The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Length of Reigns of the Neo-Babylonian Kings 109
Nabonidus No. 18, confirms the length of reign for that king as
found in those ancient sources.
The second cuneiform tablet, Nabonidus No. 8, clearly
establishes the total length of the reigns of the Neo-Babylonian kings
up to Nabonidus, and enables us to know both the beginning year
of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign and the crucial year in which he
desolated Jerusalem.
The third, Nabonidus No. 24, provides the length of the reign
of each Neo-Babylonian king from the first ruler, Nabopolassar,
onward and down to the ninth year of the last ruler, Nabonidus
(Belshazzar was evidently a coregent with his father Nabonidus at
the time of Babylon’s fall). 41
Following are the details for each of these cuneiform tablets:
(1) Nabon. No.18 is a cylinder inscription from an unnamed year
of Nabonidus. Fulfilling the desire of Sin, the moon-god,
Nabonidus dedicated a daughter of his (named En-nigaldi-Nanna)
to this god as priestess at the Sin temple of Ur.
The important fact here is that an eclipse of the moon, dated in the
text to Ulûlu 13 and observed in the morning watch, led to this
dedication. Ulûlu, the sixth month in the Babylonian calendar,
corresponded to parts of August and September (or, sometimes,
parts of September and October) in our calendar. The inscription
explicitly states that the moon “set while eclipsed,” that is, the
eclipse began before and ended after sunrise. 42 Its end, therefore,
was invisible at Babylon.
41 Unfortunately, scholars have arranged or numbered the inscriptions differently,
which may cause some confusion. In the systems of Tadmor, Berger, and Beaulieu
the three inscriptions are listed as follows:
Tadmor 1965: Berger 1973: Beaulieu 1989:
(1) Nabon. No. 18 Nbd Zyl. II, 7 No. 2
(2) Nabon. No. 8 Nbd Stl. Frgm. XI No. 1
(3) Nabon. No. 24 (missing) (Adad-guppi stele)
Beaulieu’s arrangement is chronological: No. 1 was written in Nabonidus’ first
year, No. 2 in his second year, and No. 13 after year 13, possibly in year 14 or 15.
(Beaulieu, op. cit., p.42.) In Tadmor’ s list Nabonidus’ inscriptions are numbered in
the order of their publication, starting with the fifteen texts published by Langdon
in 1912. (Hayim Tadmor, “The Inscriptions of Nabunaid: Historical Arrangement,”
in Studies in Honor of Benno Landsberger on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday [=
Assyriological Studies, No. 16], ed. H. Güterbock & T. Jacobsen, Chicago, The
Chicago University Press, 1965, pp. 351–363.) The systems of Tadmor, Berger, and
Beaulieu, in turn, differ from that of H. Lewy in Archiv Orientální, Vol. XVII, Prague,
1949, pp. 34, 35, note 32. In the discussion here presented Tadmor’s numbers will
be used.
42 This part of the text says, according to Beaulieu’s translation: “On account of the
wish for an entu priestess, in the month Ulûlu, the month (whose Sumerian name
means) ‘work of the goddesses,’ on the thirteenth day the moon was eclipsed and
set while eclipsed. Sin requested an entu priestess. Thus (were) his sign and his