Hebrew Bible and

Ancient Israel
2 Prophetic Hope in the Late-
Babylonian and Persian Periods
Volume 3
2014 John Kessler
Prophetic Hope in the Late-Babylonian
and Persian Periods: an Introduction 155–162
Laurie E. Pearce
Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating
to the Judean Exile 163–184
Risa Levitt Kohn
“As Though You Yourself Came Out of Egypt”:
The Ethos of Exile in Ezekiel 185–203
Christl M. Maier
Prophetic Expectations and Aspirations in Late Babylonian
and Early Persian Texts in Jeremiah 204–224
Mark J. Boda
Babylon in the Book of the Twelve 225–248
Willem A. M. Beuken
Shifting Settings in (Post-)Exilic Prayer from the Hebrew
to the Old Greek Text of Isaiah 26 249–275

New Findings
Yuval Gadot, Preliminary Report on the Excavations at
Jerusalem’s Southeastern Hill, Area D3 279–292

Mohr Siebeck
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Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel
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Laurie E. Pearce

Continuity and Normality in Sources

Relating to the Judean Exile

1. Introduction

The prophetic books of the Bible concern themselves with powerful and
sweeping themes, among them theological expressions of national identity.
The historical contexts in which they are set appear in explicit notices in the
biblical text, and may be corroborated to varying degrees by extra-biblical
documentation. For example, Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions provide
valuable information and help to identify the social, economic, and political
background out of which prophetic activity grew. The compelling words of
the prophets’ messages make clear that they describe and respond to the real
activities, concerns, and destiny of a people. It is the activities of the indi-
viduals about which and to whom the prophets speak that will be our focus
here, just as the prophetic missions address details of life that reflect the peo-
ple’s success and failures at adapting to changing social, political, economic,
and religious conditions.
The complexity inherent in attempting to identify these realities is imme-
diately evident from the multiple terminologies with which the reader must
contend. Various terms are used to label the time periods in which some
of the prophetic activities occurred: Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, exilic,
post-exilic, and restoration or return. These equally valid labels relate not
only to a community’s progress through time, but also to the various loca-
tions in which it lives under foreign rule. Some Judeans remain in Judah;
others leave Judah, while their descendants return; those who remain in
Babylonia form the core of a Diaspora that endured for many centuries. An
understanding of the range of their experiences and the environments in
which they lived can only be fully appreciated when the evidence from the
multiple locations in which this people and these individuals experienced
dislocation and restoration is taken into account.
Research published in the first decades of the twenty-first century pre-
sents evidence that makes it possible to begin sketching a framework of their

HeBAI 3 (2014), 163–184 DOI 10.1628/219222714X14067042117773

ISSN 2192–2276 © 2014 Mohr Siebeck

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164 Laurie E. Pearce

experiences, both in Judah and in Babylonia. Both regions present data sets
that demonstrate patterns of continuity throughout the Neo-Babylonian and
Achaemenid periods, and suggest that even in the face of national tragedy,
familiar social and economic institutions endured.
The present discussion focuses on trends detectable in cuneiform docu-
mentation that transforms the current state of knowledge about the presence
of Judeans and other West Semitic peoples on the Mesopotamian landscape.
Together with recent archaeological research that confirms that Judah was
anything but an “empty land” during the exilic period,1 they delineate pat-
terns of continuity that stand in marked contrast to the dramatic chasms
suggested by the prophetic writings alone, as well as substantiate the obser-
vations of two eminent scholars. Of conditions in and related to Judah,
R. G. Kratz concludes that:
… the primary sources – as far as we can see – do not seem to regard the events of the
sixth century as being as traumatic as the biblical sources would have us believe. Rather,
one gets the impression of a certain continuity and a quick return to normality.2

And with regard to Mesopotamia, I. Eph‘al’s assertion from a generation ago

can now be considered all but proven:
It is a logical assumption that, by the Babylonian period, the entire region (including
Judah) had already been organized along the well-defined administrative lines that
Cyrus and his successors were to inherit.3

1 The bibliography for this topic is extensive. The reader may begin with: O. Lipschits,
The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah Under Babylonian Rule (Winona Lake: Eisen-
brauns, 2005); idem, “Persian Period Finds From Jerusalem: Facts and Interpretations,”
JHS 9 (2009): article 20; idem, “Shedding New Light on the Dark Years of the ‘Exilic
Period’: New Studies, Further Elucidation, and Some Questions Regarding the Archae-
ology of Judah as an ‘Empty Land’,” in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation
in Biblical and Modern Contexts. (ed. B. Kelle, F. Ames, and J. Wright; Ancient Israel and
Its Literature 10; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 57–90, and bibliography
cited there.
2 R. G. Kratz, “The Relation Between History and Thought: Reflections on the Subtitle
of Peter Ackroyd’s Exile and Restoration,” in Exile and Restoration Revisited. Essays on
the Babylonian and Persian Periods in Memory of Peter R. Ackroyd (ed. G. N. Knoppers,
L. L. Grabbe, and D. N. Fulton; London: T&T Clark, 2009), 152–160, here 160. For a
statement of administrative continuity throughout the empire from the perspective of
the Persian administration itself, see P. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of
the Persian Empire (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 70–76.
3 I. Eph‘al, “Syria-Palestine under Achaemenid Rule,” in Persia, Greece and the Western
Mediterranean c. 525 to 479 B. C. (ed. J. A. Boardman et al.; CAH 4; Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988), 139–164, here 161. Indicative of the degree to which
change has occurred in the fields, as recently as 1999, Vanderhooft stated that assertions
such as those of Eph‘al just referenced could not be sustained: see D. S. Vanderhooft, The

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 165

2. Recent Cuneiform Evidence Regarding Judeans in Babylonia in

the Sixth-Fifth Centuries b.c.e.

This new cuneiform evidence informs our understanding of the Judean

experience in Babylonia, both in the days of the exile and in the period of
restoration, and demonstrates that the exiled Judeans were brought into and
experienced a stable, if evolving, culture. In Babylonia, in an atmosphere that
sustained group identity while affording opportunities for acculturation, the
Judeans fulfilled their overlords’ requirements for service. It is hoped that
the features discussed here will enrich the understanding of the social and
economic background against which prophetic expectations may be con-
sidered.
The content of the āl-Yāhūdu and related texts have drawn the atten-
tion of and generated excitement among biblical and cuneiform scholars.
In large measure, this is due to the significant number of distinctively Yah-
wistic names that appear in the āl-Yāhūdu texts.4 But the evidence in some
200 routine Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid cuneiform administrative
texts belonging to different archival groups, and housed in collections at
Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets (HSM 59; Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1999), 90.
4 Texts that either belong to or are related to the corpus of āl-Yāhūdu texts have been
published in F. Joannès and A. Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens d’époque achéménide
du Bît-abî Râm avec une épigraphie araméenne,” RA 90 (1996): 41–60; F. Joannès and
A. Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cunéiforms à l’onomastique ouest-sémitique,” Transeuphra-
tène 17 (1999): 17–34; K. Abraham, “West Semitic and Judean Brides in Cuneiform
Sources from the Sixth Century BCE. New Evidence from a Marriage Contract from
Āl-Yāhudu,” AfO 51 (2005–2006): 198–219; idem, “An Inheritance Division Among
Judeans in Babylonia from the Early Persian Period,” in New Seals and Inscriptions,
Hebrew, Idumean, and Cuneiform (ed. M. Lubetski; Hebrew Bible Monographs 8; Shef-
field: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), 206–221; W. G. Lambert, “A Document from a
Community of Exiles in Babylonia,” in New Seals and Inscriptions, Hebrew, Idumean,
and Cuneiform (ed. M. Lubetski; Hebrew Bible Monographs 8; Sheffield: Sheffield
Phoenix Press, 2007), 201–205. Preliminary comments and observations appear in:
R. Zadok, The Earliest Diaspora: Israelites and Judeans in Pre-Hellenistic Mesopotamia
(Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2002); M. Jursa, Neo-Babylonian Legal and Administrative
Documents: Typology, Contents, and Archives (GMTR 1; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2005),
151; L. E. Pearce, “New Evidence for Judeans in Babylonia,” in Judah and the Judeans in
the Persian Period (ed. O. Lipschits and M. Oeming; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006),
399–411; idem, “‘Judean’: A Special Status in Neo-Babylonian and Achemenid Baby-
lonia?,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period. Negotiating Identity in an
International Context (ed. O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and M. Oeming; Winona Lake:
Eisenbrauns, 2011), 267–277. A concise overview of the corpus appears in F. R. Magda-
lene and C. Wunsch, “Slavery Between Judah and Babylon: The Exilic Experience,” in
Slaves and Households in the Near East (ed. L. Culbertson; OIS 7; Chicago: University
of Chicago Oriental Institute, 2011), 113–134.

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166 Laurie E. Pearce

great remove from each other, provides a more nuanced view of the expe-
rience of Judean and other West Semitic populations in the Mesopotamian
landscape. In nearly equal numbers, The Bible Lands Museum (Jerusalem)
and the Schøyen Collection (Oslo) house tablets that originated in three
archives or text groups.5 Two are defined by the texts’ place of composition:
āl-Yāhūdu and ālu ša mNašar.6 The third is referred to as the Zababa-šar-

5 Full publication of the texts is expected in 2014 in L. E. Pearce and C. Wunsch, Docu-
ments of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer
(CUSAS 28; Bethesda: CDL Press, forthcoming); and C. Wunsch, Judeans by the Waters
of Babylon. New Historical Evidence in Cuneiform Sources from Rural Babylonia. Texts
from the Schøyen Collection (with contributions by L. Pearce; Babylonische Archive 6;
Dresden: ISLET, forthcoming). The sigla CUSAS 28 and BaAr 6 precede the publica-
tion numbers of texts in those volumes, respectively. “CUSAS 28” replaces the designa-
tion TAYN used in Pearce, “New Evidence,” and IMMP in other preliminary published
discussions of the texts. In the present discussion, CUSAS / BaAr will designate the
entire known corpus: the previously published texts, tablets housed in The Bible Lands
Museum, the Schøyen Collection, the Moussaieff collection, and a handful of tablets in
other private collections.
The term “archive” is used here for convenience, in full recognition of the ongo-
ing discussion in cuneiform studies of the meaning of the word and of the nature of
archives. For the issues, see C. Waerzeggers, “Social Network Analysis of Cuneiform
Archives: A New Approach,” in Proceedings of the Second START Conference in Vienna
(17–19th July 2008) Too Much Data? Generalizations and Model-building in Ancient Eco-
nomic (ed. H. D. Baker and M. Jursa; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, forthcoming). Accessed
July 20, 2013. Online: http://www.academia.edu/1225745; J. S. du Toit, Textual Memory:
Ancient Archives, Libraries, and the Hebrew Bible (SWBA 2/6; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoe-
nix Press, 2011).
The archival context of the previously published texts is as follows: (1) āl-Yāhūdu:
Joannès and Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cunéiformes,” text 1; Abraham, “West Semitic
and Judean Brides;” idem, “An Inheritance Division” (This text duplicates CUSAS 28
45 and is discussed on p. 16, below). (2) Bīt Našar: Joannès and Lemaire, “Trois tablettes
cunéiformes,” text 2; (3) Zababa-šar-u ur: all texts in Joannès and Lemaire, “Contrats
babyloniens;” Joannès and Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cunéiformes,” text 3.
The title of Joannès and Lemaire’s 1996 article obscures the archival context of
those texts, as it focuses on “Bīt Abī-râm,” which “constitue le toponyme le plus souvent
attesté” rather than on the protagonist (whose name is most often used to label cunei-
form administrative archives), Zababa-šar-u ur, who “sert de lien entre les divers tex-
tes.” (Joannès and Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” 52). Jursa refers to the Zšu archive
in his introduction to the administrative texts of the Neo-Babylonian period (Neo-
Babylonian Legal and Administrative Documents, 151). Additional Zšu texts in BaAr 6
(nos. 44, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 57–66, 68, 69, 72, 73, 76, 78, 82, 91, 92, 94, 95) bring the total
to over 50 texts, a number that notably includes many texts composed in towns other
than Bīt Abī-râm.
6 This settlement is referred to both as the “town of Našar” (ālu ša MNašar) and the “town
of the estate of Našar” (ālu ša bīt MNašar). Našar, a name equivalent to a common West
Semitic word for “eagle,” appears as a personal name independent of its use in the
toponym only once in the CUSAS/BaAr corpus (CUSAS 28 8), in the patronymic of a
witness to a transaction completed in a town named for a M ūb-Yāma. Since the tab-

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 167

u ur archive (henceforth Zšu), for the administrative official who figures

prominently therein.
Of the three groups, the āl-Yāhūdu texts provide the most explicit evi-
dence of Judeans and their exilic experience. The texts present a demo-
graphic previously underrepresented in cuneiform sources; notably, they
portray social and economic realities that do not differ from those evident in
the texts of the Našar or Zšu groups, or in the contemporaneous cuneiform
record in general. The āl-Yāhūdu texts range in date from 572–400 b.c.e.,
years that in and of themselves mark no significant milestones in the his-
tory of the Judean community. These years are, however, nearly bookended
by the start of the exile (whether computed from 597 or 586 b.c.e.) and the
Murašû archive, which until now was the only substantial corpus of cunei-
form evidence for the presence of Judeans in Babylonia.7 The āl-Yāhūdu

let was written in Nabonidus 5 (= 551 b.c.e.) and antedates all known instances of the
toponym, it is possible, but not certain, that he was the eponymous ancestor for which
ālu ša MNašar was named. Well attested in the Neo-Babylonian corpus are toponyms
containing personal names (see the entries under Ālu-ša-PN in R. Zadok, Geographical
Names According to New- and Late-Babylonian Texts [RGTC 8; Wiesbaden: L. Reichert,
1985], 7–21), including some named for estate administrators (see the entries under
Bīt-PN [É PN] in Zadok, Geographical Names, 78–112). The unusual practice of writ-
ing the town of Našar both with and without the designation bīt PN may be a simple
accident of discovery, understandable in light of the limited number of attestations of
many of these place names.
7 The primary publications of the Murašû texts are: H. Hilprecht and A. T. Clay, Busi-
ness Documents of Murashû Sons of Nippur Dated in the Reign of Artaxerxes I. (464–424
B. C.) (BE 9; Philadelphia, 1898); A. T. Clay, Business Documents of Murashû Sons of
Nippur Dated in the Reign of Darius II (424–404 B. C.) (BE 10; Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, 1904); A. T. Clay, Business Documents of Murashu Sons of Nippur
Dated in the Reign of Darius II (PBS II/1; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1912);
M. W. Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire: The Murašû Archive, the Murašû Firm, and
Persian Rule in Babylonia (Leiden: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te
Istanbul, 1985); V. Donbaz and M. W. Stolper, Istanbul Murašû Texts (Istanbul: Neder-
lands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1997). Secondary studies of the
Murašû archives focused specifically on the Yahwistic names of the Judeans include:
Clay apud Hilprecht and Clay, Business Documents, 26–29; D. Sidersky,“L’onomastique
hébraïque des tablettes de Nippur,” REJ 87 (1929): 177–199; G. Cardascia, Les archives
des Murašû: une famille d’hommes d’affaires babyloniens à l’époque perse, 455–403 av.
J.-C. (Paris: Impr. Nationale, 1951); M. D. Coogan, West Semitic Personal Names in the
Murašû Documents (HSM 7; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1976); idem, “More Yahwistic
Names in the Murashu Documents,” JSJ 7 (1976): 199–200; M. W. Stolper, “A Note on
Yahwistic Personal Names in the Murašû Texts,” BASOR 222 (1976): 25–28. Under the
direction of Professor Yoram Cohen (University of Tel Aviv), a team of scholars asso-
ciated with the project Cuneiform Texts Mentioning Israelites, Judeans, and Related
Population Groups (CTIJ, oracc.org/ctij) is preparing digital editions of the cuneiform
texts that include the names of Judeans and Israelites. The bibliography of works con-
cerned with the broader Mesopotamian context of the Murašû texts is extensive; for an

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168 Laurie E. Pearce

texts themselves range in date from Nbk 33 (= 572 b.c.e.; CUSAS 28 1) to

Xer 9 (= 477 b.c.e.; CUSAS 28 53) and prove the existence of a community
of Judeans on the Mesopotamian landscape twenty-five years following the
Jehoiachin exile and fifteen years following the destruction of the Jerusalem
temple.8 In both CUSAS 28 1 and BaAr 6 1 (written in Nbk 33 = 572 and
Nbk 38 = 567 b.c.e., respectively), the two earliest texts in the CUSAS/BaAr
corpus, the toponym of the place in which the texts were composed is con-
structed with the Akkadian gentilic ending, -āia: ālu ša Yāhūdāia, literally,
“the town of the Judeans.” The gentilic quickly falls into disuse, and thence-
forth the tablets’ subscriptions refer exclusively to āl-Yāhūdu, “Judahtown.”9
The Bīt Našar group includes texts dating from Nbn 12+ (= ~544 b.c.e.,
BaAr 6 18)-Dar 7 (= 512 b.c.e., CUSAS 28 94). The Zšu texts range in date
from Cyr (= 538 b.c.e., BaAr 6 58)-Xer 5 (= 481 b.c.e., BaAr 6 94). Thus, the
CUSAS / BaAr corpus establishes the Judean settlement’s presence in Meso-
potamia in a nearly-unbroken line from the late part of Nebuchadnezzar’s
reign to within a generation of the earliest Murašû documentation (Artax-
erxes 10 = 454 b.c.e.) excavated at Nippur.10
The āl-Yāhūdu texts, along with the other two text groups, document
Judeans and other West Semites conducting the business of their daily lives.
Whereas individuals bearing Yahwistic names in the Murašû corpus appear

initial exploration of the corpus, one may conveniently refer to Stolper, Entrepreneurs
and Empire; and to G. van Driel, Elusive Silver: In Search of a Role for a Market in an
Agrarian Environment. Aspects of Mesopotamia’s Society (Uitgaven van het Nederlands
Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te İstanbul 95; Leiden: NINO, 2002).
8 The first published instance of the name āl-Yāhūdu appeared in Joannès and Lemaire,
“Trois tablettes cunéiformes,” 18, text 1. They referred to it as a “new Jerusalem,” reflect-
ing the urban origin of a portion of the exilic population. Julian dates follow R. A. Parker
and W. H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 B. C.–A. D. 75 (Brown University
Studies 19; Providence: Brown University Press, 1956).
9 The evidence for and the implications of the orthographic shift that eliminates the
gentilic from the toponym are briefly discussed in Pearce, “New Evidence,” 402; idem,
“Judean: Special Status,” 270; idem, “Identifying Judeans and Judean Identity in the
Babylonian Evidence,” in the Proceedings of the Workshop “Exile and Return: The
Babylonian Context,” University College London, November, 2011 (forthcoming). In
view of the fact that all of the orthographies (of which URU ia- u-du is the most fre-
quent) end in a final vowel and that from the Neo-Babylonian period onward final
vowels were no longer pronounced (see J. P. Hyatt, The Treatment of Final Vowels in
Early Neo-Babylonian [YOSR 23; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941]; Coogan,
West Semitic Personal Names; D. B. Weisberg, Guild Structure and Political Allegiance
in Early Achaemenid Mesopotamia [YNER 1; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967],
95–104), it is quite possible that the toponym was vocalized āl-Yāhūd or simply Yāhūd,
if URU (= ālu), the classifier for “city,” was unpronounced.
10 For the date of the earliest Murašû documentation, see Stolper, Entrepreneurs and
Empire, 23.

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 169

primarily as witnesses, those in the CUSAS/ BaAr texts are principals in

documents: they marry and inherit,11 they extend credit and incur debt,
and they serve as witnesses in all of these transaction types. Because the
recognizably Judean Yāhwistic names are almost exclusive to the āl-Yāhūdu
dossier, published discussions have focused primarily that group. Yet, these
Judeans and other West Semites interact with Babylonians and inhabitants of
Babylonia in activities and roles typical of the Neo-Babylonian and Achae-
menid administrative records.
Thus, the CUSAS /BaAr corpus as a whole enriches the general under-
standing of the social, political and economic environments in which the
exiles lived, and underscores the commonplace nature and continuity of
the experiences of Judean and West Semitic deportees and their offspring.
The CUSAS /BaAr corpus spans the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid
(or Persian) periods, chronological labels reflecting the imperial contours of
the landscape of western Asia. However, the political transition inherent in
the shift in terminology is not mirrored in a marked transformation in the
day-to-day administrative practices that the texts record. As a result, some
Assyriologists have adopted the term “the long sixth century,”12 while others
take an expansive view of the chronological scope of “Neo-Babylonian,”13 in
order to reference institutions whose slow evolution is evident in documen-
tation from the core years of this period, the reign of Nabopolassar (626–605
b.c.e.) through the second year of Xerxes (484 b.c.e.).14

11 The inheritance document CUSAS 28 45, and its parallel HBM 8 (published in Abra-
ham, “An Inheritance Division”), are discussed briefly below on p. 11. The marriage
document (Abraham, “West Semitic and Judean Brides”) is not considered here, in spite
of its obvious relevance to the matter of the foreign wives in Ezra and Nehemiah (see
K. E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10. An Anthropo-
logical Approach [Oxford Theological Monographs; Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012] for bibliography as well as for the issue of the cultural locus of the document’s
legal formulary). With respect to those legal formulations, divergent interpretations are
evident in the analysis, on the one hand, of Abraham, “West Semitic and Judean Brides;”
K. Abraham, “Does the Al-Yāhudu Marriage Contract Reflect Jewish or Babylonian
Law?” (paper presented at the workshop “Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context,”
University College London, November 2011) and, on the other hand, of F. R. Magda-
lene, “Marriage Contracts from the Bible and the Early Judean Babylonian Diaspora: A
Comparative Study” (paper presented at the workshop “Exile and Return: The Babylo-
nian Context,” University College, London, November 2011).
12 M. Jursa and H. D. Baker (ed.), Approaching the Babylonian Economy: Proceedings of the
START Project Symposium Held in Vienna, 1–3 July 2004 (AOAT 330; Münster: Ugarit-
Verlag, 2005), 4–5.
13 Magdalene and Wunsch, “Slavery Between Judah and Babylon,” note 2.
14 For a discussion of the difficulties inherent in the periodization of Near Eastern his-
tory, see E. von Dassow, “Temporality and Periodization in Ancient Near Eastern His-

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170 Laurie E. Pearce

The latter date marks an important juncture in the socio-economic his-

tory of Mesopotamia, namely the time after which documentation of a
specific segment of Babylonian society ceased to be produced. During the
revolts at the end of the reign of Darius and the start of that of Xerxes, elite
families of the cities of northern Babylonia (Sippar, Babylon, Borsippa),
whose positions of social and economic power represented potential oppo-
sition to the new regime, were removed from participation in those cultic
offices from which they had long derived prebendary income. As there was
no longer activity to document, the families of members of the priesthood
disappeared from the cuneiform record.15 However, this was not the case
for communities throughout southern Babylonia, nor for individuals in the
north who belonged to a lower social stratum, but who, under Achaeme-
nid rule, served Persian interests in Babylonia, including as local managers
of Persian-held estates.16 Texts from the āl-Yāhūdu and Zšu groups in the
CUSAS / BaAr corpus date beyond the end of archives,17 leading to the con-
clusion that the geographic and social contexts of the Judean-Babylonian
interactions documented there took place outside the circles of the power
and social elite, a factor that may bear on any assessment of the social con-
ditions influencing prophetic activity and expectations.
It is not yet possible to identify securely the places on the rural landscape
from which the texts of the CUSAS/BaAr corpus originate. Joannès and
Lemaire tentatively located the Bīt Abī-râm text group (now referred to as
the Zšu group) in the general area of Babylon and Borsippa. 18 On the basis
of onomastic evidence, notably the absence of names compounded with the
theophoric elements Enlil and Ninurta, they surmised that Bīt Abī-râm lay

tory,” Social Science History 36 (2012): 113–143. The problems of this terminology in
the Judahite evidence are highlighted by Lipschits, “Shedding New Light,” 67 n. 33.
15 C. Waerzeggers, “The Babylonian Revolts Against Xerxes and the ‘End of Archives’,”
AfO 50 (2003–2004): 158; Waerzeggers, “Social Network Analysis,” 62–64.
16 Waerzeggers, “Babylonian Revolts,” 159–160.
17 Texts from the āl-Yāhūdu group: CUSAS 28 52 (Xer 7); CUSAS 28 53 (Xer 9). Texts
from the Zšu group: BaAr 6 83, 96 (Xer 3), 96; BaAr 6 53, 82; Joannès and Lemaire,
“Contrats babyloniens,” no. 7 (Xer 4); BaAr 6 94 (Xer 5). Dates of texts in the Zšu
group within the CUSAS / BaAr corpus (BaAr 6 43–96) extend Zababa-šar-u ur’s
activities back to the beginning of the reign of Darius; the earliest, BaAr 6 75, dates to
521 b.c.e., during year 1 of the usurper Nebuchadnezzar IV. It may be productive to
further explore the implications of the social conditions reflected in the evidentiary
break for its relationship to the political and social standing of figures such as Ezra
and Nehemiah.
18 Joannès and Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” 52. This identification was followed by
Waerzeggers, “Babylonian Revolts,” 157.

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 171

outside Nippur’s sphere of influence.19 They noted the presence of names

formed with the divine names Zababa, and with Eanna, Nanaya, and Innina,
associated with Kiš and with Uruk, respectively.20 In the CUSAS/BaAr cor-
pus, additional attestations of names compounded with these theophoric
elements, considered together with internal geographic clues, suggest that
the toponyms identified in the CUSAS/BaAr corpus – many of them unique
and previously unattested – lay south and east of Babylon, in the triangle
roughly bounded by Nippur–Karkara-Keš.21 This additional evidence cor-
relates well with the general acknowledgement of the Nippur region as an
area home to prophetic activity early in the exile.
The Chebar canal (‫כבר‬-‫ )נהר‬and the town Tel-aviv (‫אביא‬-‫ )תל‬situated on it
are the location of Ezekiel’s activity, which began five years after the Jehoi-
achin wave of deportation.22 The appearance of the name of the canal in
two Murašû texts seemed to secure its location in the Nippur region.23 A
single text in the Zšu group adds evidence for a toponym written in āl-Nār
Kabari (URU ÍDkabara), the town of the Kabar (= Chebar) canal.24 While it
is of interest, this datum does not confirm the existence of the toponym at
a time proximate to Ezekiel’s mission, since the text dates to Xerxes 4 (481
b.c.e.). Further, whether this is the same town as the “town (at the) ‘mouth of
the Kabar canal’,” preserved in an undated letter from Uruk,25 remains to be
determined. Although the Zšu texts preserve no Yāhwistic personal names,
the text mentioning the Kabar canal situates Zababa-šar-u ur’s administra-

19 The addition of Zšu texts to the corpus does not substantially change this impression.
In the entire CUSAS/BaAr corpus, nearly 600 individuals can be identified. Only five
individuals bear Enlil- names; thirteen bear Ninurta- names.
20 Joannès and Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” 52.
21 This is the eastern two-thirds of the Nippur region as defined by R. Zadok, “The Nippur
Region During the Late Assyrian, Chaldean and Achaemenian Periods Chiefly Accord-
ing to Written Sources.” IOS 8 (1978): 268–272, and map, p. 332). The significance of
this location as a whole, and of the mention of Keš in particular, is discussed in detail
by Wunsch, Judeans by the Water of Babylon; and briefly in Magdalene and Wunsch,
“Slavery Between Judah and Babylon,” 116 n. 13.
22 Ezek 1:1, 3; 3:16, 23; 10:15, 20, 22; 43:3.
23 Zadok, Geographical Names, 373; idem, “The Nippur Region,” 387; Joannès and
Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” 52. More recently, the existence of three canals of
this name was noted by R. Zadok, “Notes on Syro-Palestinian History, Toponymy and
Anthroponymy,” UF 28 (1996): 727. The Murašû texts dates are as follows: BE 9 4:9,
Artaxerxes 22 = 443/442 b.c.e., BE 9 84:2, Artaxerxes 41 = 424/423 b.c.e.
24 Joannès and Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” text 7:5’. Only the witness list and sub-
scription (which includes the name of the scribe, place and date of composition) are
preserved.
25 YOS 3 111:28: URU «KÁ» kabar. See also Zadok, Geographical Names, 373.

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172 Laurie E. Pearce

tive duties in the geographic area populated by Judean descendants of the

exile and indirectly connects the Zšu group of texts, the Judean presence in
the Nippur region, and the multiple socio-economic environments in which
Ezekiel was active.
While Nebuchadnezzar’s policy toward vanquished lands and peoples is
well documented in the literature,26 his development of the Nippur coun-
tryside deserves consideration inasmuch as some aspects of this growth and
expansion of empire endured, maturing into social structures characteris-
tic of the Persian empire, under which Judean life continued in the post-
exilic era. Imperial continuity defined the context of Judean life in the exilic
and post-exilic years. Nebuchadnezzar’s interests in the southern Levant,
and Judah in particular, were focused on establishing a geographic buffer
between Babylonian interests and Egypt.27 Motivation for the destruction of
Jerusalem and the concurrent establishment of an administrative center at
Mizpah derived primarily from political concerns.28 The economic vitality
of the region as a whole was of interest insofar as it supported development
of Nebuchadnezzar’s ambitious building program, particularly of temples in
Babylon and in other major cities. Whether motivated by self-aggrandize-
ment29 or by a desire to develop a unified identity for a reinvigorated empire
that would turn Babylon into the “supreme cultic metropolis” or adminis-
trative center of the empire,30 Nebuchadnezzar’s program consumed con-
siderable resources, both material and labor, and his geographic reach was
broad. His inscription at Wadi Brissa attests to a lengthy and strong Baby-
lonian presence in the region, one dedicated to the exploitation of its many
resources, cedar chief among them:
What no former king had done (I did): I cut through the high mountains, I crushed the
stones of the mountains, I opened up passes, I prepared a passage for (the transport of)
the cedars for king Marduk. Strong cedars, thick and tall, of splendid beauty, supreme
their fitting appearance, I bundled them together like reeds of the river(-bank) and I

26 See, for example, in brief, I. Eph‘al, “The Western Minorities in Babylonia in the 6th–5th
Centuries B. C.: Maintenance and Cohesion,” OrNS 47 (1978): 74–90; and for a detailed
analysis, Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 90–114.
27 O. Lipschits, “Nebuchadrezzer’s Policy in ‘Hattu-Land’ and the Fate of the Kingdom of
Judah,” UF 30 (1998): 467–487.
28 Lipschits, “Nebuchadrezzer’s Policy,” 475.
29 R. Da Riva, “A Lion in the Cedar Forest. International Politics and Pictorial Self-Repre-
sentations of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–562 BC),” in Studies on War in the Ancient Near
East: Collected Essays on Military History (ed. J. Vidal; AOAT 372; Münster: Ugarit-
Verlag, 2010), 165–191, here 166.
30 R. Albertz, Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B. C. E.
(Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 58.

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 173

perfumed the Ara tu (with them), and I set them up in Babylon like Euphrates poplars.
(WBC IX 33–46)31

The expense of transporting raw materials to Babylonia could not be

avoided. But costs associated with provisioning labor could be mitigated,
and work forces managed more efficiently when situated in local or regional
bases. Documents concerned with the provisioning of labor are preserved in
the archives of other cities, for example in administrative records from the
Eanna temple at Uruk,32 and thus provide evidence for Nebuchadnezzar’s
attention to structures in and around other cities throughout the Babylonian
heartland.33 But Nebuchadnezzar, as well as all other Neo-Babylonian kings,
ignored Nippur as a site in which to implement major building programs,34
undoubtedly in response to Nippur’s anti-Babylonian stance in the Assyro-
Babylonian wars of the seventh century.35
As a consequence of wartime damage inflicted on its countryside, agrar-
ian conditions in the area surrounding Nippur differed markedly from those
in the rest of Babylonia.36 Nippur had a greater expanse of available land,
which supported expansion of the land-for-service model “to the benefit of
newly arrived foreign groups, mercenaries and so forth.”37 The availability of

31 R. Da Riva, The Twin Inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar at Brisa (Wadi Esh-Sharbin, Leba-

non): A Historical and Philological Study. (AfO Beih. 32; Wien: Institut für Orientalistik
der Universität Wien, 2012), 18.
32 K. Kleber, Tempel und Palast: die Beziehungen zwischen dem König und dem Eanna-
Tempel im spätbabylonischen Uruk (AOAT 358; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2008), 75–80.
The corvée Nebuchadnezzar imposed for the Babylon building projects is known from
the Entemenaki Cylinder, and the Istanbul Prism (Hofkalendar): E. Unger, Babylon: die
heilige Stadt nach der Beschreibung der Babylonier. 2. Auflage (ed. R. Borger; Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1970), 282–294, plates 52–56; Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 91–97.
33 For example: Borsippa, Isin, Kiš, Larsa, Marad, Sippar, Ur, and Uruk. For the correlation
of building inscriptions with these locations, see R. Da Riva, The Neo-Babylonian Royal
Inscriptions (GMTR 4; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2008), 111–112.
34 According to M. P. Streck, “Nippur. A. III. Seit der mittelbabylonsichen Zeit,“ RlA 9
(1998): 545: “In den Bauinschriften der Chaldäer-könige erscheint N.[ippur] nicht.”
For the limited, localized building activity at Nippur in the Neo-Babylonian through
Parthian periods, see M. Gibson, D. Hansen, and R. Zettler, “Nippur B. Archäologisch,”
RlA 9 (1998): 546–565.
35 For conditions in Nippur at the transition from the Neo-Assyrian to Neo-Babylonian
periods, see G. Frame, Babylonia 689–627 B. C. A Political History (Leiden: Nederlands
Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1992 [2007]), esp. chapter 9.
36 Eph‘al, “The Western Minorities,” 82; I. Eph‘al, “On the Political and Social Organiza-
tion of the Jews in Babylonian Exile,” in XXI. Deutscher Orientalistentag: vom 24. bis 29.
März 1980 in Berlin, Vorträge. (ed. F. Steppat; ZDMG Supplement 5; Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1983), 106–112, here 108.
37 M. Jursa, “On Aspects of Taxation in Achaemenid Babylonia: New Evidence from Bor-
sippa,” in Organisation des pouvoirs et contacts culturels dans les pays de l’empire achémé-

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174 Laurie E. Pearce

real estate facilitated the practice of “integrating outsiders of different ethnic

origins into the fabric of the state by settling them on institutional land and
saddling them with service and tax obligations.”38 This economic potential,
in combination with Nippur’s central location and the empire’s failure to
establish another administrative center in the immediate region, contributed
to Nippur’s central role in the institutions that characterize economic activ-
ity in the long sixth century.39
The rural location and agrarian activities of the Murašû Judeans reflect a
developed stage of economic institutions that existed, if in incipient form,
during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign. As the biblical passages identified Babylon
as the destination for the priests and prophets,40 the Murašû texts prompted
scholars to comment on the seemingly exceptional appearance of Judeans
in the role of tenant farmers in lands outside the capital or other urban cent-
ers. Eph‘al drew attention to the diversity in social standing of various seg-
ments of the exilic population, and distinguished between “socio-econom-
ically advantaged” deportees and “poor farmers … who were settled in the
Nippur region.”41 He understood the latter to be constrained to limited and
specific margins of Judean society in Mesopotamia.42 The āl-Yāhūdu texts,
as well as a few from Našar, eliminate this perceived tension as they illus-
trate early integration of Judeans into Mesopotamian agricultural models
and administrative structures that remained in place throughout the period
under consideration.
The earliest evidence of the existence of bowfiefs, i. e., royal land granted
in exchange for military service and tax obligations, appears in a document

nid (ed. P. Briant and M. Chauveau; Persika 14; Paris: de Boccard, 2009), 237–269, here,
239.
38 M. Jursa, “Taxation and Service Obligations in Babylonia from Nebuchadnezzar to
Darius and the Evidence for Darius’ Tax Reform,” in Herodot und das Persische Weltre-
ich = Herodotus and the Persian Empire: Akten des 3. Internationalen Kolloquiums zum
Thema “Vorderasien im Spannungsfeld klassischer und altorientalischer Uberlieferungen,”
Innsbruck, 24.–28. November 2008. (ed. B. Truschnegg, R. Bichler, and R. Rollinger;
Classica et Orientalia 3; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 431–448, here 431–432, 437.
Jursa suggests that the land-for-service sector of the economy may have been influenced
by, or may even have been an outgrowth of, Neo-Assyrian institutions.
39 Zadok, “The Nippur Region,” 274–275; R. Zadok, “Archives from Nippur in the First
Millennium B. C.,” in Cuneiform Archives and Libraries. Papers read at the 30e Rencontre
Assyriologique Internationale (Leiden, 4–8 July 1983) (ed. K. R. Veenhof; Leiden: Neder-
lands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1986), 278–288, here 279.
40 2Kgs 24:12; Jer 24:1.
41 Eph‘al, “Political and Social Organization,” 109–110. See also idem, “The Western
Minorities,” 75.
42 Idem, “Political and Social Organization,” 109.

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 175

from Nbk. 35 (= 569 b.c.e.).43 CUSAS 28 2, an āl-Yāhūdu text from the reign
of Nebuchadnezzar II (unfortunately the year is broken), provides clear evi-
dence that Judeans were assigned such lands almost at the inception of the
institution, and before the third and final wave of deportations. The text
documents a Judean, Bēl-šar-u ur, known also as Yāhû-šar-u ur,44 in pos-
session of a bowfief (designated by Akkadian bīt azanni, a rare synonym of
the more common bīt qašti).45 In this small group of texts, the debtor is a
Judean, as are a number of the witnesses, demonstrating that the Judeans
occupied a variety of roles associated with tenant farming. Bēl- /Yāhû-šar-
u ur also appears in CUSAS 28 3 and 4, dated to the fourth and sixth years
of Nabonidus, 552 and 550 b.c.e., respectively. The dates of these texts and
Bēl-/Yāhû-šar-u ur’s status as fief-holder comprise the evidence necessary
to counter speculation “that the Persian imperial administration afforded

43 R. H. Sack, Cuneiform Documents from the Chaldean and Persian Periods (Cranbury:
Susquehanna University Press/Associated University Presses, 1994), no. 98, as identi-
fied in M. Jursa, “Bogenland schon unter Nebukadnezar II,” NABU 1998–24. For refer-
ences to additional early instances of bowlands, see Jursa, “Taxation and Service Obli-
gations,” 436.
44 For the equation of the two names, see Pearce, “Judean: Special Status,” 271; and the
comments to CUSAS 28 2. In cuneiform documents, double-names are an attested phe-
nomenon in the onomastica from other periods. The use of double-names is considered
by some as a marker of identity in the cuneiform archives from Hellenistic Uruk: see
See T. Boiy, “Akkadian-Greek Double Names in Hellenistic Babylonia,” in Ethnicity in
Ancient Mesopotamia: Papers Read at the 48th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale
Leiden, 1–4 July 2002 (ed. W. Soldt, D. Kalvelagen, and D. Katz; PIHANS 102; Leiden:
NINO, 2005), 47–60. The double-names in the Hellenistic Uruk texts may provide a
means of assessing the contributions of both genetic lines in the establishment and
transmission of an individual’s and family’s cultural identification, as suggested by
S. M. Langin-Hooper and L. E. Pearce, “Mammonymy, Maternal-Line Names and Cul-
tural Identification: Clues from the Onomasticon of Hellenistic Uruk,” JAOS 134 (2014):
185–202. For discussion of the double-names in the biblical tradition, see A. Demsky,
“Double Names in the Exile and the Identity of Sheshbazzar,” in These Are the Names:
Studies in Jewish Onomastics (ed. A. Demsky; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press,
1999), 23–39; A. Lemaire, “Zorobabel et la Judée à la lumière de l’épigraphie (fin du
VIe s. av. J.-C.),” RB 103 (1996): 48–57.
The predicates of Neo-Babylonian names that include the noun šarru, “king,” as the
object of the verbal component of the name, appear frequently in the onomasticon of
officials or individuals who aim to ingratiate themselves into the imperial administra-
tion. For a discussion of these Beamtennamen, see M. P. Streck, “Das Onomastiken der
Beamten am neubabylonischen Ebabbar-Tempel in Sippar,” ZA 91 (2001): 110–119. It
is remarkable that a Judean bears a programmatic name that includes Yahweh as the
theophoric element.
45 The term bīt azanni appears to be associated with the Nippur area, strengthening the
association of the CUSAS/BaAr corpus with that region: see van Driel, Elusive Silver,
240.

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176 Laurie E. Pearce

opportunities to ethnic minorities that had previously not been available

under the Babylonians,”46 as they demonstrate that administrative structures
that accommodated foreigners or ethnic minorities were already in place
in the Neo-Babylonian period. This attitude toward ruling and integrat-
ing minority populations is, of course, also reflected in the biblical record.
Nebuchadnezzar’s appointment and assignment of administrative duties to
Gedaliah (2 Kgs 25:24; Jer 40:9–10) results in the installation of an individual
from a prestigious family within the Judean community, and who served as
a stabilizing presence expediting the restoration of the country.47
Evidence from the Bīt Našar and āl-Yāhūdu texts further documents the
continuity of such integration, accommodation, or acculturation into the
early Persian period. Three Judeans bear the title dēkû, a low-level tax-col-
lector.48 Texts written in Bīt Našar identify Abdi-Yāhû, son of Barak-Yāma,
and Šalam-Yama, acting as an agent of Yāma-izri, as dēkûs of āl-Yāhūdu.49 A
text from Keš adds another name to the roster of Judean dēkûs: Pilli-Yāma,
son of Yadi-Yāma, served on behalf of Yāhû-eDIR, son of ūb-šalam, the
summoner (dēkû) responsible for the collection of silver due as the ilku-
obligation of A īqam, son of Rapā-Yāma, the foreman present in many of
the texts of the āl-Yāhūdu corpus.50 Although no evidence yet confirms that
a Judean held the office of dēkû prior to the Persian period, the office itself
antedates it.51 The dates of the texts that mention Judean dēkûs (Cyrus 1, 5,
and 7 = 538, 533, 532 b.c.e., respectively) show that by the time of the prom-
ulgation of Cyrus’s edict (Ezra 1:1), Judeans had already entered the ranks of
the Persian administration, a realm in which some of them would achieve
positions of standing.
At the same time that the CUSAS/BaAr corpus testifies to early inte-
gration of Judeans into the imperial administration, it documents their
subservient status in what would be a long-standing connection with the

46 D. S. Vanderhooft, “Babylonian Strategies of Imperial Control in the West: Royal Prac-

tice and Rhetoric,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period (ed. O. Lip-
schits and J. Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 235–262, here 227.
47 Lipschits, “Nebuchadrezzer’s Policy,” 479. For the continuity into the Persian period
of the practice of installing local members of a population to administrative positions
within their communities in Babylonia, see Eph‘al, “Syria-Palestine under Achaemenid
Rule,” 177.
48 CAD D 128–129; Stolper, Entrepreneurs and Empire, 83. For the specifics of the title as
attested in CUSAS 28 12 and 83, see Pearce, “Judean: Special Status,” 273; and Joannès
and Lemaire, “Contrats babyloniens,” text 9.
49 Joannès and Lemaire, “Trois tablettes cunéiformes,” 27, 29, written in Cyrus 7 (532);
CUSAS 28 83 (Cambyses 2 = 538 b.c.e.).
50 CUSAS 28 12, written in Cyrus 5 (= 533 b.c.e.).
51 It is attested in: GCCI 2 92:9, Amēl-Marduk 1 = 561 b.c.e.; VS 6 70:4, Nbn 6 = 550 b.c.e..

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 177

agricultural sector. The Murašû documentation shows that, in the Persian

period, the land-for-service model expanded to the point that multiple fief-
holders were grouped into a rûs, small-scale fiscal districts. Many a rûs
were identified by the geographic origin or professional designation of the
members. Although no explicit mention of a Judean a rû yet exists, the
CUSAS/BaAr corpus records the Judeans’ dependent economic status, and
their interactions with the administrative structures in the long sixth cen-
tury in ways that suggest the potential for the existence of a Judean a rû
in the Nippur region.52 The documentation, primarily promissory notes
for commodities due on the land, depict a relationship between individuals
and officials, between those who work or hold the land and members of the
bureaucracy. In the case of the āl-Yāhūdu texts, they provide a window into
the Judeans’ full integration into the economic institutions of Babylonian
and Achaemenid society.
The CUSAS /BaAr corpus also documents contact between Judeans and
Babylonian officials in the realm of the economic perquisites attendant to
those offices. CUSAS 28 7, a promissory note for barley owed as rent, dat-
ing to Nabonidus 5 (= 551 b.c.e.), stipulates that Rupa-Yāma, son of Samak-
Yāma, is to deliver grain without interest, and in an amount equivalent to
the rent owed on land defined as property of the king and managed by the
Babylonian Ninurta-ana-bītīšu, son of Ri ēti.53 This provides further indica-
tion that, already in the exilic period, some Judeans served as tenant farmers
in association with crown lands. The repayment in this transaction was to
occur at the “gate of the storehouse of the estate of the (unnamed) rab mūgi,”54
and thus points to the interaction of Judeans with this imperial office, the
same one held by Nergalsare er (‫נרגלשראצר‬, Nergal-šar-u ur) in Jer. 39:3,
13.55 The specific responsibilities of this office are still not known for the

52 Pearce, “Judean: Special Status,” 271–272.

53 CUSAS 28 7:1–2 reads: makkur šarri ša qašti ša Ninurta-ana-bītīšu māršu ša Ri ēti.
54 Other toponyms referencing estates of administrative officials appear in the Nippur
region: Bīt-rab-kā ir, Bīt-rab-ki ir, Bīt-rab- ābi ē, Bīt-rab-urāti (all, Zadok, Geographical
Names, 101) and Bīt-rēši (R. Zadok, “The Toponymy of the Nippur Region during the 1st
Millennium B. C. within the General Framework of the Mesopotamian Toponymy,” WdO
12 [1981]: 41). BM 62731: rev.4’ provides evidence for the existence of a bīt rab mungu/
mūgi, “the estate of the rab mūgi,” in a Sippar text dated to Nbk 31 (= 574/574 b.c.e.): see
J. MacGinnis and C. Wunsch, The Arrows of the Sun: Armed Forces in Sippar in the First
Millennium BC. (Babylonische Archive 4; Dresden: ISLET, 2012), n. 158.
55 For a discussion of the Babylonian administrative personnel found in Jeremiah, see
Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 149–152. Jursa has already demonstrated
the appearance in the cuneiform record of named Babylonian officials known from
the biblical record: the rab ša-rēši Nabû-šarrūssu-ukīn, who appears in BM 114789,
is the Nebusarsekim of Jer 39:3: see M. Jursa, “nabû-šarrūssu-ukīn, rab ša-rēši, und

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178 Laurie E. Pearce

Neo-Babylonian period, but the Neo-Assyrian period evidence makes clear

the office-holder was of high-ranking military status and served in close
proximity to the king. These features undoubtedly applied to the Neo-Bab-
ylonian rab mūgi’s portfolio as well.56 The mention of the estate of the rab
mūgi in a text from āl-Yāhūdu is consistent with previous evidence that, in
addition to their external postings, rab mūgi officials (notably Nergal-šar-
u ur) held estates and managed households in southern Babylonia.57
Interaction across the urban-rural divide by specific individuals is not
frequent in the CUSAS/BaAr corpus, but is attested in a pair of duplicate
documents. CUSAS 28 45 || HBM 8,58 drafted in Babylon, concern the divi-
sion of inheritance among the sons of Ahīqam, members of a well-docu-
mented family of Judeans in rural āl-Yāhūdu. As division of inheritance was
typically completed on site, there would have been no requirement for these
āl-Yāhūdeans to travel to Babylon to conclude the matter. Wunsch suggests
that these sons of Ahīqam capitalized on the opportunity provided by their
being in Babylon to attend to other administrative, juridical or business mat-
ters that demanded the attention and participation of royal judges.59 Situ-
ations that warranted their journey to Babylon could have been related to
unresolved business matters to which the father, Ahīqam, son of Rapā-Yāma,
had been a party. For example, thirteen years earlier, Ahīqam participated in
a arrānu business venture that provided him with a potential windfall.60 In
view of the fact that he would have acquired sufficient capital to engage in
this standard partnership arrangement, it follows that the potential for loss
or dispute was present. It is impossible to suggest, much less prove, that a
particular incident provoked the journey to Babylon documented in CUSAS

‘Nebusarsekim’ (Jer. 39:3),” NABU 2008–5. It was earlier proposed that the name of the
biblical figure would appear in the cuneiform record just as it has now been recovered:
see Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 151.
56 K. Radner and W. Röllig. Die neuassyrischen Texte aus Tall Seh Hamad (BATSH 2;
Berlin: D. Reimer, 2002), 12–13. For the Neo-Babylonian context of the term, see also
M. Jursa, “The Neo-Babylonian Empire,” in Imperien und Reiche in der Weltgeschichte.
Epochenübergreifende und Globalhistorische Vergleiche (ed. M. Gehler and R. Rollinger;
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 121–148, here 129; MacGinnis and Wunsch, The
Arrows of the Sun, 31.
57 Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 152; Hofkalendar iv 22.
58 The larger context of the legal background of the institution of slavery is discussed in
Abraham, “An Inheritance Division;” and Magdalene and Wunsch, “Slavery Between
Judah and Babylon,” 121–123.
59 Magdalene and Wunsch, “Slavery Between Judah and Babylon,” 116, 122.
60 CUSAS 28 40 is the only arrānu agreement in the corpus in which Judeans appear as
principals. This term is attested in CAD H 111, meaning 5c: “business venture involv-
ing travel.” A comprehensive study of the arrānu institution is provided by H. Lanz,
Die neubabylonischen arrânu-Geschäftsunternehmen (Berlin: Schweitzer, 1976).

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 179

28 45 || HBM 8, but these texts do establish that Ahīqam and his family par-
ticipated in a certain stratum of Babylonian society, and conducted their
affairs in accordance with standard Babylonian legal procedure.

3. Prophetic Expectations and the Judean Experience in Babylonia

It is clear that the texts of the CUSAS/BaAr corpus add details to the devel-
oping picture of the Mesopotamian economy in the long sixth century, as
well as provide glimpses of aspects of the day-to-day experience of Judeans
in Babylonia. The presentation here of some salient features of the corpus
is intended to pique the interests of those investigating prophetic expecta-
tions in the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods. It is hoped that with
the publication of the primary sources, they will find additional material to
explore in this context. This survey began with an assertion that continu-
ity and normality in economic and administrative matters characterize the
cuneiform documentation of the Judean experience in Babylonia, and that
these qualities are perceptible in the record from Judah itself.
Notably, the texts composed in āl-Yāhūdu identify the first settlement
of Judean exiles in the agrarian, rural landscape of southern Babylonia.61
They demonstrate the interaction of the Judean community with other West
Semites and native Babylonians, and establish that an urban-rural divide
existed among the Judeans from the inception of the exile. Until now, this
distinction could only be inferred from texts written at a remove of a cen-
tury or more: the ration tablets62 and royal inscriptions from the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar,63 on the one hand, and the Murašû texts written well into
the Persian period, during the reigns of Artaxerxes I and Darius (465–405
b.c.e.), on the other. However, while the potential of the Neo-Babylonian
royal inscriptions to inform an understanding of the prophets’ messages has

61 The possibility that there were additional locations to which Judeans were brought can-
not be excluded. There could even have been more than one settlement named for their
place of origin, though there is no analogy for this option in the known toponyms of
other contemporaneous deportee settlements.
62 E. Weidner, “Jojachin, König von Juda, in babylonischen Keilschrifttexten,” in Mélanges
Syriens offerts à M. René Dussaud (Paris: Paul Geunther, 1939), 923–935.
63 Entemenaki Inscription: P. R. Berger, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften; Königsin-
schriften des ausgehenden babylonischen Reiches (626–539 a. Chr.) (AOAT 4/1; Keve-
laer: Butzon & Bercker, 1973), 295–297; fragments that have been identified since
are catalogued in Da Riva, The Neo-Babylonian Royal Inscriptions, 19; Istanbul Prism
(Hofkalendar): Unger, Babylon, 282–294; “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Justice” (= CT 46
45): W. G. Lambert, “Nebuchadnezzar King of Justice,” Iraq 27 (1965): 1–11.

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180 Laurie E. Pearce

been carefully explored,64 the fact that the Judeans present in the Murašû
documents are almost exclusively witnesses to standard transactions has
precluded any but the most general of statements about the nature and
extent of Judean participation in Babylonian life. Evidence from the CUSAS/
BaAr corpus identifies Judeans as principals in economic and administra-
tive transactions and concretizes prophetic descriptions of some aspects of
Judean life in exile,65 providing a foundation for exploring the connections
between socio-economic conditions and prophetic missions.
Ezekiel’s prophetic activity on the Kabar/Chebar canal in the vicinity of
Nippur reflects the tension or, perhaps better, the interaction between mem-
bers of the urban and rural environments evident in the early days of the
exile. Based on the biblical reports of the destination of the exiles, it would
be expected that Ezekiel, a scion of an important Jerusalemite priestly fam-
ily carried off in the Jehoiachin wave of exiles, would have been resettled in
Babylon. However, he is encountered at a small agricultural settlement on
the Chebar canal and is believed to have died in approximately 570 b.c.e.66
The location of āl-Yāhūdu in the Nippur region and the proximity of the
date of the earliest āl-Yāhūdu tablet (572 b.c.e.) to the period of Ezekiel’s
mission contextualizes Ezekiel’s mission. R. Albertz’s observation that the
vicinity of Nippur, the setting of most of the book, lay “at some remove from
the leaders of the golah in Babylon itself,”67 underlines not only the fact that
physical distance separated the urban Judean elite situated in Babylon from
a segment of the population relocated in the countryside, but also hints that
a social demographic may have characterized the divide as well. The demo-
graphics of the exile remain to be fully understood, and, in spite of the prom-
ise of the CUSAS/ BaAr corpus, it can offer no clear resolution to many of
the attendant complexities.
The appearance of Judeans in low-level administrative positions from
the start of their exilic experience is a case in point. As demonstrated above,
the CUSAS/ BaAr texts illustrate that Judeans held positions of authority
from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar on. The texts also counter suggestions
that Judeans who were involved in imperial administration were situated in
urban Babylon, as follows:
As time went by and prospects of a return of the deportees to Palestine faded, a fair
number may have been enlisted in Neo-Babylonian governmental service. Whether the

64 Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire, 115–202.

65 Allusions to agricultural activities, processes, and products, such as those to which
Jer 24:5–7; 29:5–6 refer, find explicit statement in the cuneiform corpus.
66 Albertz, Israel in Exile, 353.
67 Ibid., 353 n. 644.

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 181

detention camps were dissolved before Cyrus’s capture of Babylon, allowing all the cap-
tives to their own way in open society, we do not know, although the poetry of Isaiah
of the Exile may imply that many Jews at least by then were part of the cosmopolitan
populace of Babylon.68

As distinctive as the Yahwistic names are, their utility is limited with respect
to the identification of the social standing of the Judeans. They do not, as
do many Neo-Babylonian names, permit any assessment of the social stand-
ing of the named person. In Neo-Babylonian onomastic practice, individu-
als bear either a two- or three- part filiation statement, in the form PN1,
son of PN2 (descendant of Ancestor Name).69 Inclusion of the third ele-
ment, the eponymous ancestor, is a signifier of the individual’s higher social
standing. Yet, the lack of Judean names formulated with the three-part fili-
ation statement is not necessarily an indication that any given person does
not come from an elite or well-connected family. Individuals in the biblical
text typically are identified by name and patronymic, and that is likely the
form in which Babylonian scribes recorded the names of the Judeans they
encountered. From the prosopographic evidence, it is impossible to deter-
mine how many, or which, of the residents of āl-Yāhūdu may have stemmed
from prestigious families. It is also impossible to exclude the possibility that
Ezekiel’s appearance in the town on the Chebar canal might reflect the early
settlement of members of the Jerusalem elite in the Nippur countryside, out-
side of the urban environment of Babylon or other cities on which the Neo-
Babylonian, and subsequently the Achaemenid, kings focused their material
support and interest. Whether Ezekiel visited or lived at āl-Yāhūdu is irrel-
evant. However, the fact that the proposed date of his death correlates well
with the earliest documentation of that town (572 b.c.e.) both substantiates
the prophet’s claim to membership in the exile70 and indicates that further
exploration of the location and nature of the settlement of members of the
Judean elite is necessary to understand the socio-economic contours of the
exile and the forces contributing to prophetic responses to it. This small
piece of evidence points to a possibility that members of the Judean elite,
located in the Nippur vicinity, may have had to negotiate the divide and dis-

68 N. K. Gottwald, The Hebrew Bible: A Brief Socio-Literary Introduction (Minneapolis:

Fortress Press, 2009), 247.
69 Wunsch, Judeans by the Water of Babylon; J. P. Nielsen, Sons and Descendants: A Social
History of Kin Groups and Family Names in the Early Neo-Babylonian Period, 747–626
B. C. (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2.
70 D. S. Vanderhooft, “Ezekiel as an Exemplar of Acculturation in the Babylonian Milieu”
(paper presented at the workshop “Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context,” Univer-
sity College London, November 2011), 3.

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182 Laurie E. Pearce

tance between the rural and urban settlements, thus extending the reach of
contexts and channels for cultural transmission and acculturation.
The CUSAS/BaAr corpus reports activity of Judeans and other West
Semites in the Babylonian economic sector. But this is undoubtedly not the
only realm of endeavor in which members of these populations participated.
Manifestations of the intellectual environment of the exilic and post-exilic
communities are evident in the relevant literature, and recently have been
revisited in considerations of the factors that impacted the acculturation
an intellectual of the Judean community might have experienced in Baby-
lonia. Starting from M. Greenberg’s 1983 characterization of the book of
Ezekiel as reflective of the thought of an intellectual, D. Vanderhooft has
recently reviewed a great many of the Akkadian and Aramaic loan words
and expressions that appear in the text, and has concluded that as they derive
from vocabularies of economic, juridical, and divinatory activity, they point
to Ezekiel’s familiarity with many aspects of the Babylonian worldview.71
The present context is not the forum in which to fully examine the lines of
inquiry that his compelling investigation prompts. However, it is relevant
to recap his line of reasoning, as the markers of the processes of Ezekiel’s
(and surely others) acculturation suggest that the social settings, as well as
the content, of the entire range of the cuneiform record must be considered
in assessing the development and expression of prophetic responses to the
exilic and post-exilic experience.72
Familiarity with Akkadian vocabulary on the part of prophetic authors
may well have resulted from physical proximity. But participation in specific
institutions would have contributed to and expedited acculturation. Vander-
hooft hints at this, without directly specifying the institution(s) that might
be responsible, when he observes that some Akkadian loans in the text of
Ezekiel, e. g. elmešu (“amber”) and iškaru (“series”), either appear in or refer
to literary and /or scholastic texts. He points to Akkadian ubullu not only
as the source for the Hebrew and / or Aramaic lexeme ‫חבל‬, but also as the
Akkadian half of the title of the work UR5.RA = ubullu, a Sumero-Akka-
dian lexical series.73 This text is well-known to have been part of the elemen-

71 M. Greenberg, Ezekiel 1–20: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB
22; Garden City: Doubleday, 1983), 26; Vanderhooft, “Ezekiel,” 1, 12.
72 As this study went to press, A. Winitzer graciously shared a pre-publication version of
his forthcoming exploration of Babylonian cultural and intellectual influences on Eze-
kiel’s work. See: A. Winitzer, “Assyriology and Jewish Studies in Tel Aviv: Ezekiel among
the Babylonian Literati,” in Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations
between Jews, Iranians, and Babylonians in Antiquity (ed. U. Gabbay and S. Secunda;
TSAJ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 163–216.
73 Vanderhooft, “Ezekiel,” 6. Editions of texts that comprise series UR5.RA = ubullu can

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 Continuity and Normality in Sources Relating to the Judean Exile 183

tary scribal curriculum in the Neo-Babylonian school,74 and thus opens the
question whether Ezekiel, or the author of the book known by that name,
enjoyed a degree of familiarity with the Babylonian scribal curriculum and
scholarly traditions because of his direct experience with the elementary and
intermediate levels of cuneiform scribal education.
That the book of Ezekiel is a prominent example of prophetic writings
infused with hallmarks of the Babylonian scholastic environment is note-
worthy also in light of the knowledge that the CUSAS/ BaAr texts provide
about the date and location of the settlement of Judeans in Babylonia in
the exilic waves of 597 and 586 b.c.e. The notion that Ezekiel, or any other
literate Judean (prophet or otherwise), might have been exposed, to some
degree, to the Babylonian school curriculum needs to be considered in light
of the presumed date of Ezekiel’s activity, his descent from the Jerusalem
elite, and the location of his activity in the rural vicinity of Nippur. Most of
the evidence for the schooling of scribes derives largely from excavations
and tablet collections originating in urban settings. However, the loca-
tion of scribal instruction in private houses in Old Babylonian Nippur (c.
1800–1600 b.c.e.), when Nippur was yet a, if not the, major center of text
and intellectual production,75 leaves open the possibility, even if small, that
scribal training could equally occur in homes in the rural landscape, away
from the urban environment. Unfortunately, we do not possess the evidence
necessary to pursue this notion in depth.
Thus, the CUSAS /BaAr corpus, and the āl-Yāhūdu texts in particular,
provide significant new, concrete evidence for the facts and nature of the
Judean experience in Babylonia. In the preservation of mundane activities,
the texts unexpectedly document the smooth and immediate integration of a
population into the fabric of the administrative structures of the Babylonian
and Persian empires, and a consideration of the temporal and geographic
setting of this community along with indications from the biblical text sug-
gest that exposure to or participation in Babylonian cultural institutions

be consulted at www.oracc.org/dcclt, the website of the project Digital Corpus of Cunei-

form Lexical Texts, directed by Niek Veldhuis.
74 N. Veldhuis, “On the Curriculum of the Neo-Babylonian School,” JAOS 123 (2003):
627–633; P. Gesche, Schulunterricht in Babylonien im ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. (AOAT
275; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001).
75 P. Michalowski, “Literacy Schooling and the Transmission of Knowledge in Early Mes-
opotamian Culture,” in Theory and Practice of Knowledge Transfer: Studies in School
Education in the Ancient Near East and Beyond: Papers Read at a Symposium in Lei-
den, 17–19 December 2008 (ed. W. S. van Egmond and W. H. van Soldt; Uitgaven van
het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten te Leiden 121; Leiden: NINO, 2012),
44–45.

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184 Laurie E. Pearce

contributed to the process as well. As the cuneiform documentation is more

fully explored, it may be hoped that it will support deeper understanding
of the Judean experience in Babylonia and of the prophetic responses to it.

Laurie E. Pearce
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Near Eastern Studies
282 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720–1940
United States
lpearce@berkeley.edu

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Hebrew Bible and
Ancient Israel volume 3 (2014), no. 2
Edited by
Gary N. Knoppers (Notre Dame IN), Oded Lipschits (Tel Aviv),
Carol A. Newsom (Atlanta GA), and Konrad Schmid (Zürich)

Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel is a new, peer-reviewed, quarterly journal

focusing primarily on the biblical texts in their ancient historical contexts,
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Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel ist eine neue Zeitschrift, die vierteljährlich
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