The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The Length of Reigns of the Neo-Babylonian Kings 131
36:10, and Jeremiah 52:28, 31. A brief discussion of this evidence is
included in the “Appendix for Chapter 3” (page 325).
c) Nebuchadnezzar to Awel-Marduk to Neriglissar
(5) In the Neo-Babylonian period, bookkeeping was already an
ancient, highly complex and formalized business. 85 An interesting
example of this is a tablet known as NBC 4897. The document is,
actually, a ledger, tabulating the annual growth of a herd of sheep
and goats belonging to the Eanna temple at Uruk for ten consecutive
years, from the thirty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar to the first year of
Neriglissar.
In the entries for each year the number of lambs and kids born
during the year is added, and the number of animals killed
(documented by their hides) or paid to the herdsmen as wages, are
subtracted. The grand totals are then given in the column farthest
to the right. Thus it is possible to follow the numerical increase of
the herd year by year. The text shows that the herdsman
responsible for the herd, Nabû-ahhe-shullim, during the ten years
succeeded in enlarging the herd from 137 sheep and goats to 922
animals. 86
True, the Babylonian scribe made a few miscalculations and
mathematical mistakes which partially hampers the interpretation
of the document. 87 There is no doubt, however, that it is an annual
record, as year numbers are given for each successive year. In the
entry for the first year of Neriglissar, for example, the grand total
column contains the following information:
Grand total: 922, 1st year of Nergal-sharra-usur, king of Babylon, 9
lambs in Uruk were received (and) 3 lambs for shearing.
Similar information is given for each year from the thirtyseventh
year of Nebuchadnezzar to his forty-third year, for the first
85 Bookkeeping is as old as the art of writing. In fact, the oldest known script, the
proto-cuneiform script, which emerged at Uruk (and usually is dated to about 3200
B.C.E.), “was almost exclusively restricted to bookkeeping; it was an ‘accountant’s
script’.” —H. J. Nissen, P. Damerow, & R. K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 30.
86 G. van Driel & K. R. Nemet-Nejat, “Bookkeeping practices for an institutional herd
at Eanna,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 46:4, 1994, p.47. The form of recordkeeping
used in the text “involves accumulating data with cross-footing the
accounts in order to prove that all entries are accounted therein.”—Ibid.,p. 47,
note 1.
87 The errors occur in the totals, probably because the scribes had difficulties in
reading the numbers in their ledgers.—Ibid., pp. 56, 57.