The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

122 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
As the names of many individuals often recur in the business and
administrative documents—sometimes hundreds of times during
the entire Neo-Babylonian period―scholars usually apply the
prosopographical method in their analysis of these texts. Such an
approach not only contributes to the understanding of the
structure and social life of the Neo-Babylonian society, but it also
provides additional, internal evidence in support of the established
chronology of the period.
Of the tens of thousands of documents from the Neo-
Babylonian era, more than half are the results of temple activities
and have been found in temple archives, particularly in the archives of
the Eanna temple in Uruk (the temple of the goddess Ishtar) and
the Ebabbar temple in Sippar (the temple of Shamash, the sun god).
But many thousands of texts also come from private archives and
libraries.
The richest private archives are those of the Egibi and Nur-Sîn
houses, centered in the Babylon area. Other private archives have
been found, for example, in Uruk (the sons of Bel-ushallim, Nabûushallim,
and Bel-supê-muhur), in Borsippa (the Ea-ilûta-bâni
family), in Larsa (Itti-Shamash-balatu and his son Arad-Shamash),
and in Ur (the Sîn-uballit family).
No state archives have been found from the Neo-Babylonian
period, the reason being that at this time such documents are
known to have been written (in Aramaic) on leather and papyrus,
materials that were easily destroyed by the climatic conditions in
Mesopotamia. 65
Consider now how a study of certain of the available archives
can yield valuable information of a chronological nature.
a) The Egibi business house
By far the largest private archive of the Neo-Babylonian period is
that of the Egibi business house. Of this enterprise Bruno Meissner
says:
From the firm the Sons of Egibi we possess such an abundance of
documents that we are able to follow nearly all business
transactions and personal experiences of its heads from the time of
Nebuchadnezzar up to the time of Darius I. 66
65 For a survey of the Neo-Babylonian archives, see M. A. Dandamaev’s article in
Cuneiform Archives and Libraries, ed. K. R. Veenhof (Leiden: Nederlands
Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1986), pp. 273–277.
66 Bruno Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien, Vol. II (Heidelberg, 1925), p. 331. The
quotation is translated from the German.