The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

544 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
“If the scribe gives correct information regarding the three years of reign of
the king mentioned in line 6, this must have been a king who is not
mentioned by Ptolemy, and who is not found in the traditional list of kings
of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. This king also had a son who may have
ruled as king as well. So, the Dynastic prophecy may have given us two extra
Neo-Babylonian kings. … In any case, a king that ruled for three years is
unknown by Ptolemy and those who accept his chronology.”
Furuli should have added that such a king was also unknown by the astronomical compilers
of the Royal Canon from whom Ptolemy inherited “his” Canon, by Berossus in the early 3 rd
century BC, by the compiler of the Uruk King List in the same century, by the accountant
who in the 1 st year of Neriglissar wrote the “ledger” NBC 4897 (see Part IV of my review),
by Adad-Guppi’, the mother of Nabonidus, and by the scribes who wrote the tens of
thousands of contract tablets dated to the Neo-Babylonian period.
And, of course, the astronomical documents, in particular the five known astronomical
tablets that records observations dated to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar – the diary VAT
4956, the lunar eclipse tablets LBAT 1419, LBAT 1420, and LBAT 1421, and the planetary
tablet SBTU IV 171 – inexorably block every attempt to move the 43-year reign of
Nebuchadnezzar backwards in time in order to create room for more kings and twenty
more years between Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus.
Furuli’s use of just three words (“for three years”) from an otherwise illegible sentence on a
damaged line on the obverse of a very damaged tablet reveals how desperate and futile the
search for the “unknown kings” is that he needs for giving his “Oslo Chronology” at least a
semblance of credibility.
(8) “Mar-šarri-uşur” and (9) “Ayadara”
Among his “possible unknown Neo-Babylonian kings” Furuli mentions two names that
were found inscribed on objects discovered during William Frederic Badè’s excavations
between 1926 and 1935 at Tell en Nasbeh about 8 miles northwest of Jerusalem in Israel.
The site was (and still is) identified as ancient Mizpah, the city where the Babylonians
appointed Gedaliah as vassal ruler of Judah after their destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE.
The dates of the two inscriptions are difficult to determine. W. F. Albright, George
Cameron, and A. Sachs suggested dates that varied between the 11 th and the 5 th centuries
BCE. (Chester C. McCown, Tell en-Nasdbeh I: Archaeological and Historical Results. Berkeley and
New Haven: ASOR, 1947, pp. 150-152, 167-169) More recently some scholars have
suggested that they may have been found in what is now designated “Stratum 2,” which is
dated to the period following the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. – Jeffrey Z. Zorn,
“Mizpah: Newly Discovered Stratum Reveals Judah’s Other Capital,” in Biblical Archaeology
Review (BAR), Vol. 23:5, 1997, pp. 28-38, 66; also André Lemaire, “Nabonidus in Arabia
and Judah in the Neo-Babylonian Period,” in O. Lipschits and J. Blenkinsopp (eds.), Judah
and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2003), pp.
292, 293.
Mar-šarri-uşur
The name of the first individual was found on a potsherd. What remains of the inscription,
which had been engraved before firing and probably is written in Hebrew, has usually been
read as “[?B]N MRŠRZR[KN]” and is translated “[?s]on of Mār-šarri-zēra-[ukīn].” (C. C.
McCown, op. cit., pp. 167-169) Recently, however, Professor André Lamaire has argued that
the name could be read “[?]N MRŠRŞR[?, [?]?”, which he translates “Mar-šarri-uşur[?”. –
André Lemaire, op. cit., pp. 292, 293.
If the first two letters were “BN” (ben, “son”), the name of the son (the owner of the pot) is
not preserved. If the name of his father is correctly restored as Mar-šarri-uşur, his title and
position is not known. Furuli’s suggestion, that he was a king who reigned in Babylon, is just
an unfounded guess. Quoting a name without a title on a potsherd found in Judah and
suggesting that it refers to a king who may have been reigning in Babylon during the Neo-