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He accompanied the sovereign wherever he went, even to the wars, in order to regulate his actions according to the rules of his art and the indications of the heavens. When the king died and his successor was not on the spot to assume the reins of government, the archimagus was regent during the interregnum, as, for instance, between the death of Nabopolassar and the accession of Nebuchadnezzar.
At any rate they abounded in the provinces, forming the chief wealth of the more northern nations. "The Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation." Habak. 1. 6. The Babylonians, who, under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, held the second place among the nations of the East, were emphatically a mixed race.
The faithless Nabopolassar saw in his sovereign's difficulty his own opportunity and, instead of marching against Assyria's enemies, as his duty required him, he secretly negotiated an arrangement with Cyaxares, agreed to become his ally against the Assyrians, and obtained the Median king's daughter as a bride for Nebuchadnezzar, his eldest son.
Cyaxares gladly accepted the terms offered; the young persons were betrothed; and Nabopolassar immediately led, or sent, a contingent of troops to join the Medes, who took an active part in the great siege which resulted in the capture and destruction of the Assyrian capital. A division of the Assyrian Empire between the allied monarchs followed.
They settled upon the bank of the Euphrates, near the ruins of the Tower of Babel, round which a city arose, sometimes free, sometimes under the power of the King of Nineveh. In the time of the weak and luxurious Saracus, Nabopolassar was governor of Babylon.
The closing years of the Assyrian empire and the military achievements of the great Neo-Babylonian rulers, Nabopolassar, Nerig-lissar, and Nebuchadnezzar II, have not yet been found recorded in any published Assyrian or Babylonian inscription, but it may be expected that at any moment some text will be discovered that will throw light upon the problems connected with the history of those periods which still await solution.
The priests were the ringleaders in those risings against Assyria, and, in later years, against Persia, which cost Babylon so dearly. Once only was the success they promised achieved, and that was in the time of Nabopolassar, when Nineveh was exhausted by its long succession of wars and victories.
To meet this double danger. Saracus, the Assyrian king, determined on dividing his forces: and, while he entrusted a portion of them to a general, Nabopolassar, who had orders to proceed to Babylon and engage the enemy advancing from the sea, he himself with the remainder made ready to receive the Medes.
Gyges had been slain in the contest with those fierce barbarians, called in the Old Testament Gomer. At first he had sought help from the Assyrians, but he broke away from this dependence. Liberated from the troubles of the Scythian irruption, Cyaxares formed an alliance with Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence.
With the assistance of Nabopolassar, a Babylonian general who had also revolted against the Assyrian monarch, Cyaxares succeeded, after repeated failures, in taking Nineveh and destroying the great Assyrian Empire which had ruled the Eastern world for several centuries.
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