as religious as any of his predecessors had been, and his son Belshazzar was as the second ruler in the kingdom. Records exist showing that Belshazzar sent offerings to the temple at Sippar whilst he was in that neighbourhood, and the king’s own offerings are sometimes mentioned with them. The king had therefore a good deputy performing his work. With regard to the bringing of foreign gods to Šu-anna, Cyrus’s scribe probably refers to the deities of Haran, which were taken thither before the siege of the place by the Medes. When the enemy had departed, Nabonidus restored the temple in that city, and replaced the deities referred to in their shrines. The transport of the idols may have been merely to place them for the time being in a place of greater security. There is, then, every probability that Belshazzar, son of Nabonidus, was the real ruler. What an excellent understanding existed between him and his father may be gained from the inscription which Nabonidus caused to be composed to place in the foundations of the temple of the Moon (the god Sin) at Ur (identified with Ur of the Chaldees), the concluding lines of which run as follows— “As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, from sin against thy great divinity save me, and a life of remote days give as a gift; and as for Belshazzar, the eldest son, the offspring of my heart, the fear of thy great divinity cause thou to exist in his heart, and let not sin possess him, let him be satisfied with fulness of life.” The text being undated, there is no means of ascertaining in what year the restoration of the temple of the Moon at Ur took place. The story of the downfall of the Babylonian empire and the end of native rule in Babylonia is told by the Babylonian Chronicle as follows—