However, modern scholarship has provided an explanation for this action. In Mesopotamia, gods were supposed to be housed inside their statues, from where they took care of their cities. But this only happened if they received the right kind of attention. So Nabonidus took special care of these statues and made sure that their cultic personnel had to come along with him.[1] This was a long-standing tradition, too:
- ↑ P.-A. Beaulieu, "An episode in the fall of Babylon to the Persians", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52 (1993:241-61)