The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s Second Book 525
category of texts containing instalment dates or delivery dates (maššartum). (F. X. Kugler,
Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, Vol. II:2, 1912, pp. 388, 389) Such dates were given at
least one month, and often several months in advance. That is why Parker & Dubberstein
explain that “this tablet is useless for dating purposes.” (Parker & Dubberstein, Babylonian
Chronology, p. 14) As shown by its contents, No. 1055 is an administrative text giving the
dates for deliveries of certain amounts of barley in year 17 of Nabonidus. - P.- A. Beaulieu in
the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 52:4 (1993), pp. 256, 258.
“XII/17 /17” (CT 57.168 = BM 55694):
This tablet was copied by T. G. Pinches in the 1890’s and was finally published in 1982 as
CT 57:168. (CT 57:168 = Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Part. 57,
1982, No. 168) It is also listed in CBT 6 where the date is given as “Nb(-) 19/12/13+” (=
day 19, month 12, year 13+). (Erle Leichty, ed., Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British
Museum [CBT], Vol. 6, 1986, p. 184 [82-7-14, 51]) Both the royal name and the year number
are obviously damaged and only partially legible. “Nb(-)” shows that the royal name begins
with “Nabu-”. This could refer either to Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar, or Nabonidus. If
it is Nabonidus, the damaged year number, “13+”, may refer to any year between his 13 th
and 17 th year.
“VI/06/18” (Contenau 1927, 122):
This tablet was copied by G. Contenau and was published as number 121 (“122” in Furuli’s
table is an error) in his work Textes Cuneiformes, Tome XII, Contrats Néo-Babyloniens, I (Paris:
Librarie Orientaliste, 1927), Pl. LVIII. Line 1 gives the date as “VI/06/17,” but when it is
repeated in line 19 in the text it is given as “VI/6/18.” PD (Parker & Dubberstein, p. 13)
assumed “either a scribal error or an error by Contenau.” The matter was settled by Dr.
Béatrice André, who at my request collated the original at the Louvre Museum in Paris in
1990: “The last line has, like the first, the year 17, and the error comes from Contenau.” —
Letter André-Jonsson, March 20, 1990. (See GTR4, p. 120, n. 62)
One could also mention another, similar error on page 117 in the latest CBT catalogue (M.
Sigrist, R. Zadok, and C. B. F. Walker [eds.], Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British
Museum, Vol. III, London: The British Museum Press, 2006), where text 486 (= BM 26668)
is dated “Nbn 18/III/18” (= day 18, month III, year 18). On my request Dr. Jonathan
Taylor, who is Curator at the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum,
collated the tablet. In an email dated January 15, 2008, he explained:
“A year 18 for Nabonidus would indeed be very interesting. Unfortunately,
the 18 is a typo here and the tablet is datable simply to year 8.”
None of the four tablets listed by Furuli have an anomalous date. None of them, therefore,
may “suggest either that there was one or more years between Nabonaid and Cyrus, or that
the regnal years of Nabonaid could be calculated in a way different from the expected one.”
(Furuli, p. 63)
Summary
If a scholar believes it is possible to present a radical revision of the generally accepted
chronology of an ancient, well known historical period, he/she should be able to present
strong evidence of this, and he/she has to be very careful to check if his/her evidence is
valid before it is published. Furuli has done nothing of this. His claim that there are “about
90 anomalous tablets” from the Neo-Babylonian period is demonstrably false. And most of
the “anomalous dates” that he does quote have been proved not to be anomalous at all.
Fresh collations have shown that most of them either contain scribal errors or have been
misread by modern scholars, or have turned out to be modern copying, transcription, or
printing errors.
The question is why Furuli has used such tablets in support of his “Oslo chronology”
without having them collated. Basing a radical revision of the chronology established for