‘Where does cuneiform writing come from?’
‘Cuneiform is the ancient written form of Assyrian inscribed on wet clay tablets with a wooden point making triangular marks, after the clay is then baked and it’s almost indestructible compared to other written materials.’
‘Who discovered it, I mean how did it come down to us, when?’
‘That’s a very interesting question. It was first invented by the Sumerians, who lived in a region that is approximately that of present day Iraq, in about 3500BC and was also used by other peoples to write their languages. It was rediscovered by Henry Rawlinson, an English army officer, who found inscriptions carved on a cliff at Behistun in Persia in 1835, these dated from the reign of Darius the Great, King of Persia in the fifth century BC. The texts were written in three languages: Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamite. Since Rawlinson had studied Persian, he was able to work on deciphering the others and after more than fifteen years he could read 200 Babylonian signs. Today there's about one hundred thousand cuneiform tablets in museums and private collections around the world making it the largest collection of ancient texts, that's considerably more than the Bible.’
‘Have they all been translated?’
‘Not all but a good number.’
‘What do they say?’
‘Just about every thing, commercial transactions, laws, royal decrees, literature and so on. What’s interesting is that there are probably tens, even hundreds of thousands of tablets waiting to be discovered.’
‘Incredible!’
‘There are hundreds of specialists in the languages written in cuneiform and a detailed knowledge of the grammar exists, almost like a living language.’
‘So what does it tell us of ancient Israel or Palestine?’
‘A great deal, when the Babylonian Empire was defeated by the Persians Palestine fell under Persian rule and became a satrapy in other words a province for centuries until the arrival of Alexander the Great.’
‘For example?’
‘Well it is possible to fix the fall of Jerusalem to the Second of Adar, which is the sixteenth of March in 597 BC.’
‘So does that mean the Bible is right?’
‘Yes, on that point.’
‘What else?’
‘In the seventh month of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s reign in 599 BC during the month Chislev, that’s November-December his army laid siege to the city of Judah. He conquered the city and took the Israelite King Jehoiachin prisoner, putting his uncle in his place.’
‘What happened to Jehoiachin?’
‘He was just a child only eight years of age, and reigned for one just hundred days according to the Bible. He was brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar as a prisoner together with the elite of Jerusalem.’
‘All that is written on clay tablets?’
‘Yes and if you compare the Book of II Kings with the cuneiform texts from ancient Babylon they are in broad terms concordant.’
‘Are there many other tablets that speak of Judah?’
‘Yes, there are texts such as the Lachish letters that talk of the last days of Judah. These were discovered at Lachish or Tel ed-Duweir with later three inscribed potsherds containing names and lists from the time just before the fall of Jerusalem in 586BC’
‘What did they say?’
‘They were mostly dispatches from a Jewish commander at the time the Babylonians invaded the country. Then there is a tablet that revealing the presence of the Judean royal prisoners in Babylon. They contain lists of rations of barley and oil issued to the royal and artisans, including Yaukin, king of the land of Yahud a direct reference to Jehoiachin when he was a prisoner in Babylon.’
‘So this is all factual recorded information.’
‘Absolutely, there are also several seals, for example one bears an inscription relating to a servant of Jehoiakin found near Hebron and another has the inscription Zedaliah, who is over the house, Zedaliah as I just mentioned was the new King of Judah appointed by the Babylonians to replace Jehoiachin.’
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The Christian Bible
The Legacy of Solomon Page 59