Bible-Related Timelines supported by Archaeology but without Astronomy

[JW Insider]

The next king after Evil-Merodach based on business tablets is Neriglissar. His reign lasted 4 years. Giving us the following update for our chart:

 

[edited: after this first version of P&D another tablet was published showing Nisannu the 6th of this fourth and last year of his reign.]

[JW Insider]

Now we have one of the most interesting features of the Babylonian system of keeping track of years. Based on the tablets, it was very early after the New Year started on Nisannu 1 that Neriglissar evidently died. Note that the last tablet that P&D knew about when producing this book on Babylonian chronolgy was Nisannu the 2nd. [edited: after this first version of P&D another tablet was published showing Nisannu the 6th of this fourth and last year of his reign.]

The next king, Labashi-Marduk, reigned for as little as one to two months, from at least the middle of the  second month to the middle of the third month. The tablets noting him as king are only for his "accesssion" year. He never made it to an official "Year 1." 

[Edited to add, since the first publication of P&D, another tablet was published that showed Labashi-Marduk's first known tablet as the Nisannu the 23rd, so it was parts of 3 months, not just 2 months.]

So how is this year counted in the calendar? Because the previous king made it to the New Year, he is "credited" with this particular year in the "count of years." It doesn't mean that you won't find Labashi-Marduk in a king's list somewhere, but you should not find him in a year-by-year "calendar count." Even if 10 kings had ruled for a few days each this year, this year "counted" for Neriglissar. 

So we don't really update the next year in the chart with his name. We shouldn't, or else the count of years will be off. The next year must only count for a king who is reigning on Nisannu the 1st. 

And that would be . . . 

[JW Insider]

Nabonidus, or Nabunaid.

But we also see another problem here. Those two months of Labashi-Marduk overlap with Nabunaid. This also happened with some Assyrian kings and has caused a lot of confusion in trying to make sure the order of kings is known or whether there were multiple claimants to the throne at the same time, or even co-rulers. During the time of civil war in Assyria, and the Babylonian ascendancy, there were multiple issues regarding who was the legitimate king during a few years. The Babylonian chronicles claim there was no legitimate king in the year between Kandalanu and Nabopolassar, for example. 

in this case, other histories have helped to clear up the confusion. And for year-to-year calendar purposes, we would not have included Labashi-Marduk anyway because he never had an official "Year 1."

The end of the reign of Nabonidus is fairly well-known because he was king when his co-regent Belshazzar was in Babylon at the time Cyrus conquered Babylon.

So he reigned 17 years. There is one tablet that evidently was reported to contain a reference to an 18th year of his reign, but the same tablet is dated at the top to the the 17th year. So we might have a scribal error. Or it was misread by the person who published the tablet. I don't know about this one, but I have seen that some are hard to read. 

There is another one dated to one day after Cyrus conquered Babylon, and is explained by P&D as follows:

With this information we can safely add the 17 years of Nabonidus to the chart.

[JW Insider]

In the chart, I will put the BCE years back for reference, with a small word of explanation. The light-green BCE timeline represents the standard timeline, and the light-blue (teal-colored) timeline represents the WTS publications timeline. From 556 BCE onward, however, the WTS publications accept the standard timeline, because the Nabonidus Chronicle has been used as verification of the accepted 539 date for Cyrus.

*** ad p. 1197 Nabonidus ***
the Nabonidus Chronicle covers events in the period from at least 556 to about the start of 521 B.C.E.

But the WTS chronology still remains unique for up to the 4-year reign of Neriglissar, because the dates for Evil-Merodach are tied to the chronology that the WTS gives to Nebuchadnezzar. This leaves 3 to 4 years in the WTS chronology that have not been addressed, and are left blank below. (Although see the last note, about Cyrus, below.)

Notes:
*** it-1 p. 773 Evil-merodach ***
The Babylonian king who succeeded Nebuchadnezzar to the throne in 581 B.C.E.
*** it-1 p. 1267 Jehoiachin ***
About 32 years later, evidently in 580 B.C.E., Jehoiachin was released from prison by Nebuchadnezzar’s successor Evil-merodach (Awil-Marduk) and given a position of favor above all the other captive kings. Thereafter he ate at Evil-merodach’s table and received a daily allowance.—2Ki 25:27-30; Jer 52:31-34.
Babylonian administrative documents have been found listing rations for Jehoiachin and five of his sons.

The following article was a bit confusing, but I don't think it counts for the WTS acceptance of the standard chronology, although it doesn't question the fact that a tablet dated to the 33rd year of Nebuchadnezzar is dated 572 BCE. In Watchtower chronology this would be adjusted to 592 BCE. 

*** mrt article 11 par. 2 Is the Bible’s Depiction of the Jewish Exile in Babylon Accurate? ***
Researchers have analyzed over 100 clay tablets that appear to be from ancient Babylon or nearby. The tablets show that many Jewish exiles maintained their cultural and religious identity while peacefully submitting to Babylonian rule. The tablets, dated from 572 to 477 B.C.E., include rental agreements, business ventures, promissory notes, and other financial records. “These documents,” says one reference work, “provide glimpses into the lives of ordinary people in a rural setting: they till the land and build houses, pay taxes, and render services to the king.”

Wikipedia presents the following about the tablets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Yahudu_Tablets

The earliest document in the collection dates back to 572 BCE, about 15 years after the destruction of the Temple, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.^[6] The most recent tablet dates back to 477 BCE, during the reign of Xerxes I, about 60 years after the Return to Zion began and about 20 years before the rise of Ezra the Scribe.

Note regarding Cyrus in WTS publications:

*** it-1 p. 454 Chronology ***
The date of 539 B.C.E. for the fall of Babylon can be arrived at not only by Ptolemy’s canon but by other sources as well. The historian Diodorus, as well as Africanus and Eusebius, shows that Cyrus’ first year as king of Persia corresponded to Olympiad 55, year 1 (560/559 B.C.E.), while Cyrus’ last year is placed at Olympiad 62, year 2 (531/530 B.C.E.)

The acceptance of this particular part of the Olympiad data indicates that the standard chronology is accepted all the way back to 560 BCE, which would close up those 3 years currently left blank in the chart. It does not mean that the reign of Neriglissar is 100% accepted per the tablets however, because these 3 or 4 years still represent the unaddressed period of time in which WTS chronology proposes 23 or 24 years instead of 3 or 4. 
 

[JW Insider]

It's true that there are tens of thousands of these business tablets, and tablets have been found for every year of the reigns of the Neo-Babylonian kings. And it's usually on the order of hundreds of them for each year of each king. This means that there are thousands of such tablets covering exactly:

1. 21 years for Nabopolassar
2. 43 years for Nebuchadnezzar
3. 2 years for Evil-Merodach
4. 4 years for Neriglissar
5. 2 months for Labashi-Marduk
6. 17 years for Nabonidus

But that doesn't necessarily mean they we have put them in the right order. Without any knowledge of the astronomy tablets, how would contemporary documents show which kings ruled before and after each other?

For one thing we have the interlocking dates. The months of the accession year of one king cannot overlap with the last months of the last year of the previous king. But there was an exception to this with those two months of Labashi-Marduk who appears not to have been fully accepted as king in all parts of Babylonia, while Nabonidus was already a contender immediately after Neriglissar's death. There is another exception of a month or so, evidently, when Nebuchadnezzar's son, Evil-Merodach, was already taking over for his father in Nebuchadnezzar's final dying months. It's also conceivable that slight overlaps could happen when the year is already named for the previous king, and the new king is not fully established among royal contenders.  

We also have inscriptions where Nebuchadnezzar more than once calls himself the son of his father Nabopolassar, and inscriptions where Evil-Merodach calls himself the son of Nebuchadnezzar:

*** it-1 p. 773 Evil-merodach ***
There is also archaeological testimony concerning Evil-merodach (Awil-Marduk, Amil-Marduk). For example, an inscription on a vase found near Susa reads: “Palace of Amil-Marduk, King of Babylon, son of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.”

And inscriptions where Nabonidus calls himself the "ambassador of Nebuchadnezzar." 

As it turns out, the tablets themselves leave us with many different ways to link from one King to the next. They often reference prior years in contracts regarding loans and interest. The Egibi business entity provides a completely independent link of "presidents" of their banking/real estate company that perfectly matches and supports the order of the kings presented above.

And of course, the surviving portions of the Babylonian Chronicles provide a year by year reference that includes the transitions between most of these kings. 

I'd like to present a few of these "interlocking" tablets that determine the order of the kings, but there is another archaeological discovery that manages the interlocking of these kings in just one inscription . . . next. 

[JW Insider]

There is a long inscription attributed to (actually in honor of) Nabonidus' mother, which honors her long life of about 102 to 104 years of age. It says about her life:

 From the 20th year of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, when I was born, until the 42nd year of Ashurbanipal, the 3rd year of his son Ashur-etil-ili, the 21st year of Nabopolassar, the 43rd year of Nebuchadnezzar, the 2nd year of Awel-Merodach, the 4th year of Neriglissar, during (all) these 95 years in which I visited the temple of the great godhead Sin, king of all the gods in heaven and in the nether world, he looked with favor upon my pious good works and listened to my prayers, accepted my vows. ..  He [the moon god Sin] added (to my life) many days (and) years of happiness and kept me alive from the time of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, to the 9th year of Nabonidus, king of Babylon, the son whom I bore, (i.e.) one hundred and four happy years (spent) in that piety which Sin, the king of all gods, has planted in my heart’. . . . The ninth year: . . . On the fifth day of the month Nisan the queen mother died in Dur-karashu which (is on) the bank of the Euphrates upstream from Sippar.

Therefore, the inscription says:

• Ashurbanipal reigned 42 years,
• Ashuretilili reigned 3 years,
• Nabopolassar reigned 21 years,
• Awel-Merodach reigned 2 years,
• Neriglissar reigned 4 years,
• Nabonidus followed Neriglissar and the queen mother died in his 9th year.

This matches the various other contemporary or near-contemporary sources for the lengths of the reign of each king:

[JW Insider]

So even without checking out any astronomy, just from the tablets alone, we would get exactly the same as "Ptolemy's Canon." We'd get the same length and order of all the kings' reigns.

[Pudgy]

Well, that’s one less thing Ah has to worry about!

I never really understood the difference between Avil-Marduk, and Evil-Knieval.