Babylonian Chronicles

Babylonian Chronicles is the name for a series of historical texts from ancient Mesopotamia, written in cuneiform on clay tablets, that record events in Babylonian history. Most of the tablets were recognized as chronicles among the holdings of the British Museum in London, which keeps the tablets described below. They give a Babylonian record of events that 2 Kings, Jeremiah and Daniel also report, from the siege of Samaria to the fall of Babylon. One entry, telling of the capture of "the city of Judah" in 597 BC, brought the published tablets wide attention.

The events in the Bible

Shalmaneser V, king of Assyria from 727 to 722 BC, marched against Samaria and besieged it, and after three years, in the ninth year of Hoshea, the Assyrians captured it (2 Kings 17:3-6; 2 Kings 18:9-10). Samaria fell in 722 BC. Sennacherib, king of Assyria from 705 to 681 BC, was killed by his sons Adrammelech and Sharezer while worshiping in the temple of Nisroch, and his son Esar-haddon reigned in his place (2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38). Zephaniah foresaw Nineveh made "a desolation, as dry as a desert," and Nahum pictured onlookers saying, "Nineveh is devastated" (Zephaniah 2:13; Nahum 3:7).

In the reign of Jehoiachin (598-597 BC), the servants of Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem, and Jehoiachin surrendered with his mother and officials; "in the eighth year of his reign, the king of Babylon took him captive" (2 Kings 24:10-12). Nebuchadnezzar carried off the treasures of the temple and palace and took Jehoiachin, his household, the leading men and the craftsmen and metalsmiths into exile in Babylon (2 Kings 24:13-16). He then made Mattaniah, Jehoiachin's uncle, king in his place and renamed him Zedekiah, king of Judah from 597 to 586 BC (2 Kings 24:17). Jeremiah counts 3,023 Jews carried away "in the seventh year" (Jeremiah 52:28). In Zedekiah's reign Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem again, and in his nineteenth year the temple and the city were burned: the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC (2 Kings 25:1-10). Daniel tells of King Belshazzar's feast for a thousand of his nobles and says that he was slain that very night and Darius the Mede received the kingdom (Daniel 5:1; Daniel 5:30-31).

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What the tablets are

The chronicles are written in cuneiform, usually in the Akkadian language. Their entries are short and are dated by the year of the king's reign, often down to the month and day, as in "the second day of the month of Addaru" of Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year. The series began with the reign of Nabonassar, king of Babylon from 747 BC, and continued at least into the Seleucid period; exactly when and why it ended is not known.

The British Museum's cuneiform collections held chronicle tablets that had not been edited, and D. J. Wiseman, who spent fourteen years at the Museum and later became a professor of Assyriology at the University of London, published several of them in his 1956 book Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings. These concern the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, of his father Nabopolassar and of a third king, and they include the first publication of the chronicle of Nebuchadnezzar's early years. The standard edition of the series is A. K. Grayson's Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975), whose numbers (ABC 1, ABC 5 and so on) are used to cite the tablets.

Assyria's last century

The chronicle numbered ABC 1 records the accession of Shalmaneser to the throne of Assyria and Akkad and adds, "He ravaged Samaria." It says that Sennacherib "was killed by his son in a rebellion" after twenty-four years of rule and that Esarhaddon, his son, then ascended the throne in Assyria. The Fall of Nineveh Chronicle (ABC 3) records an alliance between the king of Akkad (Babylonia) and Cyaxares, king of the Medes, and tells how they encamped against Nineveh, pressed the siege for three months and "turned the city into a ruin heap," and how Sin-shar-ishkun, king of Assyria, died at that time. The fall of Nineveh came in 612 BC. Later entries tell of an Egyptian army that came to help Aššur-uballit, king of Assyria, in his march on Harran; 2 Kings says Pharaoh Neco went up to aid the king of Assyria at the Euphrates and that Josiah went out to confront him (2 Kings 23:29). C. J. Gadd first published this tablet, BM 21901, in The Fall of Nineveh (1923).

Nebuchadnezzar's early years

The chronicle of the early years of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon from 605 to 562 BC, is tablet BM 21946 (ABC 5), and it outlines his first eleven years. It records that he, then crown prince and eldest son of Nabopolassar, marched to Carchemish on the bank of the Euphrates, crossed the river against the Egyptian army and defeated it, the Battle of Carchemish of 605 BC, which Jeremiah places in the fourth year of Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 46:2). Nabopolassar, who had become king of Babylon in 626 BC and founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire, then died after twenty-one years as king, and in the month of Ululu Nebuchadnezzar "sat on the royal throne in Babylon," in 605 BC. In his fourth year, the chronicle records, he marched toward Egypt, the two armies inflicted heavy losses on each other, and he returned to Babylon; 2 Kings says that Jehoiakim served Nebuchadnezzar three years and then rebelled (2 Kings 24:1). For his seventh year it records that in the month Kislîmu he mustered his troops, "besieged the city of Judah," seized it on the second of Addaru, captured its king and "appointed there a king of his own choice," then sent its heavy tribute to Babylon. Addaru is the month Adar, and the date falls on 15 or 16 March 597 BC. 2 Kings supplies the names: the king taken captive was Jehoiachin, and the king Nebuchadnezzar set in his place was Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:12; 2 Kings 24:17). Ezekiel dates his opening vision to "the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin" (Ezekiel 1:2).

The chronicle and Jeremiah 52:28 count this capture in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year, while 2 Kings 24:12 counts it in his eighth. Rodger C. Young, in a 2004 article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, explains that 2 Kings 24 and 25 "use Nisan years and non-accession reckoning." The tablet ends with Nebuchadnezzar's eleventh year, and its sequel, which covered Jerusalem's capture in 586 BC, is lost, so no Babylonian chronicle account of that destruction survives.

Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon

The Nabonidus Chronicle (ABC 7) records that Nabonidus, king of Babylon from 556 to 539 BC, was "in Tayma," the oasis of Tema, while "the prince, the officers, and his army" were in Akkad, and that the Akitu festival did not take place. William H. Shea, in a 1982 article in Andrews University Seminary Studies, identifies this prince as Belshazzar and reads Belshazzar's offer of "the third highest ruler in the kingdom" as leaving his father Nabonidus first (Daniel 5:7; Daniel 5:16; Daniel 5:29). The chronicle records that the army of Cyrus entered Babylon "without battle," that Nabonidus was captured there after he retreated, and that Cyrus entered Babylon: the fall of Babylon in 539 BC.