the city had shifted by 689 BC. Ultimately, Sennacherib decided to destroy Babylon. Brinkman believed that Sennacherib's change in attitude came from a will to avenge his son and tiring of a city well within the borders of his empire repeatedly rebelling against his rule. According to Brinkman, Sennacherib might have lost the affection he once had for Babylon's gods because they had inspired their people to attack him. Sennacherib's own account of the destruction reads: Although Sennacherib destroyed the city, he appears to have still been somewhat fearful of Babylon's ancient gods. Earlier in his account of the campaign, he specifically mentions the sanctuaries of the Babylonian deities had provided financial support to his enemies. The passage describing the seizure of the property of the gods and the destruction of some of their statues is one of the few where Sennacherib uses "my people" rather than "I". Brinkman interpreted this in 1973 as leaving the blame of the fate of the temples not personally on Sennacherib himself, but on the decisions made by the temple personnel and the actions of the Assyrian people. During the destruction of the city, Sennacherib destroyed the temples and the images of the gods, except for that of Marduk, which he took to Assyria. This caused consternation in Assyria itself, where Babylon and its gods were held in high esteem. Sennacherib attempted justifying his actions to his own countrymen through a campaign of religious propaganda. Among the elements of this campaign, he commissioned a myth in which Marduk was put on trial before Ashur, the god of Assyria. This text is fragmentary, but it seems Marduk is found guilty of some grave offense. Sennacherib described his defeat of the Babylonian rebels in the language of the Babylonian creation myth, identifying Babylon with the evil demon-goddess Tiamat and himself with Marduk. Ashur replaced Marduk in the New Year's festival, and in the temple of the festival he placed a symbolic pile of rubble from Babylon. In Babylonia, Sennacherib's policy spawned a deep-seated hatred amongst much of the populace. Sennacherib's goal was the complete eradication of Babylonia as a political entity. Though some northern Babylonian territories became Assyrian provinces, the Assyrians made no effort to rebuild Babylon itself, and southern chronicles from the time refer to the era as the "kingless" period when there was no king in the land. Renovation of Nineveh After the final