Yesterday, Ha’aretz reported that Marjo Korpel will soon argue—in Biblical Archaeology Review—that artifact “IDAM 65-321″ from the Israel Museum collection was once the official seal of Israel’s most infamous queen, Jezebel. The blogosphere and e-mail lists have been abuzz with discussion of Korpel’s claim; see, for example, the comments by Jim West, Jim Davila, Todd Bolen, and Duane Smith, with my apologies to anyone I’ve left out. Jan Pieter van de Giessen actually had the story several weeks ago.

Before we go much farther, here’s a picture of the actual artifact, from the Canadian Museum of Civilization web site:

And now here’s a picture from the Universiteit Utrecht web site, showing Korpel’s proposed reconstruction at the top:

The extant inscription on the actual piece reads יזבל, but Jezebel’s name is spelled איזבל in the Tanakh—hence the need to reconstruct the missing letters. As you can see from the second photo, Korpel proposes to read לאיזבל, which would be the preposition ל (here, “belonging to”) + the proper name איזבל.

One obvious problem, of course, is the big crack in the top of the seal. What letters, if any, used to be there? On his blog, Jim West characterizes Korpel’s reconstruction as “guesswork”; on the Biblical Studies Discussion List, he went further, calling the reconstruction “pure speculation” and “impossible to verify or really even to suggest.” Caution is wise, but Jim’s pronouncements overstate the case. Duane wisely advises that we wait until Korpel’s formal article comes out to assess her claims—I don’t see how we could do otherwise! Nevertheless, I’ll make a couple of observations that will, I think, temper Jim’s dismissal of Korpel’s reconstruction without being overly credulous.

First, it is obvious that the object in question is a seal, meant for making impressions (for those of you who don’t read paleo-Hebrew, the letters are inscribed backwards, so that the impression left by pressing the seal into clay would produce forwards-facing letters—the seal itself is a mirror image of the intended end product). Based on copious evidence from other ancient Israelite and Judean seals and seal impressions, we should expect to find a ל (”belonging to”) somewhere on the seal, preceding the proper noun. This expectation is not conclusive, of course, but it is quite reasonable—and the only place a missing ל could go would be in the broken area at the top of the seal. In my opinion, doubting the ל would be like finding a busted baseball and doubting that it ever had stitches.

The second step is more difficult. Korpel’s reconstruction shows that there is room for a ל plus one other letter in the missing area. If that be so, we only have 23 possibilities for the complete inscription. It might have been ליזבל, with only the ל at the top; or it might have been לאיזבל or לביזבל or לגיזבל or … well, I hope you get the point. There are a finite number of possible readings, and the next step becomes sorting those by their plausibility, which should involve some consideration of attested names and so on.

But that brings up another point. As Jim West points out in a paragraph from Philip Davies, posted to the Biblical Studies Discussion List, there’s a good chance that איזבל is an “invented” or “distorted” name. Here’s what Philip wrote, copied from Jim’s copy:

So the letter/letters at the top of ‘Jezebel’ seal are all missing, leaving YZBL. Since ZBL is a common Phoenician theophoric element (and Y very commonly the preceding letter) what is the statistical probability that the name is ‘YZBL? Can that be worked out? More seriously, the biblical spelling is problematic. It could be a distortion intended to mean ‘Zebul is not’. Can we be sure that it is a genuine Phoenician name? What would it mean?

I do think that the probability of איזבל over against some other reconstruction (ביזבל or גיזבל or דיזבל … there are only 22 possibiities) could be worked out, given sufficient time and attention to attested patterns of Phoenician names. If I were to undertake that personally, I would have to do some homework on Phoenician names, but presumably Korpel has taken this into account (we’ll all find out when the article or more information about her argument appears). It should nevertheless be possible, in principle. As for Philip’s question about whether איזבל could be a genuine Phoenician name (or a genuine Hebraicization of a genuine Phoenician name), Aren Maeir pointed out an interesting possibility. While the biblical—nay, Masoretic—vocalization אִיזֶבֶל suggests “Zebul is not,” with another vocalization, אַיזֶבֶל, the name might suggest “Where is Zebul?” But could that be a genuine Phoenician name? Alas, I don’t know enough about Phoenician names to make that call. However, it is at least interesting that the biblical narrator names Jezebel’s father אֶתְבַּעַל—apparently another combination of a preposition with a theophoric.

I clearly do not know for sure whether the seal belonged to a woman named איזבל or somebody with some other name. I’m eager to read Korpel’s argument. However, I am certainly open to being persuaded—the reconstruction is not at all unreasonable.

Update: Please now see this guest post from Chris Rollston, on Jim West’s blog. Chris gives some important cautions. Most interesting to me was Chris’s assessment that the script is clearly younger than the 9th century, which would remove Ahab’s Jezebel from consideration. Also, as far as I know, we have no historical confirmation of Jezebel’s actual existence—Assyrian inscriptions attest to Ahab, but only the Bible attests to Jezebel, unless I have missed some important bit of information. Before anyone cites the seal itself: it is in question and cannot be used to support the existence of a historical Jezebel, for that would be a circular argument. In fact, it’s hard not to see any argument one could make here as more or less circular: attaching the seal to the biblical Jezebel begs the question of that queen’s existence, and using the seal to prove her existence is flawed because the reconstruction depends on presupposing the name איזבל on the basis of the Bible itself.

Of 4,500-year-old music, that is. Maybe. At least you can get a sense of the sounds that musical instruments from Sumer were capable of making by watching this YouTube video.

I haven’t been able to discover the basis on which the music itself was composed, and I can’t claim to know anything about ethnomusicological investigations of ancient Sumerian music.

There’s also a brief clip of someone playing the Ur harp reconstruction while another narrates Gilgamesh, but the narration is in English, not Sumerian.

Jim recently linked to Christopher O’Brien’s post on the problem of unprovenienced artifacts—artifacts presented to the world with no information about the archaeological context of their discovery—in Syro-Palestinian archaeology. The topic is very important and Christopher deals with it very well. Please read Christopher’s post if you haven’t already.

Before the Telegraph article on the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet became unavailable (at least to non-subscribers), John Hobbins archived it. Along with the main article, John archived a comment posted to the Telegraph article by Hector Avalos. Get John’s PDF for the whole comment; I wish to interact with just a couple of points therein.

Hector commented:

This tablet an important find, but it does not have the more exaggerated biblical fundamentalist implications that are being assigned to it by some.

First, it is a mistake to assume that because one biblical claim mentioned in the Bible is confirmed by an independent source, then ALL claims in the Bible are true. This tablet certainly would confirm nothing about the supernatural claims in the Bible.

This is exactly right and an important caveat. What the tablet demonstrates, at most, is that the narrative presented in Jeremiah 39 about the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem was written by someone who knew the names and titles of some of the Babylonian officials present. Now, as a matter of inference, one might judge it likely that such a person was an eyewitness, or somehow had access to eyewitness accounts. That would be an unprovable but not unreasonable inference, but an inference nevertheless. But to then try to generalize beyond this particular report to all biblical narratives is by far an unwarranted leap.

Second, if one is going to assume that everything is true in the Bible because one claim is proven true, then one must apply this rationale to all religions, including the Babylonian religion. After all, we could just reverse this rationale and say that the Babylonian records are confirmed by the biblical records, and so Babylonian claims about the supernatural are correct.

This also is quite correct. The claims “Chief Eunuch Rab-saris Nabu-sharrussu-ukin was present when the Babylonian army breached Jerusalem’s defensive wall” is of quite a different order than “God sent the Babylonian army to destroy Jerusalem as punishment for Judah’s sins.” Note also that the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin temple offering tablet does not even actually verify the first claim; it just verifies that such a person existed (nine years earlier than the sack of Jerusalem). But even if the tablet is taken as indirect confirmation of the former claim, it has no bearing whatsoever on the second claim. One might be tempted to argue that “if the author was right about X, s/he must have been right about Y,” but that argument would work only if Y were logically or causally dependent on X.

Third, we are not completely sure that “Nabu-sharrusu-ukin, the chief eunuch” is the very same official mentioned in Jeremiah 39:3, where the name is vocalized (in English transcription) as Sarsechim (or Sarsekim).

But note that Sarsekim lacks the “Nabu” part which we would expect in other names (“Nebuchadnezzar”) has it. Likewise, Nebuzaradan (2 Kings 25:8-11) retains the “Nebu” part of the name, which refers to the god, Nabu (or Nebo).

The issue is further complicated because in Jeremiah 39:13 “The Rabsaris” (“the Chief Eunuch”) is named Nebushazban, which is a different name deriving perhaps from the Babylonian Nebu-shuzibanni (= “Nabu deliver me”).

Because of these problems, it has been proposed that the name prior to Sarsekim in Jeremiah 39:3 be redivided so that the “nebo” of “Samgar-nebo” be joined with Sarsekim, which would now yield Nebo-Sarsekim, a name closer to the name found on the British Museum tablet.

This way of presenting the matter is a little bit misleading. The correct division of the names in Jeremiah 39:3 has long been a matter of (minor) debate. The final paragraph just quoted almost makes it sound like the motive for reading Nebo-sarsekim in Jeremiah 39:3 is because of the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet. Yet that cannot be the case, since the English translations that read “Nebo-sarsekim” were published well before the temple donation tablet came to light. Those translations, by the way, include Wycliffe’s, NIV/TNIV/NIrV, REB, NEB, NLT, and ERV. These are in the minority (see the chart here), but they are not non-existent, nor were the translations prompted by Jursa’s publicization of the tablet. Indeed, the earliest translation to join the “Nebo-” element to “Sarsekim” was the Septuagint.

Please see my earlier treatments (here, here, and here) and follow the links in those posts for a fuller presentation of the issues surrounding the interpretation of Jeremiah 39:3 in light of this tablet.

Professor Michael Jursa, therefore, opted for a re-division of the Hebrew text to get Nebo- Sarsekim (so does the NIV, but not the KJV or RSV).

However, this would mean that the biblical text (or at least the standard Masoretic edition of the Hebrew text) was WRONG in how it transcribed the Babylonian name, or that the text has been corrupted. It would mean that we had to use Babylonian texts to CORRECT the biblical mangling of the Babylonian name. That should not inspire much confidence that biblical scribes were always accurate.

Oh, come on, Hector! We’re talking about a maqqeph sitting where it doesn’t belong. It’s well known that the Masoretic pointings and punctuation, while conservative in their preservation of the tradition of synagogue reading, were a very late addition to the biblical text. Biblical scholars and educated non-professional readers have long known that the Masoretic pointings and punctuations are not 100% trustworthy. But that is not a matter of Jeremiah 39 being “wrong” or “corrupted” in transmission. It’s a matter of the Masoretes, well over 1,000 years after the composition of the text, putting a punctuation mark in the wrong place. Misplaced Masoretic punctuation neither indicts the text as “wrong” nor shows it to be “corrupt.”

What we have here is not an “incorrect” or “corrupt” text, but a limitation in translators’ knowledge of how to render a potentially ambiguous text. The consonantal text is perfectly secure here. We just need to know how to group the words together in the sentence. That’s where the Masoretes seem to have made their mistake.

Note also that the New American Bible omits Sarsechim altogether in Jeremiah 39:3, and substitutes Nebushazban (from Jeremiah 39:13). So now one has to be specific as to WHICH VERSION of “the Bible” one believes is “confirmed.” The NAB would be proven wrong by this tablet.

Again, come on. Give churchgoers some credit. The vast majority understand that their modern-language translations might differ from one another based on translators’ and editors’ decisions. If any text is “confirmed” by the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet, it’s the consonantal Hebrew text.

So, yes, thank goodness for Mesopotamian texts which have helped us immensely to understand how mythological and how textually corrupted biblical texts can be.

This tablet does neither. There’s nothing at all “mythological” about Chief Eunuch Rab-saris Nebu-sharrussu-ukin’s temple donation (per the tablet) or his putative presence at the sack of Jerusalem (per Jeremiah). Nor is there anything “textually corrupt” about the consonantal text of Jeremiah 39:3. “The Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet proves the Bible true!” is a ridiculous claim, but “The Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet proves the Bible mythological and textually corrupted!” is equally incorrect.

John Hobbins has posted a very nice discussion of Jeremiah 39:3 and the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin temple donation tablet. Of particular interest is John’s reference to the attestations of a title “Sin-magir” in a few Assyrian texts. Some of you will recall that I raised the possibility of the MT’s “Samgar” as a title back in my first post on the topic, but John has done the background work to show that this is not just idle speculation, but actually probable. Please read John’s post for the full scoop; his data and reasoning drive even higher my confidence in the three-official rendering of Jeremiah 39:3.

The translation and publicizing of a cuneiform tablet—basically a receipt for a temple donation—mentioning one Chief Eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin has certainly generated a lot of interest in biblioblogdom. I was away from both home and work all day long; during that time, a number of comments were added to my earlier post on this topic, and several other posts have appeared, for example, Claude’s follow-up as well as notices and comments by Peter Kirk, Stephen Hebert, BK (sorry, that’s all the ID I have), Limbidgit (twice: here and here), Metacatholic, Henry Neufeld, and Jan Pieter van de Giessen (twice: here and here)—and probably others that I have missed (I would welcome links in the comments).

From Claude, who learned it from Peter, I learned that Michael Jursa’s translation of the tablet (it’s neither a cylinder nor a cylinder seal, Jim) has been published in the Telegraph as follows:

(Regarding) 1.5 minas (0.75 kg) of gold, the property of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the chief eunuch, which he sent via Arad-Banitu the eunuch to [the temple] Esangila: Arad-Banitu has delivered [it] to Esangila. In the presence of Bel-usat, son of Alpaya, the royal bodyguard, [and of] Nadin, son of Marduk-zer-ibni. Month XI, day 18, year 10 [of] Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

It’s great to have the actual translation now—and so quickly!—but all the data salient to assessing a possible biblical connection were already given in earlier reports.

In a comment to my earlier post, Kevin Edgecomb cited the attestations of Sin-magir/Simmagir as a place name, which adds weight to the case in favor of the (T)NIV’s rendering of the list of Babylonian officials in Jeremiah 39:3 over against the NRSV/NJPSV rendering. (There are a number of other translations that could be cited, of course; these are the ones I happen to look at most often.) Let’s call these the three-official rendering (Nergal-sharezer of Samgar, Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim, and Chief Mag Nergal-sharezer) and the four-official rendering (Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Chief Eunuch Sarsekim, and Chief Mag Nergal-sharezer) instead of tying them to specific translations. In my opinion, there are several good reasons to prefer the three-official rendering:

• The three-official rendering successfully distinguishes the two Nergal-sharezers, which seems like a reasonable desideratum. (This argument is obviously subjective.)
• The three-official rendering gives each person in the list an additional identifier, which is “standard operating procedure” in Jeremiah 39 when dealing with Babylonian officials—even those with unique names who play a prominent role in the narrative (compare the treatment of Nebuzaradan, whose name is always accompanied by a title).
• “Samgar” is potentially a straightforward Hebraicization of “Sin-magir/Simmagir,” an attested Neo-Babylonian place name. (Thanks, Kevin!)
• “Nebo-sarsekim,” if such a name appears in Jeremiah 39:3, is potentially a straightforward Hebraicization of “Nabu-sharrussu-ukin,” a name attested Neo-Babylonian personal name. (Yes, this statement represents a shift from some earlier comments that I have made. Keep reading, please.)
• The LXX translator(s) read סמגר נבו סרסכים רב סריס as Σαμαγωθ καὶ Ναβουσαχαρ καὶ Ναβουσαρις. Clearly, the LXX is imperfect here, as the translator(s) rendered רב סריס as if it were נבו סריס, but this is easily explained as an error resulting from jumpy eyes (note the graphical similarity of נב and רב, and of סריס and סרסכים). It’s a perfectly understandable error of scribal mechanics. But it’s very important for our purposes that the LXX translator(s)—working long before the Masoretes joined the נבו in question to the preceding סמגר with a maqqeph—joined the נבו to the following סרסכים to yield the name Ναβουσαχαρ. (By the way, if you try to look this up, remember that LXX Jeremiah is in a different sequence from MT Jeremiah; MT Jeremiah 39 finds its parallel in LXX Jeremiah 46.)

In the fourth bullet point above, it may seem that I am moving close to Peter’s suggestion—see also BK’s question in the comments to my earlier post—that the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin temple gift receipt proves the translation “Samgar, Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim” to be correct over against “Samgar-nebo, Chief Eunuch Sarsekim.” That’s not exactly accurate, though; my point is more nuanced, though the ultimate difference is one of degree. My point is that having the name Nabu-sharrussu-ukin actually attested for a Neo-Babylonian person—whoever he might be—adds a degree of probability to the “Nebo-sarsekim” reading, just because we know it’s a genuine Neo-Babylonian name. Another important piece of data, which I don’t have, would be whether Samgar-nebo is attested as a genuine Neo-Babylonian name. Such attestation would weaken—yea, perhaps even negate—the probative value of the Nabu-sharrussu-ukin tablet for solving the translation issue in Jeremiah 39:3.

Yesterday I was leaning slightly toward the three-official translation of Jeremiah 39:3. The new data (Sin-magir as a place name; the LXX translation) convince me more strongly that this leaning is correct.

If so, what would this mean for drawing a connection between the tablet’s charitable donator and the biblical character? The tablet gives us a Chief Eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin in 595 BCE; the biblical story gives us a Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim in 587 BCE. Could these be the same person? Well, sure they could. My hunch is that it’s more probable than not. However, proof for that hunch is lacking. Please remember that Jeremiah 39 names two different people named Nergal-sharezer, and two different people with the title Rab-saris (Chief Eunuch). It is possible that there were two different individuals named Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim, especially if “Nebo-sarsekim” were a royally-conferred name rather than one given at birth by this fellow’s parents. My gut tells me that these being the same person is more likely than there being two different men with the same name and title, but the data doesn’t quite allow my brain to hold firmly with my gut on this matter.

So what would all of this mean for the historical accuracy of the book of Jeremiah? Well, quite honestly, nobody ought to doubt that the book of Jeremiah is populated with characters bearing the names of real people. Both major (e.g. Jehoiachin) and minor (e.g., Gemariah/Gemaryahu) characters can be found mentioned in nonbiblical sources (e.g., Babylonian tablets and bullae, for the two aforementioned, respectively). It truly should come as no surprise to learn that the author of Jeremiah knew what (s)he was talking about when (s)he listed one “Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim” among the participants in the siege. Nevertheless, it’s pretty cool to have a tablet mentioning someone who appears to possibly be the same guy. Call a spade a spade: the author of Jeremiah 39 mentions a Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim (or, at least, I think [s]he does), and so does a Babylonian temple receipt. If we accept on other grounds that there is such a person mentioned in the verse, we might then go on to infer—we cannot show—that the two Chief Eunuchs are the same person. If the Nebo-sarsekim of Jeremiah 39 is not a real person, he has at least a very realistic person. This does not prove the historical accuracy of the book of Jeremiah in each and every part. It could, however, form part of a cumulative case in favor of such accuracy, though here I would recommend at least enough caution to carefully discern the possible sources of Jeremiah and treat them independently in this regard.

A couple or three other comments are appropriate before I close this post.

First, the Telegraph claims that Jursa’s translation of the tablet “has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years.” The Telegraph doesn’t say who has so labeled the translation of this tablet, but the claim itself is idiotic. No way is this find more important than the Dead Sea Scrolls, the House of the Bullae, or the Tel Dan inscription, to name but three possible contenders.

Second, I have to disagree with Peter Kirk on one point. Peter wrote:

Also the date on the tablet, the tenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, is two years after Nebuchadnezzar first sacked the temple in Jerusalem and took all the gold from it, 2 Kings 24:13. So the gold mentioned in this tablet could well have been Nebo-Sarsekim’s share of the spoil from Jerusalem.

There is no evidence whatsoever to link Chief Eunuch Nabu-sharrussu-ukin to the Babylonian plundering of the temple/treasury in 598/7 BCE (reign of Jehoiachin). Jeremiah 39 concerns the siege of Jerusalem c. 587/6 BCE (reign of Zedekiah). Even if (as I now think probable, but not definitive) the tablet’s Nabu-sharrussu-ukin is the same person as Jeremiah 39’s Nebo-sarsekim, assigning him a “share of the spoil from Jerusalem” in 598/7 BCE is sheer fanciful speculation.

Third, Jim West floats the idea, ostensibly derived from conversations with an anonymous “leading Old Testament scholar” (which in Jimspeak could mean anyone skeptical of the biblical narratives’ historical veracity, as long as they live in England, Italy, or Denmark), of a biblical author deriving the name and title “Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim” from research in a Babylonian archive. Ridiculous. No, really. Just try to imagine this for yourself. Which seems truer to life: (a) a biblical author writing that “Babylonian official X was present during and after the siege during Zedekiah’s reign” because (s)he knew that to be true, or at least knew of a tradition to that effect, or (b) a biblical writer combing through stacks of Akkadian cuneiform temple receipts, happening upon a cool name/title combo, and writing this otherwise unknown personage into a fictional story which just happens to include accurate historical data like “Nebuchadnezzar’s army besieged and defeated Jerusalem”? The likelihood of a Judean exile or even a Yehudian scribe doing such research into the Babylonian archives is far-fetched indeed, but if such research were done, the notion that such a scribe was just mining tablets for realistic names to put into a fictional story, rather than doing actual historical research, is even sillier.

You’ve probably read about it on Jim’s or Claude’s or Todd’s blog(s) already, but a researcher at the British Museum recently deciphered a cuneiform tablet that describes someone named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, the “chief eunuch,” making an offering at a temple in Babylon. The tablet’s text dates the offering to a particular day in the tenth year of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabu-kudurri-usur, for you Akkadian enthusiasts). The researcher mentioned, Michael Jursa, infers that this Nabu-sharrussu-ukin is the same person as the Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim who is mentioned in Jeremiah 39:3.

If you happen to have just looked up Jeremiah 39:3 in the New Revised Standard Version or the JPS Tanakh, you may be asking, “Who?”

When Jerusalem was taken, all the officials of the king of Babylon came and sat in the middle gate: Nergal-sharezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim the Rab-saris, Nergal-sharezer the Rab-mag, with all the rest of the officials of the king of Babylon. (Jer 39:3, NRSV)

All the officers of the king of Babylon entered, and took up quarters at the middle gate — Nergal-sarezer, Samgar-nebo, Sarsechim the Rab-saris, Nergal-sarezer the Rab-mag, and all the rest of the officers of the king of Babylon. (Jer 39:3, NJPSV)

If you’re reading the New International Version, what do you know, he’s right there:

Then all the officials of the king of Babylon came and took seats in the Middle Gate: Nergal-sharezer of Samgar, Nebo-sarsekim a chief officer, Nergal-sharezer a high official and all the other officials of the king of Babylon. (Jer 39:3, NIV)

Now this is curious. Is there a Nebo-sarsekim in Jer 39:3 or not? Here’s the MT, from BHS (best wishes for good display in your browser):

‏וַיָּבֹאוּ כֹּל שָׂרֵי מֶלֶךְ־בָּבֶל וַיֵּשְׁבוּ בְּשַׁעַר הַתָּוֶךְ נֵרְגַל שַׂר־אֶצֶר סַמְגַּר־נְבוּ שַׂר־סְכִים רַב־סָרִיס נֵרְגַל שַׂר־אֶצֶר רַב־מָג וְכָל־שְׁאֵרִית שָׂרֵי מֶלֶךְ בָּבֶל׃

Look carefully and you’ll see what’s happening in this string of names. The NRSV and NJPSV translators read the list of names as follows:

The NIV translators, however, have read the list as follows:

I don’t have any specific information or comment—published or otherwise—from anyone involved with the NIV translation of Jeremiah, but here’s what I suspect. Since there are clearly two Nergal-sharezers in this verse, the NIV translators thought that there must be some identifier attached to the first Nergal-sharezer to distinguish him from the second Nergal-sharezer, identified as the chief mag (whatever a mag is). They didn’t know what else to do with Samgar, so they treated it as a place name. Admittedly, this rendering of the verse breaks with the MT’s maqqephs and accents, which the NRSV and NJPSV translators respected—but the MT accents and punctuation can hardly be held as definitive in such matters, being secondary to the original text and postdating it by no less than a thousand years. The NIV translators’ treatment of the list also brings good balance to the list: each name is qualified by some sort of additional identifier, as typically happens throughout Jeremiah 39 (note that Nebuzaradan is always “Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard” throughout the chapter, and indeed, everywhere he is mentioned in the book of Jeremiah). In this case, it seems to me that the NIV has the preferable rendering, though I would suspect that סַמְגַּר is some sort of title rather than a place name.

This doesn’t definitively solve the problem of whether there is indeed a Nebo-sarsekim in Jer 39:3, though I’d lean toward that conclusion. Still, the uncertainty does recommend caution in drawing links between the tablet’s Nabu-sharrussu-ukin and “the biblical character” Nebo-sarsekim, since it’s not absolutely certain that there is such a biblical character.

Suppose there is a Nebo-sarsekim in Jer 39:3, as the NIV translators think. Would it be appropriate to connect the biblical character to the person mentioned in the tablet? More interesting yet, would it be appropriate to use the tablet to “correct” translations like the NRSV and NJPSV that read “Samgar-nebo, Sarsekim” rather than “Samgar, Nebo-sarsekim”?

While it would be fun to answer both with an enthusiastic “Yes!”, caution is again called for here—and the caution comes not just from a general scholarly desire to have all one’s ducks in a row, or from rank skepticism, but from the text of Jeremiah 39 itself. There are two important factors to weigh.

First, although the existence of any Nebo-sarsekim in Jer 39:3 is ambiguous, all translators agree that there are two Nergal-sharezers mentioned in that verse. If there were two Nergal-sharezers in Nebuchadnezzar’s service—and not just in his service, but among the officials charged with sacking Jerusalem and administering it post-rout—why should we believe that there was only one Nebo-sarsekim working for him, and that every Nebo-sarsekim/Nabu-sharrussu-ukin mentioned in any text from Nebuchadnezzar’s reign is the same person?

Second, one could argue—as Jursa seems to say in the 24 Hour Museum article—that it’s not just the name Nebo-sarsekim/Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, but the colocation of that name with the title “chief eunuch.” It’s interesting and provocative, of course, to find a “Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim” mentioned in both Jer 39:3 (if he’s there) and a Babylonian tablet, but the force of the coincidence is mitigated by the fact that Jeremiah 39 knows of two different chief eunuchs. The title “chief eunuch” or רַב־סַרִיס appears in Jeremiah only twice, namely, in Jer 39:3 and Jer 39:13. Just ten verses apart, in the same literary and historical (yes, Virjimia, the Babylonians really did sack Jerusalem in 587/6 BCE, and the biblical writers really did record some accurate historical information about it) context, two different people are titled רַב־סַרִיס: the aforementioned Sarsechim/Nebo-sarsekim (v. 3) and one Nebushazban (v. 13). Either the author of Jeremiah 39 (or a later tradent) was hopelessly confused about the identity of the chief eunuch, or—more likely—we do err when we stick a definite article in front of “chief eunuch,” as if there could only be one רַב־סַרִיס at a time.

In order to connect the tablet’s Nabu-sharrussu-ukin to a biblical character, then, we must make the following two interpretive moves:

• We must read Jer 39:3 in such a way as to yield נבו שרסכים as the proper noun Nebo-sarsekim (with the NIV, against the NRSV and NJPSV, for instance).
• We must assume that there was only ever one Nebo-sarsekim to serve as a rab-saris during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

Both of these interpretive moves can be made tentatively at best. And yet this does not mean they are completely without merit. The only other -nebu- names we have in the Tanakh are Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuzaradan, and Nebushazban, all of whom have the -nebu- element at the beginning, rather than the end, of the name. If there is a Samgar-nebo in Jeremiah 39:3, he’s the only person in the Tanakh with -nebo- as an element in his name. This, plus the considerations mentioned above, do make me lean toward the NIV against the NRSV and NJPSV on the translation of the list of officials’ names. The assumption that there was only ever one Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim working for Nebuchadnezzar is just that: a sheer guess. It may seem like a stretch to imagine that Nebuchadnezzar had more than one Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekim, but with the testimony of Jeremiah that he had more than one Nergal-sharezer involved in the sack of Jersualem, and more than one chief eunuch involved in the sack of Jerusalem, the possibility becomes less difficult to imagine (and if you think the author of Jeremiah 39 is just blowing smoke, you have even less reason to entertain the notion of identity). And what if there are two Nergal-sharezers in Jeremiah 39:3 not because “Nergal-sharezer” was a popular name among Babylonian mothers, but that these men were given the name “Nergal-sharezer” as a concomitant of their royal service, not unlike the way Nebuchadnezzar is said to have changed Mattaniah’s name to Zedekiah (2 Kings 24:17)? As your judgment of the plausibility of such name assignments goes up, your implausibility of two or more Chief Eunuch Nebo-sarsekims during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign should go down.

I have not, of course, actually solved the mystery of Nabu-sharrussu-ukin in this little post. I hope that I have, however, showed that the whole matter might be more complicated than it first appeared. Personally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn—if I had a way to learn this—that this Nabu-sharrussu-ukin was in fact present at the sack of Jerusalem and that his name and presence were known to the author of the book of Jeremiah. The “proof” of such a connection, though, would be a multi-step process that hasn’t yet been achieved. Color me golden brown—as in “waffle.”

Between 1893 and 1925, the University of Pennsylvania published a series of volumes treating cuneiform texts from ancient Mesopotamia. Four of these volumes have just appeared in the Internet Archive’s Open Library:

• Old Babylonian Inscriptions Chiefly from Nippur (vol. 1, 1893)
• Sumerian Administrative Documents Dated in the Reigns of the Kings of the Second Dynasty of Ur (vol. 3, part 1, 1910)
• Documents from the Temple Archives of Nippur Dated in the Reigns of Cassite Rulers (vol. 15, 1906)
• Letters to Cassite Kings (vol. 17, part 1, 1908)

There may be other volumes already available; I’ve only just started exploring the archive.

No, no, I’m not talking about getting suckered on the black market. I’m talking about intentionally buying replicas of antiquities. Last year at the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago, I purchased a resin replica of the laws of Lipit-Ishtar, mostly for the purposes of showing my students what a cuneiform tablet might look like. The other day, I decided to take the plunge and order a few replicas from two different suppliers who do business online.

First, I ordered a couple of items from the LMLK Shop. From LMLK, I ordered replicas of the Gezer Calendar and Lachish Ostracon #3. My main interest in purchasing these items is to be able to enhance my Hebrew class in 2007–2008 with some amateur paleography. (The Gezer Calendar may really be Phoenician rather than Hebrew, but functionally this makes no difference to reading the text.) I chose Lachish Ostracon #3 rather than one of the other Lachish ostraca, or the Yavneh Yam Ostracon, because of its author’s reference to his own literacy, which is an interesting piece of the puzzle in constructing a picture late 7th-century/early 6th-century Judean society. When I placed my order, I did not realize the happy coincidence that the LMLK Shop is run by G. M. Grena, who reads Higgaion on comments occasionally on my posts.

G. M. referred me to another online replica shop, at the Institute for Bible & Scientific Studies. Exactly what approach this Institute takes to the Bible and scientific studies I don’t know, and I didn’t spend a lot of time poking around to find out. I just went to the replicas shop. From IBSS, I purchased two sets of bullae replicas and a replica of the Nash Papyrus. Again, my intention for these is primarily to use them as visual aids in Hebrew 330–331 and Hebrew 502 this coming fall, spring, and summer.

I haven’t yet received these items, and I haven’t returned to Malibu from Buenos Aires anyway. After I do, I’ll comment on the quality of the reproductions.

Those of you who followed my long review of Terje Oestigaard’s Political Archaeology and Holy Nationalism (Göteborg University, 2007)—see my treatments of chapters 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, and 4b—will know that I was not terribly impressed, and indeed somewhat annoyed with the book, but found it interesting enough to keep going to the bitter end.

Some of you also remember my recent argument with Jim West, who ended up declaring me a non-person. However, despite Jim being wrong about a great many things, he’s very good at organizing interesting conversations on his Biblical Studies Yahoo Group.

Today marks the beginning of that group’s colloquium with Oestigaard, organized by Jim. All other conversation on the list is suspended in favor of the colloquium with Oestigaard. If you are not a member of that discussion list but are interested in the conversation, now would be a good time to join so that you can follow along.