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Nebuchadnezzar King of Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

W. G. Lambert
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Extract

The latest volume of cuneiform texts published by the British Museum contains one piece of exceptional interest as nothing exactly like it has been discovered before. It is part of a tablet with three columns of writing on each side. The upper part of the tablet is missing, and since the Babylonians and Assyrians turned their tablets from top to bottom, and not from side to side, this means that the beginnings of the first three, and the ends of the last three columns are missing, which includes of course the beginning and end of the text. A substantial portion of each column is missing, though just how many lines are involved cannot be estimated. The left edge of the tablet is also missing, so much so that only the extreme right-hand ends of the lines are preserved in columns I and VI. While some disconnected words can be made out in these two columns, no sense results and they will not be referred to again. We have, then, three portions of the text left: parts of column II, columns III and IV (which are consecutive because they are on different sides of the tablet), and column V.

The first of these surviving sections begins as though it were prophecies of social disorder. Texts of this kind do indeed exist, and up to line 21 no objection could be taken to this interpretation. The rich and powerful are to oppress the poor. The judges will pay no heed to justice and will not lecture the oppressors on the error of their ways. (A specimen of such sermonising is actually given in 11. 9–13.) However, suddenly in line 22 we are abruptly introduced to the opposite, both in tense and spirit: a king devoted to justice and burning midnight oil to write down a just code of laws for his land and regulations for his city and his own royal office. The change is so abrupt that one must assume textual corruption, and indeed at a number of points there are erasures, badly written signs, and passages which simply do not hang together. In the translation an asterisk indicates where the present writer at least finds no connexion between clauses and assumes corruption.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 1965 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1965

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References

1 Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, Part XLVI, by W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, No. 45, London, 1965.

2 See Grayson, A. K. and Lambert, W. G., “Akka dian Prophecies,” JCS XVIII, pp. 7–30Google Scholar.

3 On these places see: Albright, W. F., BASOR 120, pp. 22–25Google Scholar; Oppenheim, A- L., ANET p. 305, note 2Google Scholar; Wiseman, D. J., Chronicles of Chaldean Kings, pp. 39-40, 86–87Google Scholar.

4 Langdon, S., ZA 19 146Google Scholar = VABIV 146 II.

5 VAB IV pp. 154 and 158–159Google Scholar.

6 Ed. H. Winckler, 11.432–433 = Atlas pl. 24, no. 51.

7 VAB IV pp. 206Google Scholar 17 and 146–8 2 and 5.