Biblical Archaeology: Bonus 55 - Babylonian Chronicles

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Bonus 55 - Babylonian Chronicles

Chronicle (ca. 550-400 BC) including the first
Babylonian capture of Jerusalem (605-595 BC) Displayed upside down
Photo by Dr. David Graves
Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum

The Babylonian Chronicles are a group of Babylonian texts describing the exploits of the Babylonian rulers.1. The tablet depicted in the above photograph describes the Fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC and the victories of Nabopolassar mentioned in 2 Kings 24:10-14. 2.

10. At that time the servants of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. 11 And Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to the city while his servants were besieging it, 12 and Jehoiachin the king of Judah gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself and his mother and his servants and his officials and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign 13 and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon king of Israel had made, as the Lord had foretold. 14 He carried away all Jerusalem and all the officials and all the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths. None remained, except the poorest people of the land (2 Kgs 24:10-14 ESV).

Other tablets from the Babylonian Chronicles mention the rebellion which resulted in the murder of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria by his son (747-668 BC, 2 Kgs 19:36; Isa 37:37), the fall of Nineveh (612 BC, 2 Kgs 23:29; Jer 46:2; 2 Chron 35:20-25), the Battle of Charchemish (605 BC, 2 Kgs 24:7), and the Fall of Babylon (539 BC, Isa 13, 21; Jer 50-51).3.

Footnotes

1. Waerzeggers, Caroline .“The Babylonian Chronicles: Classification and Provenance,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 71, no. 2 (2012): 285–98.
2. Peter Masters, Heritage of Evidence: In the British Museum (London, U.K.: Wakeman Trust, 2004), 73-80.
3. Charles F. Pfeiffer, ed., Wycliffe Dictionary of Biblical Archaeology (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2000), 133-36.

Babylonian Chronicle Online Text

For further Study

Finkel I .& R.J. van der Spek, Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Period, forthcoming.
Brinkman, J. A.“The Babylonian Chronicle Revisited,” in Lingering over Words, Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran, ed. T. Abusch et al. (Atlanta, 1990), 73–104.
Brinkman, J. A. “Glassner’s Mesopotamian Chronicles,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 667–70.
Glassner, J. J. Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta, 2004).
Grayson, A. K. Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 1975.
Sherwin-White, S. “Babylonian Chronicle Fragments as a Source for Seleucid History,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 42 (1983): 265–70.
van der Spek, R. J. “Darius III, Alexander the Great and Babylonian Scholarship,” in A Persian Perspective: Essays in Memory of Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg, eds. W. Henkelman and A. Kuhrt, Achaemenid History 13 (Leiden, 2003), 289–346.
van der Spek, R. J.“Berossus as a Babylonian Chronicler and Greek Historian,” in Studies in Ancient Near Eastern World View and Society Presented to Marten Stol on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, ed. R. J. van der Spek (Bethesda, 2007), 277–318.
Van Seters, J. In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (Winona Lake, IN, 1997), 79–92.
Waerzeggers, Caroline .“The Babylonian Chronicles: Classification and Provenance,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 71, no. 2 (2012): 285–98.
Weissert, E. “Interrelated Chronographic Patterns in the Assyrian Eponym Chronicle and the ‘Babylonian Chronicle’: A Comparative Study,” in La circulation des biens, de personnes et des idées dans le Proche-Orient ancien. Actes de la XXX– VIIIe Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale (Paris, 8–10 juillet 1991), eds. D. Charpin and F. Joannès (Paris, 1992), 273–82.