The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

The 20 th Year of Artaxerxes 387
In support of the claim that Artaxerxes ruled for 51 years instead
of 41, the Watch Tower Society refers to two tablets dated to his
”50 th ” year and ”51 st ” year, respectively. The first tablet, listed as
BM 65494 in E. Leichty and A.K. Grayson, Catalogue of the
Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Vol. VII (London, 1987), is
still unpublished. The second tablet, CBM 12803 (= BE 8/1, 127),
on the other hand, was published in 1908 by Albert T. Clay in The
Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, Series A:
Cuneiform Texts, Vol. VIII, text 127. All authorities on Achaemenid
history agree that both of these cuneiform tablets contain scribal
errors.
As the Watch Tower Society points out, the tablet published by
Albert Clay is double-dated. The date on the tablet is given as,
”51st year, accession year, 12th month, day 20, Darius, king of
lands.” (Insight, p. 616) This text, then, seems to equate the 51st
year (evidently of Artaxerxes I; the name is not given in the text)
with the accession-year of his successor Darius II.
But once again, the Watch Tower Society does not tell the whole
truth. The reason is, that the whole truth changes the picture
completely. Many dated tablets are extant from the end of
Artaxerxes’ reign, thanks to the discovery of a cuneiform archive
from the Murashu firm. In Istanbul Murashu Texts (Istanbul, 1997),
V. Donbaz and M. W. Stolper explain that the Murashu archive is
”the largest available documentary source for Achaemenid
Babylonia in the years between Xerxes and Alexander.” (Page 4)
Nearly all of the tablets are dated to the reigns of Artaxerxes I and
his successor Darius II. The number culminates in the last two
years of the reign of Artaxerxes and the first seven years of the
reign of Darius II, as shown by the graph below, published by
Donbaz and Stolper on page 6 of the work quoted above. The
archive includes over 60 texts from the 41st year of Artaxerxes and
the accession year of Darius II, and culminates with about 120
texts dated to the 1st year of Darius II!