The Stolen Statue of Marduk

In Babylon, the cult statue of Marduk symbolized the god's presence, and conquering kings often looted it to claim the city's power. Every foreign ruler known to have carried off the statue, like the Hittite Mursili I, Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta I, Elamite Shutruk-Nakhunte, Sennacherib, and possibly Xerxes, later met violent ends at the hands of relatives. The Babylonians saw those deaths not as coincidences, but as divine vengeance for daring to seize their god.

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