The Religious Chronicle is an ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

n register of portents such as the straying of wild animals into urban areas and extraordinary natural phenomena which presaged the disruptions which interfered with the Akītu or new year festival and the performance of its regular cultic activities which included the transport of the idols of the gods to the city of

Babylon Babylon ( ) was an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia, within modern-day Hillah, Iraq, about south of modern-day Baghdad. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-s ...

during the tumultuous years of chaos caused by the incursions of

Aramean The Arameans, or Aramaeans (; ; , ), were a tribal Semitic people in the ancient Near East, first documented in historical sources from the late 12th century BCE. Their homeland, often referred to as the land of Aram, originally covered ce ...

nomads.

The text

The Religious Chronicle seems to have drawn its sources from the protases of omen literature in contrast to the

Chronicle of Early Kings The Chronicle of Early Kings, named ABC 20 in Grayson’s ''Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles'' and CM 40 in Glassner’s ''Chroniques mésopotamiennes'' is a Babylonian chronicle preserved on two tablets: tablet ABM 26472 (98-5-14, 290) tablet ...

which drew them from their apodoses. The tablet has two columns per side and is in poor condition, with the surface severely abraded and most of the left-hand side (columns I and IV) gone. It may have been part of a series as there is part of a catch-line evident on line 8 of column IV. It is designated BM 35968 (Sp III, 504) and is held in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. Written during the

Seleucid era The Seleucid era ("SE") or (literally "year of the Greeks" or "Greek year"), sometimes denoted "AG," was a Calendar era, system of numbering years in use by the Seleucid Empire and other countries among the ancient Hellenistic period, Hellenistic ...

, it was acquired by the Museum from Spartali & Co, sponsors of much of the unofficial tablet gathering in Iraq under Ottoman jurisdiction in 1880, and consequently its find spot is uncertain. The earliest king to appear in the text is Nabû-šumu-libūr ( 1033 – 1026 BC) on line 16 of the first column and the work also name-drops

Nabû-mukin-apli Nabû-mukin-apli, typically inscribed dAG-DU-A, “ Nabû (is) establisher of a legitimate heir,” ruled 974–939 BC, founded Babylon’s 8th dynasty, the so-called ''Dynasty of E'', and ruled for thirty-six years.''Babylonian King List A'', t ...

( 978 – 943 BC). The intervening text describes a reign or reigns of up to seventeen years. Only Simbar-Šipak ( 1025 - 1008 BC) and Eulmaš-šākin-šumi ( 1004 – 987 BC) reigned so long during this period. The historical era covered was a period of great turmoil. Column II, in a passage ascribed to Simbar-Šipak's reign, includes a possible reference to a solar eclipse: “On the twenty-sixth day of the month Sivan, in the seventh year, day turned to night and there was a fire in the sky.” Rowton identified this with May 9, 1012 BC although the current chronology places this in his thirteenth year and the absence of an appropriate technical term for the eclipse, such as AN-KU₁₀, casts doubt on this astronomical identification.

The text

Primary publications

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