The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

526 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
one of the chronologically best established periods in antiquity on misreadings and
misinterpretations of the documents used does not speak very well about the quality of the
research performed.
Part IV: The Neo-Babylonian Ledger NBC 4897
The cuneiform tablet NBC 4897 is 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 thirtyseventh
year of Nebuchadnezzar to the first year of Neriglissar. As it is an annual record, it
clearly shows that Nebuchadnezzar ruled for 43 years, his son Amēl-Marduk for 2 years, and
that the latter was succeeded by Neriglissar. The tablet makes it impossible to insert any
extra years or any extra kings between Nebuchadnezzar and Amēl-Marduk, or between
Amēl-Marduk and Neriglissar. This is strong evidence, indeed.
The first presentation and discussion of the tablet was included in an article written by
Ronald H. Sack, “Some Notes on Bookkeeping in Eanna,” published in M. A. Powell Jr.
and R. H. Sack (eds.), Studies in Honor of Tom B. Jones (1979). It was a brief, preliminary study
of just five normal-sized pages (pp. 114 -118), three of which contain a drawing of the
tablet.
Another discussion of the tablet appeared 16 years later in an article written by G. van Driel
& K. R. Nemet-Nejat, “Bookkeeping Practices for an Institutional Herd at Eanna,” Journal of
Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 46 (1994), pp. 47-58. It was a somewhat longer study of 12 large-sized
pages, six of which contain a drawing, transliteration and translation of the tablet. Their
article corrects a number of errors and misinterpretations by Sack.
The most extensive and detailed discussion of the tablet, however, is Stefan Zawadzki’s
article, “Bookkeeping Practices at the Eanna Temple in Uruk in the Light of the Text NBC
4897,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 55 (2003), pp. 99-123. Zawadzki’s discussion covers
25 large-sized pages, four of which give a transliteration and translation of the tablet. The
article contains the most detailed and careful examination of the tablet so far. He corrects a
number of misreadings and misinterpretations in the previous articles by Ronald H. Sack
and G. van Driel/K. R. Nemet-Nejat.
Do the total numbers on the tablet contain serious mistakes and
miscalculations?
Although van Driel and Nemet-Nejat corrected many misinterpretations and misreadings by
Sack, they also claimed that the interpretation of the tablet “is hampered by miscalculations
and mistakes in the text.” (Van Driel/Nemet-Nejat, p. 47) Their conclusion at the end of
their article (page 57) is quoted approvingly by Rolf Furuli, who claims that it “highlights the
lack of quality of this tablet”:
“For the most part, mistakes occur in the totals. The scribes probably had
difficulties similar to ours in reading the numbers in their ledgers. We can
understand small mistakes of a single digit, but the mistakes occurring in the
crucial final section of NBC 4897 again raise the question of how the
administrations could work with this kind of accounting.” – Quoted by Rolf
Furuli in his Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian Chronology, pp. 247, 248 (2007
ed.; pp. 251, 252 in the 2 nd ed. of 2008).
As is demonstrated by Zawadzki, however, these claims are much exaggerated. The fact is
that they are mainly based on misreadings and misunderstandings by the authors. As
Zawadzki explains, van Driel “has solved many problems, yet he has failed to explain several
significant points, or has proposed interpretations that require reevaluation.” (Zawadzki, p. 100;
emphasis added) In fact, when the tablet is correctly read, copied, understood and
translated, it can be shown to contain very few errors “in the totals”, and these are small and
unessential and do not occur “in the crucial final section of NBC 4897” as van Driel/Nemet-
Nejat state.