The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

Furuli’s Second Book 547
Ronald H. Sack, Neriglissar—King of Babylon (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1994),
pp. 224, 225.
To check if it really is possible for a modern Assyriologist to misread the name of Nergalshar-usur
(Neriglissar) as “Marduk-šar-uşur”, I sent an email message to C. B. F. Walker at
the British Museum back in 2003 and asked him to take a look at the original tablet (BM
30599). In his answer, he explains:
“I have just taken BM 30599 out to check it, and I do not see how anyone
could read the name as anything other than d U+GUR-LUGAL-SHESH. A
reading Marduk-shar-usur would seem to be completely excluded. Our
records show that the tablet was baked (and cleaned?) in 1961, but it had
been published by T G Pinches in the 5 th volume of Rawlinson’s Cuneiform
Inscriptions of Western Asia, plate 67 no. 4 in a copy which clearly shows
dU+GUR. It was also published by Strassmaier in 1885 (Die babylonischen
Inschriften im Museum zu Liverpool: Brill, Leiden, 1885) no. 123, again clearly
with d U+GUR. So the reading cannot be put down to our cleansing the
tablet in 1961, if we did.” (Walker to Jonsson, October 15, 2003)
How, then, could Boscawen misread the name? Another Assyriologist, Dr. Cornelia
Wunsch, who also collated the original tablet, pointed out in an email to one of my
correspondents that “the tablet is in good condition” and that there is “no doubt about
Nergal, as published in 5R 64,4 by Pinches. More than 100 years ago he already corrected
the misreading by Boscawen.” She goes on to explain that “Boscawen was not a great
scholar. He relied heavily on the notes that G. Smith had taken when he first saw the tablets
in Baghdad.”
But Furuli still seems unwilling to give up the idea that an unknown Neo-Babylonian king
named Marduk-šar-uşur might have existed. He argues on page 80:
“Sack read the name as Nergal-šar-uşur, and if this is the same tablet as the
one read by Boscawen, I can confirm that Sack’s reading is correct, because I
have collated this tablet myself at the British Museum. If both scholars read
the same tablet, a Neo-Babylonian king with the name Marduk-šar-uşur
never existed. However, the broken tablet BM 56709, the signs of which are
Neo-Babylonian, refers to year 1 of a king whose name begins with Marduk-.
So we cannot exclude that Boscawen read a tablet different from the one
read by Sack, and that a king with Marduk in his name reigned in the Neo-
Babylonian Empire.”
This tablet is listed in the Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (CBT), Vol. 6
(London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1986, p. 215). In an unpublished list of
“Corrections and additions to CBT 6-8” (my copy is dated March 18, 1996), which
Christopher Walker kept at the British Museum, Walker gives the following comments on
the text:
“56709 Marduk-[…] 12/–/1 Dated at Borsippa. CT 55, 92 (not CT 56,
356).
The tablet is probably early Neo-Babylonian.”
Note the words “probably” and “early Neo-Babylonian.” This is a suggestion. Furthermore,
scholars often use the term “Neo-Babylonian” to describe a more extended period than
625-539 BCE. The Assyrian Dictionary, for example, starts the period at about 1150 BCE and
ends it in the 4th century BCE. (Cf. GTR 4 , Chapter 3, n. 1) Maybe this is how Walker uses
the term here. The names of about a dozen Babylonian kings between ca. 1150 and 625
BCE begin with Marduk-, including Marduk-apla-iddina II (the Biblical Merodach-Baladan,
Isa. 39:1, who ruled in Babylon twice, 721-710 and 703 BCE), and Marduk-zakir-shumi II
(703). Thus, as the royal name is only partially legible and we do not know exactly to which
period the tablet belongs, it is useless for chronological purposes. Placing the king in the