The Nebo-Sarsekim Tablet is a clay

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

inscription referring to an official at the court of

Nebuchadnezzar II Nebuchadnezzar II, also Nebuchadrezzar II, meaning "Nabu, watch over my heir", was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Often titled Nebuchadnezzar ...

, king 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 ...

. It almost certainly refers to an official named in the Biblical

Book of Jeremiah The Book of Jeremiah () is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1#Superscription, Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "th ...

. It is currently in the collection of 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 ...

. Dated to circa 595 BC, the tablet was part of an archive from a large sun-worship

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

at Sippar.

Description

The tablet is a clay cuneiform inscription (2.13 inches; 5.5 cm) with the following content:

Discovery

Archaeologists unearthed the tablet in the ancient city of

Sippar Sippar (Sumerian language, Sumerian: , Zimbir) (also Sippir or Sippara) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its ''Tell (archaeology), tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell ...

(about a mile from modern

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

) in the 1870s. The

acquired it in 1920, but it had remained in storage unpublished until Michael Jursa (associate professor at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (, ) is a public university, public research university in Vienna, Austria. Founded by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, Duke Rudolph IV in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world and among the largest ...

) discovered its relevance to biblical history. He noted that both the name and the title (''rab ša-rēši'') of the official closely matched the Hebrew text of Jeremiah 39:3. Additionally, the tablet is dated just eight years before the events in Jeremiah. According to Jursa, the rarity of the Babylonian name, the high rank of the ''rab ša-rēši'' and the close proximity in time make it almost certain that the person mentioned on the tablet is identical with the biblical figure.Jursa, M., "Nabû-šarrūssu-ukīn, ''rab ša-rēši'', und "Nebusarsekim" (Jer 39:3)" ''Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires'' 2008-1 pp. 9-10
link

Bible comparisons

According to

Jeremiah Jeremiah ( – ), also called Jeremias, was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewish tradition, Jeremiah authored the Book of Jeremiah, book that bears his name, the Books of Kings, and the Book of Lamentations, with t ...

( 39:3 in the

Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...

or 46:3 in the

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

), an individual by this same name visited

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

during the Babylonian conquest of it. The verse begins by stating that ''all'' the Babylonian officials sat authoritatively in the Middle Gate, then names several of them, and concludes by adding that all the other officials were there as well. Over the years,

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

translators have divided the named individuals in different ways (as seen in the table below), rendering anywhere from two to eight names.

Josephus

In Book 10 (chapter VIII, paragraph 2; or line 135) of his ''

Antiquities of the Jews ''Antiquities of the Jews'' (; , ''Ioudaikē archaiologia'') is a 20-volume historiographical work, written in Greek, by the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus in the 13th year of the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, which was 94 CE. It cont ...

'',

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...

records the Babylonian officials as:

William Whiston William Whiston (9 December 166722 August 1752) was an English theologian, historian, natural philosopher, and mathematician, a leading figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton. He is now probably best known for helping to inst ...

's translation follows the KJV/ASV rendition, albeit reversing two of them: : Nergal Sharezer, Samgar Nebo, Rabsaris, Sarsechim, and Rabmag The literal translation by Christopher T. Begg and Paul Spilsbury is: : Regalsar, Aremant, Semegar, Nabosaris, and Acarampsaris

References

External links