3. Towards the close of his reign the glory of Nebu- chadnezzar suffered a temporary eclipse. As a punish- ment for his pride and vanity, that strange form of madness was sent upon him which the Greeks called lycanthropy (KvKav^ptDTria) ; wherein the sufferer im- agines himself a beast, and, quitting the haunts of men, insists on leading the life of a beast (Dan. iv, 33). Berosus, with the pardonable tenderness of a native, anxious for the good fame of his country's greatest king, suppressed this fact; and it may be doubted whether Herodotus in his Babylonian travels, which fell only about a century after the time, obtained any knowledge of it. Nebuchadnezzar himself, however, in his great inscription appears to allude to it, although in a studied ambiguity of phrase which renders the passage very difficult of translation. After describing the construction of the most important of his great works, he appears to say, " For four years (?)... the seat of my kingdom . . . did not rejoice my heart. In all my dominions I did not build a high place of power, the precious treasures of my kingdom I did not lay up. In Babylon, buildings for myself and for the honor of my kingdom I did not lay out. In the worship of Merodach, my lord, the joy of my heart, in Babylon the cit}^ of his sovereignty, and the seat of my empire, I did not sing his praises, I did not furnish his altars with victims, nor did I clear out the canals" (Rawlin- son's Herod, ii, 58G). Other negative clauses follow. It is plain that we have here narrated a suspension — apparently for four years — of all those works and occu- pations on which the king especially prided himself — his temples, palaces, worship, offerings, and works of* irrigation ; and though the cause of the suspension is not stated, we can scarcely imagine anj-thing that would account for it but some such extraordinary malad}"- as that recorded in Daniel.
It has often been remarked that Herodotus ascribes to a queen, Nitocris, several of the important works, which other writers (Berosus, Abydenus) assign to Nebuchadnezzar. The conjecture naturally arises that Nitocris was Nebuchadnezzar's queen, and that, as she carried on his constructions during his incapacity, they were by some considered to be hers. It is no disproof of this to urge that Nebuchadnezzar's wile was a Median princess, not an Egyptian (as Nitocris must have been from her name), and that she was called, not Nitocris, but Amyitis or Amyhia; for Nebuchadnezzar, who
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
900
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
married Amyitis in B.C. 625, and who lived after this 1 consequent disappearance, but there is at most, as De marriage more than sixtv years, may easily have roar- Wette observes, only a traditional connection between ried a<»ain after the decease of his first wife, and his j them. Jahn {Hebrew Commonwealth') conceives the
second queen may have been an Egyptian. His later relations with Egypt appear to have been friendly; and it is remarkable that tlie name Nitocris, which belonged to ver}' primitive Egyptian history, had in fact been resuscitated about this time, and is found on the Egyp- tian monuments to have been borne by a princess be- longing to the family of the I'sammetiks.— Smith.
The nature of Nebuchadnezzar's disease and recovery- has been much debated. Origen strangely allegorizes the story (ap. Hieron. in Dan.) as a reiiresentation of the fall of Lucifer. Bodin (in Demoml.) maintains that Kebuchadnezzar underwent an actual metamorphosis of soul and body, a similar instance of wliich is given by Cluvier {Append, ad Epilom. Hist.') on the testimony of an eye-witness. Tcrtullian {De Panit.) confines the transformation to the body only, but without loss of reason, of which kind of metamorphosis St. Augustine {De Civ. Dei, xviii, 18) reports some instances said to have taken place in Italy, to which he himself attaches little credit ; but Gaspard Pcucer asserts that the trans- formation of men into wolves was very common in Li- vonia. Some Jewish rabbins have asserted that the soul of Nebuchadnezzar, by a real transmigration, changed places with that of an ox (Medina, De recta in Deiim JUL) ; while others have supposed not a real, but an apparent cliange, of which there is a case re- corded in the life of St. Macarius, the parents of a young •woman having been persuaded that their daughter had been transformed into a mare. The most generally re- ceived opinion, however, is that Nel)uchadnezzar la- bored under that species of hypochondriacal monomania which leads the patient to fancy himself changed into an animal or other substance, the habits of which he adopts. Jerome probably leaned to this ojiinion : '• Who does not see," he observes, " that madmen live like brute beasts'' {in Dan. iv, 4). To this disease of the imagina- tion physicians have given the name of Lycanthropy. Zoanthropy,orInsaniaCanina. See DisiiASE. In Dan, iv, 15 (iv, i2, according to the Latin) there seems to be an allusion to some species of insanity in the expression, "Even with a band of iron and brass" {alligetur vinculo ferrvo et fp/To, A'ulg.) ; and the loss and return of reason is very clearly intimated in ver. 34, "IMine understand ing returned to me, and I blessed the JMost High." (Sec also Virgil, Ecloi/.\\; Drummond Hay, Westej-n Borbari; p. 05 ; B. Reckenberger, De Ncbucadn. ab hominibus ex- pulso, Jen. 1733 ; Bertholdt, Daniel, i, 200 ; Heinroth, Seelenstdr.\,Gb; Ader, /Je a-grotis in A^-Hn//. p. 31, etc.; Meade, Med. Sac. ; IMlillcr, De Nebuchadnezz. fttra- fioptpwaii, Lips. 1747.)