Henri-Paul Motte’s Bride of Belus (c. 1885) stages a dramatic reinterpretation of an ancient Babylonian ritual described by classical writers, where a woman was offered to the god Bel. Motte turns this fragmentary myth into an almost theatrical historical fantasy: a young woman stands elevated above a lavish temple interior, illuminated as the central sacrificial figure, while priests, soldiers, and worshippers surround her with solemn reverence. The painting blends archaeological imagination with 19th-century Orientalist aesthetics, using exaggerated scale, ornate architecture, and saturated color to evoke a distant and mysterious civilization. Far from depicting a documented event, Motte constructs a vision of ancient Babylon filtered through Victorian fascination with the exotic, highlighting both the grandeur and the brutality projected onto the ancient Near East.