1.2.1 Political History

This study covers the period from 591 to 413, from the first until the last attestation of Judeans in Babylonian cuneiform sources. The early sixth century marks the zenith of the Neo-Babylonian Empire: Kings Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar ii had consolidated their power in most parts of the former Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the flow of resources to the core of the empire resulted in massive construction projects in Babylon and its surroundings. Judeans, Neirabians, and other deportees from the fringes of the empire were resettled in its core areas. The Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 did not radically alter anything in Babylonian society, but the rule of Darius i at the turn of the century introduced some changes. A major upheaval occurred, however, after the Babylonian revolts against Xerxes in 484. Xerxes’ actions against the rebels and their supporters resulted in the loss of power of many old Babylonian families and in the end of many Babylonian cuneiform archives.⁶ The richly documented period from the accession of Nabopolassar in 626 until the revolts in 484 attests to economic growth and institutional continuity in Babylonia despite the Persian conquest, and, for this reason, it has been called the long sixth century in Babylonia.⁷ The number of available cuneiform sources from Babylonia sharply declines after 484, but Judeans are well attested in surviving documents from the late fifth century. The year 413 marks the end of cuneiform sources pertaining to Judeans in Babylonia but certainly not the end of Judean habitation in the region.

Before the Neo-Babylonian Empire emerged under the leadership of Nabopolassar in the late seventh century bce, territories from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf had been under Assyrian rule for a century. The Neo-Assyrian period was decisive for many later developments, as state formation in Palestine, the use of Aramaic as an administrative language, and the Babylonian practice of mass deportation were all influenced by the Assyrians. The heartland of Assyria was located on the Upper Tigris, which was the point where the state started to expand from in the late tenth century.⁸ The Aramean states in Syria were among the first to come into conflict with the emerging empire.⁹ By the late eighth century, the Aramean states were incorporated into Assyria, among them the town of Neirab, located in the vicinity of Aleppo.¹⁰ Aramaic-speaking population groups had migrated to the east and south already long before the expansion of Assyria, and Aramean and Chaldean tribes had reached Babylonia at the turn of the second and first millennia.¹¹ Moreover, the voluntary and forced migration of Arameans within the empire brought the Assyrians and Arameans into close interaction with each other, and Arameans served the empire in various positions, including high offices.¹² This led to the adoption of Aramaic as an important administrative language of the empire, a practice that was later adopted by the Babylonian and Persian Empires.¹³

Assyrian expansion continued westwards across Syria and reached the small kingdoms of Southern Palestine, including Israel and Judah, in the ninth century. Assyrian rule in the region was not permanent before the reign of Tiglath-pileser iii who turned Israel and Judah into vassal states of Assyria in the second half of the eighth century.¹⁴ Although Israel and Judah were two separate kingdoms, they shared Hebrew as a common language, as well as many cultural traditions, one of them being the worship of Yahweh. After unsuccessful resistance against Assyria, Israel was turned into an Assyrian province of Samerina, its capital Samaria was destroyed, and part of its inhabitants were deported to the east.¹⁵ The kingdom of Israel ceased to exist, but Judah retained its status as a vassal state of Assyria, received Israelite refugees, and became the main cult centre of Yahweh and keeper of some Israelite traditions.¹⁶ However, King Hezekiah of Judah also rebelled against his Assyrian overlords, and a significant number of Judeans were deported in 701.¹⁷ The deportations from Israel and Judah resulted in the emergence of Yahwistic names in Northern Mesopotamia,¹⁸ but nothing suggests that a significant number of Israelite or Judean deportees found their way to Babylonia at this time.¹⁹ Despite its unsuccessful rebellion, Judah was not reduced to a provincial status, and native kings continued to rule the vassal state.

The territorial interests of Assyria also touched Babylonia, which had, however, a very different status from Neirab and Judah. Babylonia, especially the city of Babylon, was the cultural epicentre of Mesopotamia, and the Assyrians generally respected its special status. Although Assyria intervened in the affairs of its southern neighbour, before the reign of Tiglath-pileser iii the empire did not aim to control Babylonia directly.²⁰ At the same time, internal chaos characterised Babylonia: Chaldeans and native Babylonians fought for the Babylonian throne, and the foreign powers Elam and Assyria interfered in this struggle. For religious and political reasons, Assyria was hesitant to use ruthless practices of conquest against Babylonia, and it tried to employ alternative strategies instead.²¹ However, constant Babylonian revolts and the abduction of the Assyrian prince Aššur-nādin-šumi to Elam in the 690’s drove Sennacherib to destroy Babylon, deport the ruling family, and eradicate or deport local gods to Assyria.²² Babylon did not remain in ruins for long, as Sennacherib’s successor Esarhaddon started to rebuild the city; this policy was continued by his son Assurbanipal, who returned the statue of Marduk to Babylon.²³

Despite Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal’s restorative policy, internal chaos continued in Babylonia. Assurbanipal’s older brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn, who ruled as the vassal king of Babylonia, rebelled in 652.²⁴ The revolt was quelled and Babylonia brought under Assurbanipal’s rule, but peace lasted only until the death of Assurbanipal in 627. The empire was weakened by the struggles of succession, and a man named Nabopolassar, perhaps of Chaldean origin,²⁵ succeeded in taking the throne in Babylon. After fifteen years of ravaging war, Assyria fell to the Median and Babylonian armies, and the Assyrian capital Nineveh was captured in 612.²⁶

After the fall of Nineveh, Nabopolassar and his crown prince Nebuchadnezzar ii continued their military operations in Syria and Palestine, confronting the Egyptians who had annexed former territories of Assyria after the empire’s control declined on its western periphery. After the Babylonian troops broke the Egyptian resistance at the battles of Carchemish and Hamath, Nebuchadnezzar annexed the Mediterranean coast, including Judah, under Babylonia. Judah continued its existence as a vassal state of Babylonia. However, the turbulent political situation in the Levant and Egypt’s promises of support sparked Judean hopes of independence, and the small kingdom revolted against its Babylonian overlords. The attempt was futile and Egypt’s promises short-lived, and the Babylonian troops captured Jerusalem in the spring of 597.²⁷ Part of the Judean population, including King Jehoiachin and other members of the upper class, were deported to Babylonia. Nebuchadnezzar placed Zedekiah, Jehoiachin’s uncle, on the throne in Jerusalem. Jehoiachin and his sons were held hostage in Babylon to prevent Zedekiah from rebelling, but this was in vain. Zedekiah did revolt, and Jerusalem was destroyed, perhaps in 587 or 586,²⁸ and more Judeans were deported to Babylonia. Judah was reduced to a province, and the native kingship in Jerusalem came to an end.

Judeans start to appear in Babylonian cuneiform sources right after the deportations in the early sixth century. King Jehoiachin and other royal hostages in Babylon are mentioned in a text from 591, and the first attestation of Yāhūdu, ‘(the town) of Judah’, in the Babylonian countryside is dated to 572.²⁹ Babylonian deportations from Judah and the advent of Judeans in Babylonia are thus chronologically closely related. There is no account of the conquest of Neirab or deportations of Neirabians to Babylonia, but the existence of a twin town of Neirab in the Babylonian countryside in the reign of Neriglissar (559–556) implies that some Neirabians were also deported during the Babylonian expansion at the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries.³⁰

Babylonia prospered in the long sixth century.³¹ Favourable climatic conditions and political stability in Southern Mesopotamia provided a basis for economic growth. The standard of living was relatively high, and both workers and large institutions could – and often had to – participate in the market-oriented economy. A reliable legal system, well-functioning labour market, and high degree of monetarisation supported commercial activity and economic growth. At the same time, booty from conquered regions flowed to the centre of the empire, and it was used in massive public building projects. Monumental buildings in the cities and defensive structures in the countryside reflected Babylonia’s power, and irrigation projects enhanced transport, trade, and agriculture. Transition from cereal farming to date gardening intensified agriculture, especially around the cities in the north, and, at the same time, new land was brought under cultivation in less-populated regions. Deportees played a key role here: they were settled in marginal rural areas and integrated into the land-for-service sector of agriculture.³² Given plots of land to cultivate, they had to pay taxes and perform work and military service in return. The majority of cuneiform sources pertaining to Judeans originate from the land-for-service sector of Babylonian agriculture. The social structures of long sixth-century Babylonia are studied in Section 1.2.4 below.

The Neo-Babylonian Empire only ruled over the Near East for 70 years, and the last Babylonian king Nabonidus was defeated by the Persian king Cyrus in 539. Babylonia proper did not suffer dramatically from this transition, and Cyrus did not introduce major changes in Babylonian society and the local administration.³³ Babylonia was not, however, the centre of an empire anymore, and Darius i introduced new tax-related policies aimed at channelling the flow of resources from Babylonia to the heartland of the empire.³⁴ A noticeable change occurred in 484 when unsuccessful revolts against Darius’ successor Xerxes resulted in reprisals against the rebels and their supporters among the Babylonian urban upper class, people closely associated with Babylonian temples.³⁵ From our perspective, the most dramatic effect of Xerxes’ actions was the end of many temple archives and private archives of the urban elite in the Northern Babylonian cities. It is likely that Xerxes removed many priestly families from their offices, and, at this time, these people sorted temple and private archives. Useless, outdated documents were disposed of and deposited together, whereas tablets with long-lasting value were kept elsewhere. It is not entirely clear what happened to these people and their valuable deeds: although obsolete tablets have been found in great numbers, the documents which people retained have not survived to us. In any case, writing in cuneiform continued after 484 for hundreds of years, but the number of cuneiform sources dating after 484 is small in comparison to the rich evidence from the long sixth century.³⁶

Judeans and other deportees were not involved in the organisation of the revolts against Xerxes, and they were not directly affected by his reprisals. Texts from the environs of Yāhūdu attest to the continuity of Judean habitation in the local countryside before and after 484, and a significant number of Judeans are attested in the Murašû archive from the second half of the fifth century.³⁷ The cuneiform record on Judeans in Babylonia ends in 413, when the last Murašû tablet pertaining to Judeans was written in the Nippur countryside. The evidence of the Neirabian community in Babylonia ends in the reign of Darius i, and it appears that some Neirabians returned to their ancestral hometown in the early Persian period.³⁸

1.2.2 Forced and Voluntary Migration in the Ancient Near East

Migration is a common phenomenon in world history,³⁹ and it profoundly shaped the demographics of the ancient Near East as well. Although deportations from and to conquered regions were the fate of many, the impact of other types of migration was as – or even more – significant.

The arrival of Aramean and Chaldean population groups from the north and north-west at the turn of the second and first millennia had a profound effect on the subsequent political formation in Babylonia.⁴⁰ The tribes did not amalgamate with the urban Babylonian population but introduced a strong counterforce to the old cities and occasionally vied for the throne in Babylon. Due to the lack of sources, the actual migration process of Arameans and Chaldeans is poorly understood, but conflicts between Assyria and the Aramean states in Syria, a lack of centralised power in Babylonia, and the fertile lands of the floodplain are among the plausible push-pull factors. In the same vein, Arabs started to find their way from the arid regions in the west to the Babylonian floodplain in the first half of the first millennium.⁴¹

Political stability and the thriving economy induced other types of migration to Babylonia during the long sixth century. Foreign traders found their way to the bustling quays of the large cities.⁴² Soldiers of foreign origin are attested in the Babylonian army, and it is very well possible that not all of them were deportees but some were also recruited as mercenaries.⁴³ In general, the Near East was characterised by a high degree of connectivity in the first millennium, and people, objects, and ideas travelled from one region to another.⁴⁴ Deportations were far from being the sole trigger for migrations. However, as the present study is concerned with the life of deportees and their descendants in Babylonia, it is necessary to discuss the aims and practices of deportations in closer detail.

In this study, the term ‘deportation’ refers to a form of forced migration⁴⁵ in which the state transfers population groups from one region to another. In the ancient Near East, deportation was usually the consequence of a military conquest or a reprisal after an unsuccessful revolt, and it served political as well as economic interests of the dominant state. Most of the available information on deportation policies in the first millennium bce stems from the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, since the Neo-Babylonian state archives have mostly disappeared⁴⁶ and the extant Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions primarily focus on the kings’ building projects.⁴⁷ The sources from the Persian period are not abundant either: Persian sources attest to the presence of foreign workers in Susa and Persepolis, and the Greek writers occasionally refer to Persian deportations of conquered peoples. Therefore, the logical starting point for our discussion of deportation policies in the ancient Near East is the rich Neo-Assyrian evidence.

Neo-Assyrian sources on deportations are abundant, but they have to be used with caution as they tend to give an exaggerated and propagandistic picture of the Assyrian kings’ treatment of their enemies.⁴⁸ Deportations were carried out as punishment for rebellion and to prevent future revolts. Selective deportations of the upper class aimed at stabilising the empire, as the old elite was unlikely to start a rebellion after resettlement in a foreign region.⁴⁹ Another form of selective deportations involved craftsmen and soldiers, who were employed to work in state projects and serve in the Assyrian army. Moreover, population groups were deported to underdeveloped or sparsely populated regions to increase agricultural output.⁵⁰ Two main trends are visible in the geographical scope of the deportations: on the one hand, deportees were settled in the core areas of the empire to increase population, but on the other hand, two-way deportations from one peripheral area to another stabilised and pacified annexed regions.⁵¹ Deportees were not generally turned into slaves, and their socio-economic status was diverse. Professionals employed by the state could enjoy a high standard of living, whereas people working in building projects or farming land lived at a subsistence level.⁵²

There are no Persian sources on actual deportations,⁵³ but the Persepolis Fortification tablets and building inscriptions from the reign of Darius i confirm that workers from the west were present in Persepolis and Susa.⁵⁴ The Babylonian chronicle on the reign of Artaxerxes iii describes the deportation of Sidonians to Babylon and Susa.⁵⁵ Moreover, Greek writers such as Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus provide us with some information on Persian deportation policies. Given the Greek writers’ distrust of the Persians, these accounts are suspect in terms of being partial and propagandistic. However, as they find support in the Persian sources and mirror the practices of the Assyrian Empire, they are hardly pure imagination or mere propaganda. According to the Greek writers, deportations were often a consequence of rebellious behaviour, and people were deported across great distances from the Mediterranean to the eastern parts of the empire, including the Persian heartland.⁵⁶ Deportations of foreign professionals are also referred to.⁵⁷

The aims of Persian population transfers resemble those of the Assyrians. Both empires used deportations as a geopolitical tool to crush rebellions, maintain stability in peripheral regions, and bring labour to the core areas of the empire. As will be shown in this study, Babylonian deportation practices were not markedly different from those of Assyria and Persia. It has to be noted that both Assyria⁵⁸ and Persia⁵⁹ resettled people in Babylonia, and thus the population diversity in Southern Mesopotamia did not only result from voluntary migration and Babylonian deportations in the long sixth century. However, there is no clear evidence of deportations from the region of Israel and Judah to Babylonia before Nebuchadnezzar ii’s expulsions in the early sixth century.

1.2.3 Deportations from Judah to Babylonia

Nebuchadnezzar ii’s deportations from Judah are undoubtedly the best-known population transfers in the ancient Near East due to their legacy in the Hebrew Bible and later Jewish and Christian traditions. Extra-biblical sources also attest to Babylonian military operations in Judah in the early sixth century bce and to the resulting destruction of Jerusalem, population collapse, and deportations. The primary sources for these events are the Babylonian chronicle on the early years of Nebuchadnezzar ii (abc 5), the results of archaeological excavations and surveys in Palestine, and legal and administrative documents referring to Judeans in Babylonia. The Hebrew Bible is an important secondary source, but its use is hampered by textual problems and inconsistent information on deportations.⁶⁰

Palestine was located in the border zone between Egypt and the Mesopotamian empires, and struggles for the control of this area affected Judah as well. Assyria had conquered Egypt for a short period in the early seventh century, but the tables were turned at the end of the century when Egypt invaded former Assyrian territories all the way up to Carchemish on the Euphrates.⁶¹ Judah also came under the dominion of Egypt (2 Kgs 23:28–35). After the fall of Nineveh, the Babylonian army started to advance on Syria and Palestine and push back the Egyptian troops. According to abc 5, it took years to expel the Egyptian forces from Palestine,⁶² but Babylonia finally managed to annex the former provinces and vassal states of Assyria by the end of the seventh century. Judah also had to submit to Babylonian rule, and the native dynasty continued to rule as vassal kings in Jerusalem (2 Kgs 24:1).

It was in Egypt’s interest to destabilise Babylonian rule in Palestine, and Nebuchadnezzar’s annual military campaigns in the west suggest that Babylonia experienced difficulties in consolidating its power in the region.⁶³ It is probable that Egypt was also involved in the events that resulted in the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in the spring of 597.⁶⁴abc 5 (rev. 11–13) describes how Nebuchadnezzar captured the king of Judah, took great booty from Jerusalem, and installed a new vassal king on the Judean throne in his seventh regnal year.⁶⁵ This account corresponds to the general outlines of the events described in 2 Kings 24, according to which King Jehoiakim of Judah rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar but died before the Babylonian army besieged Jerusalem. It appears that Jehoiakim hoped for Egyptian support for his revolt, but this never happened, and his son Jehoiachin chose to surrender to the Babylonians. Jehoiachin, his retinue, Jerusalemite elite, and craftsmen were deported to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar appointed Jehoiachin’s uncle Zedekiah as the vassal king in Jerusalem. Cuneiform documents from the city of Babylon confirm that Jehoiachin was held there six years later in 591.⁶⁶ Jeremiah 52:28 refers to this deportation as well.⁶⁷

The account of Nebuchadnezzar ii’s reign in abc 5 breaks up after his eleventh year. As there are no other cuneiform sources on the history of Judah in the early sixth century, the reconstruction of the events following Jehoiachin’s capture is primarily dependent on archaeology and biblical sources. Archaeological excavations and surveys in Judah attest to destruction and population collapse in the early sixth century. Jerusalem was destroyed, and the region recovered slowly in the Persian period. It was only in the Hellenistic period that the population finally started to grow rapidly.⁶⁸ Despite the destruction of Jerusalem and its environs, there was a noticeable continuity of settlement in the Benjamin region to the north of Jerusalem and around Ramat Raḥel to the south of Jerusalem.⁶⁹

As abc 5 (rev. 13) and 2 Kgs 24:17 claim that Nebuchadnezzar appointed a new vassal king in Jerusalem, it is unlikely that the archaeological record of destruction and population collapse in Jerusalem is primarily related to Nebuchadnezzar’s military operations against Jerusalem in 597. Therefore, the accounts of Zedekiah’s revolt in 2 Kings 24–25 and Jeremiah 34, 37, 39, and 52 provide a reasonable explanation for the archaeological record. In addition to biblical sources and archaeology, the letters from the Judean fortified town of Lachish shed light on the last days of Judah before the Babylonian conquest (see Jer 34:6–7).⁷⁰ It appears that Zedekiah also hoped to receive support from Egypt, but these hopes were in vain (Jer 37:1–10). The Babylonian troops destroyed Jerusalem and deported another group of Judeans to Babylonia perhaps in 587 or 586.⁷¹

In addition to the deportations in the reigns of Jehoiachin and Zedekiah, Jer 52:30 refers to a third deportation from Judah in Nebuchadnezzar’s twenty-third year. The passage does not indicate the reason for the deportation, but some scholars have connected it to the murder of Gedaliah, whom Nebuchadnezzar appointed as the governor of Judah after Zedekiah’s defeat, according to 2 Kgs 25:22–26 and Jer 40–41.⁷² No extra-biblical sources, however, attest to this population transfer. Although it remains a possibility, a historical reconstruction based on two deportations seems most plausible. Yāhūdu, the village of Judah in Babylonia, and its Judean inhabitants start to appear in cuneiform sources from 572 onwards, bearing witness to the deportations.⁷³

The Hebrew Bible provides information on the size of the deportations from Judah, but this information is not consistent and its historical reliability remains doubtful. When it comes to the first deportation in 597, 2 Kgs 24:14 refers to 10,000 and verse 16 to 8,000 deportees. According to Jer 52:28, the number was only 3,023 people. When it comes to the second deportation, there is a strong sense of definitiveness in the accounts found in 2 Kings 25 and 2 Chronicles 36. According to 2 Kgs 25:11, ‘all the rest of the population’ were deported to Babylonia, although the next verse adds that the Babylonians ‘left some of the poorest people of the land to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil’. The totality of the second deportation is emphasised in 2 Chr 36:20–21 in particular, and the land is described as being desolate during a Sabbath rest of seventy years. On the contrary, Jer 52:29–30 supplies the reader with precise numbers: the second deportation was comprised of 832 Judeans, and the alleged third deportation of 745 people. The exact numbers in Jer 52:28–30 are often taken as more reliable than the round numbers in 2 Kings 24,⁷⁴ but this matter needs to be assessed in light of archaeology and cuneiform sources as well.

Recent archaeological studies on Judah in the sixth century do not conform to the idea of desolate land depicted in 2 Chronicles 36, but they do not support the opposite view of strong continuity either.⁷⁵ They show that there was a significant collapse in population, especially in the Jerusalem region, but also a continuity of settlement in the north and south of the capital. The population estimations in Judah before and after the Babylonian military actions vary, but they all attest to a major disruption: the population fell from about 110,000 to 15,000–40,000.⁷⁶ Naturally this change did not result from deportations only, and two other factors are equally or even more important. First, people were killed in battles, they were executed, and the disruption of farming activities could result in severe famine. Second, many people left the land seeking refuge.⁷⁷ Given the sharp population collapse, deportations of roughly ten thousand people do not seem exaggerated and they would be large enough to explain the relatively large number of Yahwistic names in the Babylonian cuneiform documents from the sixth and fifth centuries. The transfer of a mere several hundred people to Babylonia would not adequately explain the genesis of Judean communities in Babylonia, but given the different factors accounting for the population collapse in Judah, deportations of tens of thousands of people seem unlikely.⁷⁸

Judean revolts against Babylonia led to two conquests of Jerusalem and to two deportations to Babylonia, the first one in the reign of Jehoiachin in 597 and the second one in the reign of Zedekiah, perhaps in 587 or 586. Babylonian military operations led to a serious population collapse in Judah, but deportations were only one contributing factor. A rough estimation of 10,000 deportees appears to be plausible, given the number of Judeans attested in Babylonia in the sixth century. Part of these people were the Jerusalemite elite and educated professionals, and the existence of the village of Yāhūdu in Babylonia already twenty-five years after the first deportation suggests that the group consisted of both men and women. The aims of the Babylonian deportations from Judah match the outlines of Assyrian and Persian deportation policies described above. The deportations aimed to punish Judah for rebellion, prevent future unrest, and, as the present study will show in detail, increase agricultural output and provide the state with taxes and a work force.⁷⁹

1.2.4 Babylonian Society

The study of any ancient society is hampered by our inability to have a balanced view of different social groups and the interactions between them. Written sources express the perspectives of a literate minority, and the archaeological record is rarely substantial enough to fully balance this view. At the same time, finding appropriate terminology to describe an ancient society is challenging, for our modern concepts – however accurate they may be in our current societies – can be misleading. The choice of terms is not a trivial question, as language necessarily guides our research questions and analysis.

These methodological concerns have to be taken seriously in Neo-Babylonian studies: indeed, the surviving texts were written by a well-defined elite group in society, and archaeological remains cannot satisfactorily complement the picture. Some widely used terminology can also be misleading if not defined carefully. For example, Babylonia and the Babylonians are etic concepts which conform to modern perceptions of state and nation, but they do not find a counterpart in cuneiform sources from Southern Mesopotamia. There is growing concern among Assyriologists about methodological rigour in the field, which is characterised by immense numbers of unpublished texts and a very small number of academics studying them.⁸⁰ Quite understandably, methodological considerations have often been overshadowed by the justifiable aspiration to make as many new sources available as possible. This section is an attempt to briefly discuss the methodological issues raised above and sketch some characteristics of ‘Babylonian’ society in the mid-first millennium.

The cuneiform records from the mid-first millennium provide us with a rich source for a historical study, but a serious methodological pitfall has to be taken into account. Despite their huge number, the written sources originate from a small segment of society. Scribes did not represent the local population as a whole, but they belonged to an educated minority which had mastered both the technical skills of writing Akkadian cuneiform and the traditions and values connected to it.⁸¹ The texts written by these scribes undoubtedly offer an emic perspective on the social structures of the literate elite, but their perceptions of other groups in society may only reflect etic conceptions of the other. This is emphasised by the fact that two languages, Akkadian and Aramaic, played a major role in Southern Mesopotamia in the mid-first millennium, but hardly anything written in Aramaic has come down to us.⁸² In contrast to tens of thousands of extant clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform, only a small number of short Aramaic inscriptions on clay tablets and bricks have survived. Aramaic was primarily written on perishable materials such as parchment and papyrus, of which nothing is left in Southern Mesopotamia. In the same vein, texts written in other languages spoken by immigrants do not survive from Babylonia. Accordingly, the Akkadian cuneiform texts and the terminology used in them by an educated elite have come to represent the whole society. This one-sidedness must be taken into account and its effects analysed critically.

The present book claims to be a study of ancient Babylonia, but, from an emic perspective, the term ‘Babylonia’ is not without its problems. Babylonia is the later Greek name of Southern Mesopotamia, and it is never used in Neo-Assyrian or Neo-Babylonian sources to describe the region around the cities of Babylon, Borsippa, Sippar, Nippur, and Uruk, located on the alluvial plain of the Euphrates and Tigris between present-day Baghdad in the north and the Persian Gulf in the south.⁸³ At the same time, cuneiform sources make a distinction between the southern alluvial plain and, for example, the Assyrian heartland in the north. These sources refer to the floodplain as Akkad, Sumer and Akkad, or Karduniaš, the last term being attested in Kassite and occasionally in Assyrian sources.⁸⁴ Sumer and Akkad were ancient terms which originally denoted two different regions on the alluvial plain, Sumer in the south and Akkad in the north.⁸⁵ Later this distinction was no longer meaningful, and the longer form Sumer and Akkad and the shorter form Akkad could be used interchangeably to refer to the whole alluvial plain, with the name Sumer and Akkad being predominant.⁸⁶

The ancient names Akkad, Sumer and Akkad, and Karduniaš suggest that the southern alluvial plain was perceived as a distinct entity, different from the surrounding regions. The area is indeed well defined geographically, as the plain is bordered by the Arabian Desert in the west, the Persian Gulf in the south, and the Zagros Mountains in the east. In the north, the alluvial plain begins roughly where the courses of the Euphrates and Tigris are closest to one another, near the ancient city of Sippar.⁸⁷ The interconnected waterways created a network of cities which shared many cultural and social traits and participated in a close-knit economic system.⁸⁸ The dialect of Akkadian spoken on the alluvial plain – commonly referred to as Babylonian – was different from the dialect spoken in the north (Assyrian).⁸⁹ Despite strong local identities and claims for self-governance,⁹⁰ the old cities of the alluvial plain shared a number of cultural features and social structures. These included, for example, literature,⁹¹ scholarship,⁹² and the social organisation of the elites and temple service.⁹³ In light of this evidence, the southern alluvial plain was not just a distinct geographical entity, as its urban literate elite shared cultural and social structures which were characteristic of the region. For the purposes of the present study, we can legitimately adopt the Greek term and call the southern alluvial plain Babylonia.

Babylonia was a distinct entity but not a state in the modern sense. The term ‘Babylonia’ is derived from the name of the most important city in the region, Babylon, which was also a royal seat from the late seventh to the late sixth century. The standard title of the kings from Nabopolassar to Nabonidus in royal inscriptions was ‘King of (the city of) Babylon’ (šar Bābili), and the title ‘King of Sumer and Akkad’ (šar māt Šumeri u Akkadi) was used only occasionally.⁹⁴ ‘King of Babylon’ was also the standard title used in the dating formula of legal and administrative texts.⁹⁵ This was an ancient and prestigious title, which rose to prominence already in the reign of King Hammurapi in the eighteenth century when Babylon became the political and cultural centre of southern Mesopotamia.⁹⁶ However, it has to be noted that there was no state of Babylonia which continuously existed on the alluvial plain since the reign of Hammurapi, but the region of Babylonia was sometimes a part of a larger state or empire, sometimes fragmented into numerous political entities. Babylonia was not a state, but rather a cultural entity and geographic region, as described above.⁹⁷ Accordingly, I will use the term ‘state’ to refer to the political entities which governed Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries, that is, first the Neo-Babylonian Empire and later the Persian Empire. The term ‘Neo-Babylonian Empire’ will be used to refer to the political entity founded by Nabopolassar in 626 and brought to an end by Cyrus in 539. Its successor, the Persian Empire, ruled over the ancient Near East from 539 until the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s.

In the self-identification of the rulers of the Babylonian Empire, the title ‘King of Babylon’ emphasised the importance of a city rather than a state. Sources from the mid-first millennium suggest that common people also identified themselves with a family, tribe, or city rather than a state. Although empires shaped the political landscape of Babylonia in the first millennium, cities still retained some autonomy and carried on the legacy of the earlier city states.⁹⁸ The term bābilāya (‘Babylonian’) in cuneiform sources does not refer to an inhabitant of the alluvial plain in general but to an inhabitant of the city of Babylon in particular. The same applies to people from other ancient cities of the alluvium, and migrants or visitors from another Babylonian city were occasionally labelled according to their place of origin.⁹⁹

Mesopotamian sources from the first millennium do not provide us with an umbrella term to describe the inhabitants of Babylonia. Neo-Assyrian sources refer to several population groups: the Akkadians (akkadû), Arameans (aramu or aramāya), Chaldeans (kaldu or kaldāya), and Arabs (urbu or arbāya). In addition, the Sealand (māt tâmti) is mentioned as a separate entity.¹⁰⁰ The terms ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Aramean’ are also used in Babylonian sources before 626, but the first term disappears and the second one is rarely used after the emergence of the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabopolassar.¹⁰¹ In the earlier sources, ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Aramean’ appear to be umbrella terms which cover a number of distinct entities. Five groups (Bīt-Amūkāni, Bīt-Dakkūri, Bīt-Yakīn, Bīt-Saˀalli, and Bīt-Silāni) are assigned under the rubric ‘Chaldean’, and although the term was no longer used in the sixth century, the names Bīt-Amūkāni, Bīt-Dakkūri, and Bīt-Silāni continued to be employed in Babylonian sources.¹⁰² On the other hand, the term ‘Aramean’ appears to cover about forty groups, the most prominent in our sources being Gambūlu and Puqūdu.¹⁰³ However, the situation is complex, and it is often impossible to make a neat division between the Aramean and Arabian population groups.¹⁰⁴

Social entities like Bīt-Dakkūri or Puqūdu are traditionally called tribes, but this term may be misleading as it is often associated with a semi-nomadic pastoral lifestyle.¹⁰⁵ In particular, the Chaldeans lived in cities and cultivated land.¹⁰⁶ Because we do not possess any sources written by the Arameans or Chaldeans, we are dependent on the cuneiform scribes’ perceptions of these population groups. Accordingly, we do not know whether these people perceived themselves as members of, for instance, both Bīt-Amūkāni and a population group called the Chaldeans. However, the designations of these groups were not linguistically Akkadian but Aramaic and Arabian, and therefore they were most likely emic terms used by the members of the group themselves, not ones imposed on them by the cuneiform scribes.¹⁰⁷ Moreover, the membership of a Chaldean group like Bīt-Dakkūri seems to have been grounded in the idea of shared kinship among its members.¹⁰⁸ Labels like ‘Chaldean’ or ‘Aramean’ may have been given by outsiders, and we should not necessarily expect that strong feelings of solidarity existed between the members of Bīt-Amūkāni and Bīt-Dakkūri.¹⁰⁹ However, from the etic perspective of the Assyrian cuneiform scribes the social entities Aramean and Chaldean existed, and the terminology employed by the scribes will be used in this study for the sake of convenience. Groups such as Bīt-Dakkūri will be called ‘tribes’ in this study, indicating primarily their social organisation, but this is not to claim that such organisation was a certain way or that their lifestyle was nomadic.

It is commonly thought that the Arameans and Chaldeans arrived in Babylonia at the turn of the second and first millennia and that they were Aramaic-speaking population groups from the north and north-west.¹¹⁰ Nevertheless, they should not be regarded as outsiders in Babylonian society, as both groups exercised significant political power in Babylonia: men of Chaldean descent led numerous rebellions against the Assyrian Empire in the eight and seventh centuries and were occasionally able to claim the throne in Babylon.¹¹¹ Furthermore, it is possible that King Nabopolassar was also of Chaldean descent, and it seems probable that King Neriglissar belonged to the Puqūdu tribe and Nabonidus’ mother was an Aramean from the Syrian city of Harran.¹¹² The political power of the Aramean and Chaldean tribes is reflected on Nebuchadnezzar ii’s Hofkalender, which lists a number of tribal leaders among the magnates of his empire.¹¹³ Yet another testimony to the importance of Chaldean tribes in Babylonia are the Hebrew Bible and Greek sources, which use the word ‘Chaldean’ to refer to the inhabitants of Babylonia.¹¹⁴

Kinship was not only a central element of social organisation among the Arameans and Chaldeans. It appears to have been the most decisive affiliation in a person’s social world among other population groups as well. This was obviously the case among cuneiform scribes, priests, and the other people in their circles, a group which Assyriologists have often called the urban elite or urban upper class.¹¹⁵ There is no evidence of an emic term which was used to describe this group or its members, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that such a social group existed in antiquity and that it is not a mere modern construction. The most distinctive feature of this group is its habit of tracing family genealogies back to eponymous ancestors, resulting in such naming patterns as ‘PN1 the son of PN2 the descendant of PN3’.¹¹⁶ The identification of a person using his first name and his father’s name was commonplace in the scribal and legal tradition of the period, but the usage of family names was confined to certain clans or lineages in each city. Many of these families were associated with temples and inherited prebends, whereas some engaged in large-scale entrepreneurial activities.¹¹⁷ These families maintained the cuneiform culture, performed the rites in Babylonian temples, and exercised significant power in the old cities. The long sixth century was the golden age of these families, but their involvement in the unsuccessful revolts against King Xerxes in 484 led to changes in the Babylonian social landscape at the expense of this old elite.¹¹⁸

The urban elite comprised only a small minority of the population, but, as noted above, they are usually attested as protagonists of private archives and as scribes of any given document.¹¹⁹ As a result, our perspective of the rest of the population is primarily their perspective, and a significant part of the Babylonian population is underrepresented in the available sources. This would include common people in the cities and countryside, including craftsmen, unskilled workers, slaves, farmers, herdsmen, fishermen, and, in particular, women and children.¹²⁰ Some of these people had recently arrived in Babylonia, while other families had lived in Babylonia for centuries. Some affiliated themselves with an Aramean or Chaldean tribe while others did not. Only a minority of the urban population belonged to the upper class. Babylonia experienced a period of population growth and urbanisation in the mid-first millennium,¹²¹ and, as described above, this was accompanied by economic growth. There was a demand for hired labour and people could make their living as paid workers, for instance, in public construction projects.

At the same time, Babylonia was an agricultural society, and the number of farmers must have exceeded the more specialised population in the same way as in other non-industrialised societies.¹²² Agriculture in Babylonia was wholly dependent on irrigation and thus vulnerable to floods, drought, and salinization.¹²³ The Euphrates was the main source of water and an important waterway, and shifts in its course also changed urban settlement patterns over time.¹²⁴ Access to water was a prerequisite for a farmer’s livelihood, and continuous work was necessary to maintain irrigation infrastructures on a local and regional scale.¹²⁵ Barley and date palm were the main crops, and the annual cycle of their cultivation dictated the work and leisure of a farmer’s family.¹²⁶ Animal husbandry played an important role in the rural economy as well.¹²⁷ Villages appear only on the fringes of our source material, however, and little is known about their social organisation and daily life.¹²⁸ The texts discussed in this study can shed light on this issue, as the majority of them were written in rural settlements.

The urban elite should probably be included in the category of Akkadians mentioned in the Assyrian sources, but we lack information about the inclusion of the urban lower classes or peasants in this group. Because Assyrian sources focus on the political developments in Babylonia, it is conceivable that the categories of Akkadians, Chaldeans, and Arameans refer first and foremost to the power blocs, not to the three main population groups of the region.¹²⁹ In this regard, it has to be emphasised that a person’s linguistically Akkadian or Aramaic name did not necessarily correspond to his affiliation with the Akkadians or Arameans.¹³⁰ There is no emic terminology that would correspond to the term ‘Akkadian’, and it is not to be equated with the modern usage of terms like ‘Dutch’ or ‘Iraqi’. Nor does it correspond to the term ‘Babylonian’ if the latter is understood to denote the native inhabitants of Babylonia.

The term ‘Babylonians’ may in fact lead us to overlook the heterogeneity of the society and create imagined solidarities which did not actually exist. In this study, I aim to use more nuanced categories when possible, such as those related to socio-economic status. However, the word ‘Babylonians’ cannot be discarded altogether, because there is an obvious need for a general term which juxtaposes deportees with the native population of Babylonia. I use the term ‘Babylonians’ to refer to people who bore Akkadian or common Aramaic names and who were apparently not descendants of deportees or recent migrants to Babylonia. This group will unavoidably include deportees and other immigrants, because Akkadian names often disguise the foreign background of their bearers. At the same time, Aramaic was widely spoken in Babylonia, and Aramaic names are not indicative of a person’s foreign origin. As Section 1.5 shows, uncommon personal names are normally the only means to identify people of foreign origin.

Despite our inability to find an emic term that would cover the population of Babylonia as opposed to the recently arrived deportees, foreignness – in the sense of originating from a different region – was presented in cuneiform sources as a distinctive feature of certain population groups. In the texts from the Palace Archive of Nebuchadnezzar ii, rations were given to sailors from Tyre, carpenters from Arwad and Byblos, and to Judean courtiers, to name but a few.¹³¹ Moreover, the foreign origins of the Egyptian temple dependants (širkus) in the Ebabbar archive¹³² and the Carian population in Borsippa¹³³ are made explicit. Finally, several foreign groups were deported to the countryside of Nippur and settled in communities according to their geographic origin. Consequently, places like Judah (Yāhūdu), Ashkelon, and Neirab appear in cuneiform documents from the sixth and fifth centuries.¹³⁴ Yāhūdu is also called the Town of Judeans (ālu ša Yāhūdāya) and Neirab the Town of Neirabians (ālu ša Nērebāya), which further corroborates the view that foreign origin was perceived as a distinctive feature of the Judean and Neirabian deportees.

I will use the following terminology to refer to people of foreign origin in Babylonia. The terms ‘Judean’ and ‘Neirabian’ will be used to refer to people who or whose ancestors had arrived in Babylonia from the kingdom of Judah or the city of Neirab. The great majority of them were deported to Babylonia at the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries. The criteria for identifying these people will be discussed in Section 1.5. Moreover, I use the terms ‘deportee’ and ‘immigrant’ to refer to people who had arrived in Babylonia after the late seventh century, excluding the population groups that had settled there earlier, such as the Chaldeans and Arameans. ‘Deportee’ specifically refers to people who arrived in Babylonia as a result of forced migration, whereas ‘immigrant’ refers to all people who had – voluntarily or involuntarily – resettled in Babylonia.

In the context of first-millennium Babylonia, it is probably most appropriate to speak of a multicultural and multilingual society in which power was divided between different actors.¹³⁵ Chaldean and Aramean tribes exercised significant political, economic, and military power, whereas the closed circle of urban families dominated the sphere of temples, science, and cuneiform culture but were also entrepreneurs and owners of capital and real estate. A significant part of the population lived in the countryside outside the scope of the preserved sources, and among them were numerous immigrants and their descendants from different parts of the Near East. The tribes and urban elite enjoyed political and cultural hegemony, but they probably did not constitute the majority of the population in quantitative terms. There was no single social entity called the Babylonians, but rather population groups that were living in Babylonia and participated in its complex society. A key feature of the region was demographic diversity.

1.3.1 Reception History

The earliest reception history of the Babylonian exile is visible in the Hebrew Bible. It is not an exaggeration to state that most books in the Hebrew Bible react to the exile in one way or another, and that the emergence of the Hebrew Bible and Judaism were greatly influenced by the Babylonian exile.¹³⁸ Above all, the exile was a catastrophe, and it is explained in Deuteronomy, the Former Prophets, and Chronicles as the consequence of sins against Yahweh.¹³⁹ When the Israelites are still on their journey from Egypt to the land of Canaan, Moses warns them about violating the covenant between Yahweh and Israel. The consequence of transgressions would be exile from the Promised Land (Deut 28:47–68). This warning is repeated several times in the subsequent books (Josh 23:15–16; 1 Sam 12:24–25; 1 Kgs 8:46–53) and given as the reason for the fate of Israel and Judah (2 Kgs 17:5–23; 24:1–4).¹⁴⁰ The Latter Prophets are busy with anticipating and explaining the exile or prophesying a return to Judah and a restoration of the temple in Jerusalem.¹⁴¹

The continuous historical narrative from Genesis to 2 Kings begins at the creation and ends at the onset of the exile. The exile marks a break in the story and the biblical narrative continues only when the exiles return to Judah in Ezra-Nehemiah.¹⁴² However, the exile in Babylon and Susa serves as the setting for Daniel and Esther, two literary works reflecting the Judean experience of living in diaspora. Both books feature Judean heroes who find themselves in serious danger in a foreign land but, with God’s help, gain favour with foreign kings.¹⁴³ These stories imply that Judeans could prosper in exile, and optimistic voices about life in exile can also be found in Jer 29:4–7.

Despite some hopeful tones in Daniel, Jeremiah, and elsewhere, the Hebrew Bible describes the exile first and foremost as a catastrophe. The powerful language of Psalm 137 has become the most well-known expression of the exilic experience: ‘By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”’ (verses 1–3).¹⁴⁴ The opening words of the psalm have even become synonymous with the exile, as can be seen in the names of recent exhibitions, books, and research projects related to it.¹⁴⁵

The motif of Babylon as a place of oppression and captivity has found its way into religious language, art, and popular culture.¹⁴⁶ An early and important adoption of this motif can be found in the Book of Revelation (14, 16–18), in which Rome is compared to Babylon as a city of sin, decadence, and oppression.¹⁴⁷ Later, in his treatise On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther employed the motif of Babylon to criticise the Roman Catholic Church.¹⁴⁸ In the twentieth century, the motif of Babylon has featured in reggae and pop music. For the Rastafari, Babylon symbolises the oppressive Western world and captivity there, whereas Zion represents Africa, especially Ethiopia, where the Rastafari and other Africans ought to return.¹⁴⁹ A famous product of this tradition is Boney M.’s disco hit Rivers of Babylon, originally a Jamaican song based on Psalm 137.¹⁵⁰

Another important stream of tradition is the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1–9), which has had a huge effect on European culture. For centuries, the Tower has been a major theme in visual arts, with examples extending from medieval images to the iconic paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the sixteenth century and to Barnaby Barford’s installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015.¹⁵¹ Greek writers and their accounts of the Hanging Gardens and other wonders of Babylon have also greatly contributed to the legacy of the city and the empire.¹⁵² The name Babylon and the story of its Tower also carry positive connotations in contemporary culture as the symbol of multiculturalism and multilingualism. The shopping centre, office, and apartment complex New Babylon in The Hague, several companies offering language learning services, and Art Cafe Babylon in the small Finnish town of Kirkkonummi all make use of a positive image of a culturally diverse and exotic city.

1.3.2 Research History

Research on Judeans in Babylonia has been traditionally guided by biblical sources. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible and later Jewish writings were the only source for the study of the exile until the emergence of relevant cuneiform sources in the late nineteenth century. The discovery of Judean names in cuneiform material then attracted some attention, but the scholarship on Judeans in Babylonia was dictated by the biblical material during the whole twentieth century. Since the Hebrew Bible hardly ever describes life in exile, a great deal of exegetical ingenuity was needed to distil information from the bits and pieces that were available. In recent decades, archaeological work in Israel and fresh sociological approaches to the exile have nuanced the prevailing picture, but only after the emergence of the tablets from the environs of Yāhūdu have cuneiform sources on Judeans attracted major interest among students of the exilic period. The following review of research history focuses on the use of Babylonian sources in the study of the exile in the twentieth century and on the general developments in the field during the last twenty years. The reader is advised to consult Ahn 2011 for an overview of biblical scholarship on the exile in the twentieth century.¹⁵³

The twentieth-century scholarship on Judeans in Babylonia did not need to be informed only by biblical texts, as the first cuneiform sources on Judeans in Babylonia were unearthed and published already at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The presence of Judeans in the Murašû archive is recognised already in the first volume of text editions,¹⁵⁴ and Albert T. Clay discussed Yahwistic names in Babylonian sources and the importance of the Murašû archive for the study of Judeans in 1907.¹⁵⁵ A very early study on Judeans in the Murašû archive was Samuel Daiches’ The Jews in Babylonia in the Time of Ezra and Nehemiah according to Babylonian Inscriptions in 1910.¹⁵⁶ Most of his conclusions would be contested today, but his attempt to use cuneiform documents as his main source was – and still is – exceptional.

Daiches had a special interest in the naming practices of Judeans, and this interest has dominated the study of the Judeans in Babylonia ever since. The studies of Léon Gry, D. Sidersky, and Gerhard Wallis focus on an analysis of the Judean onomasticon in the Murašû archive, leaving the analysis of the texts themselves aside.¹⁵⁷ In the 1970s, Michael D. Coogan and Ran Zadok laid a foundation for the later research on West Semitic names and especially on the Judean onomasticon in cuneiform texts.¹⁵⁸ Zadok’s highly productive work on Judean and West Semitic onomasticons in Babylonia has continued ever since, and his studies are foundational for the present study as well.¹⁵⁹ However, apart from occasional brief excursions into Judean life in Babylonia, this line of research has shown little interest in social and economic historical questions.

The Murašû archive has had relatively little influence on biblical scholarship on the exile, but Ernst F. Weidner’s publication of four administrative tablets from Babylon has had considerable impact.¹⁶⁰ The texts are lists of oil rations which were distributed by the Babylonian royal administration to numerous recipients, many of whom were of foreign origin. King Jehoiachin of Judah and his five sons are also attested on the lists. Although the rest of this administrative archive remains unpublished,¹⁶¹ the four published texts have become a standard part of scholarship on the exile. In particular, they have been discussed in connection to the accounts of Jehoiachin’s exile and his amnesty in 2 Kings 24–25.¹⁶²

The 1970s and 1980s saw a number of studies aimed at reconstructing the history of Judeans in Babylonia based on cuneiform and biblical sources.¹⁶³ The attempts of Israel Ephˁal and Elias J. Bickerman to use Babylonian sources in a thorough and analytical manner led to some interesting observations: Ephˁal noticed the practice of settling deportees in the Nippur countryside and naming the communities according to the ethnic or geographical origin of the deportees. Moreover, he was the first to suggest that the cuneiform tablets excavated in Neirab, Syria actually belonged to a group of Neirabian deportees who returned from Babylonia to their ancestral hometown.¹⁶⁴ Bickerman detected a generational difference in the naming practices among the Judeans in the Murašû archive and suggested that this was related to a religious awakening behind the missions of Ezra and Nehemiah.¹⁶⁵ Bustenay Oded continued this Assyriologically oriented research tradition in his two short articles on Israelite and Judean exiles.¹⁶⁶

The current state of scholarship on the exilic period and Judeans in Babylonia is characterised by a more precise archaeological picture of sixth-century Judah, new critical discussions of and methodological approaches to the study of the exile, and the publication of new cuneiform sources. First, the study of the exilic period has greatly benefitted from a better understanding of life in Judah in the exilic period. The opinions of archaeologists such as Charles E. Carter, Avraham Faust, Israel Finkelstein, Oded Lipschits, and Kirsi Valkama are divided on certain issues, but the big picture of development in the Babylonian and Persian periods is clear. The Babylonian campaigns led to serious devastation in Judah in the early sixth century, even though there was evident continuity to the north and south of Jerusalem. There are no signs of any significant return migration in the early Persian period and the population started to grow more rapidly only in the Hellenistic period.¹⁶⁷

Second, new methodological approaches to and critical discussions of the exile have advanced the field in the last three decades. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher has been influential in introducing sociological approaches to the study of the exile,¹⁶⁸ and his work has found followers such as John J. Ahn, Tracy M. Lemos, Dalit Rom-Shiloni, and Katherine Southwood.¹⁶⁹ At the same time, the term ‘exile’, its historical framework, and its ideological dimensions have been discussed by a number of scholars, including Bob Becking, Robert P. Carroll, Lester L. Grabbe, and Jill Middlemas.¹⁷⁰ A lot has been written about the alleged return migrations from Babylonia, on the historicity of the accounts in Ezra-Nehemiah, and the situation in the province of Yehud in the early Persian period.¹⁷¹ As a result of these developments, the interest in and the number of methodological approaches to the study of the exile has been constantly growing, which can been seen in recent edited volumes on the topic.¹⁷² Although the importance of cuneiform sources has been acknowledged in these studies, the historical reconstructions of Judean life in Babylonia and the exilic experience have been primarily based on biblical texts.

Third, concurrently with new approaches to the study of the exile, the recent publication of cuneiform sources has sparked new interest in the study of the exilic period. The most important text group consists of tablets written in the environs of Yāhūdu, the village of Judah in the Babylonian countryside. These tablets started to surface on the antiquities market in the early 1990s at the latest and the majority of them ended up in private collections around the world. Tablets from the collection of Shlomo Moussaieff have been published by Francis Joannès, André Lemaire, and Kathleen Abraham, and those from the collection of David Sofer by Laurie E. Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch.¹⁷³ Moreover, Wunsch is preparing a publication of the texts in the collection of Martin Schøyen.¹⁷⁴ A number of tablets seized by the Iraqi Antiquities Authority will be included in the forthcoming volume as well.¹⁷⁵ The study of the documents from Yāhūdu and its surroundings is still in its infancy, but a number of important articles have already been published. Pearce has analysed Judean naming practices, social structures in the environs of Yāhūdu, and the implications of the new data for the study of Judeans in Babylonia.¹⁷⁶ Abraham has studied marriage practices in Yāhūdu and among foreign population groups in Babylonia,¹⁷⁷ and Wunsch has discussed slavery in the environs of Yāhūdu (together with Rachel F. Magdalene) and the social and economic context of the documents.¹⁷⁸ Furthermore, Angelika Berlejung, Yigal Bloch, Johannes Hackl, and Caroline Waerzeggers have worked on the corpus and contributed to the study of Judean life in Babylonia, Babylonian chronology, scribal practices, and archival structures in the corpus.¹⁷⁹

The documents from Yāhūdu and its surroundings have excited biblical scholars and the media, and Pearce’s and Wunsch’s publication of 103 tablets from the corpus in late 2014 was accompanied by an exhibition at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem. Moreover, the texts have encouraged Assyriologists to engage with the materials related to Judeans in Babylonia. Bloch published and studied a dossier pertaining to Judean royal merchants in Sippar,¹⁸⁰ and previously published documents have received new attention in several research projects. The erc Starting Grant project ‘By the Rivers of Babylon’ brought biblical scholars and Assyriologists together to study the Babylonian exile and Second Temple Judaism from interdisciplinary perspectives.¹⁸¹ The ctij project has built an online database of Israelites and Judeans attested in cuneiform sources.¹⁸² This renewed interest in Babylonian sources on Judeans has resulted in a number of publications during the last five years or so, and many more are expected after the full publication of the documents from Yāhūdu and its surroundings.¹⁸³ At the same time, there has been renewed interest in the study of cultural interaction in Mesopotamia and its impact on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible.¹⁸⁴

The need for the present study arises from the lack of a comprehensive treatment of Judeans in Babylonia in light of the cuneiform sources. On the one hand, Judean names in Babylonian texts have attracted a lot of attention, and the present study builds upon the extensive prosopographical work of Ran Zadok and others. On the other hand, biblical scholars have focused on biblical texts, on their deconstruction and interpretation, and they have been reluctant to incorporate Babylonian material in their studies. Too often the existence of Babylonian material is acknowledged but discussed only briefly before a more detailed treatment of the biblical material.¹⁸⁵ In general, the references to King Jehoiachin on the ration lists from Babylon have received the attention they deserve, whereas other Babylonian evidence has been mentioned only in passing.¹⁸⁶ It must be emphasised that it would have been possible to conduct a detailed study of Judeans in Babylonia already before the publication of the documents from Yāhūdu and its surroundings: in 2002, Zadok listed 161 people whom he identified as Judeans in Babylonian sources.¹⁸⁷ The majority of these people are attested in the Murašû texts. The reluctance to study the Murašû texts has been partly connected to the traditional periodisation of biblical history: the sixth century is perceived as the exilic period, and the fifth-century evidence from the Murašû archive has been regarded as too late to shed any light on the life of the exiles.

Judeans were only one of numerous immigrant groups living in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries, and migrants from Egypt, the Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia, Syria, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula found their way to the floodplain. Although no comprehensive social and economic history of these people has been written, there are numerous studies which deal with the subject and focus especially on the onomastic evidence. Immigrant groups which have been studied include, among others, Anatolians,¹⁸⁸ Arabs,¹⁸⁹ Egyptians,¹⁹⁰ and Iranians.¹⁹¹ The case of the Neirabians has attracted quite a bit of attention because of its relevance to the question of return migrations from Babylonia, but it is still not very well known among biblical scholars.¹⁹² Despite the onomastic evidence gathered, only few studies have attempted to offer a bird’s-eye view of the matters of integration and socio-economic status among the immigrants. In a seminal article, Israel Ephˁal focuses on immigrants attested in the Nippur countryside,¹⁹³ and Muhammad A. Dandamayev explores immigrants in two articles.¹⁹⁴ As noted above, the emergence of the texts from Yāhūdu and its surroundings has initiated a growing interest in the study of Judeans in Babylonia, which will probably be reflected in the study of other deportee and immigrant groups as well.

Any deeper understanding and proper contextualisation of the evidence of minorities in Babylonia would not be possible without the advancements in Neo-Babylonian studies since the late 1980s. The exceptionally large cuneiform record from the late seventh to the fifth centuries has been made more easily accessible, and it has been used to promote an understanding of the social and economic history of Babylonia. First, Babylonian primary sources are becoming more and more accessible, not only to Assyriologists but also for general historians. Numerous archive studies have made large text corpora available for historical inquiry,¹⁹⁵ and Michael Jursa’s overview of Babylonian archives is an indispensable tool for any student of these tens of thousands of texts scattered in museums all over the world.¹⁹⁶ Currently, there are serious efforts to make Babylonian sources more easily available online in order to facilitate their use by non-Assyriologists as well.¹⁹⁷ Second, the social and economic history of Babylonia has been the subject of several studies. Two important works on economic history are Govert van Driel’s Elusive Silver and Michael Jursa and his team’s Aspects of the Economic History of Babylonia.¹⁹⁸ In addition to these general works, different aspects of the Babylonian economy have been studied in detail. These include, but are not limited to, temple economy,¹⁹⁹ private business,²⁰⁰ labour,²⁰¹ and taxation.²⁰² Social historical studies have focused on topics such as dependence and slavery,²⁰³ Babylonian urban elite,²⁰⁴ housing and urbanism,²⁰⁵ priesthood and temple personnel,²⁰⁶ and officialdom.²⁰⁷ New methodological and theoretical approaches have been tested on the historical record, including the application of social network analysis to cuneiform sources.²⁰⁸

1.4.1 The Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is an important but also problematic source for the study of history in the sixth and fifth centuries. The historical reconstruction of the fall of Judah and the early Second Temple period is largely dependent on biblical sources. At the same time, the Babylonian exile itself constitutes a gap in the biblical narrative, even though theological reflection on the exile characterises many parts of the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, although the accounts on the fall of Judah and deportations to Babylonia undeniably refer to historical events, they are not primary sources written at the time of the events they describe. Biblical texts are secondary sources at best, and books like the Chronicles fall into the category of tertiary sources. The Hebrew Bible should not be excluded out of hand from a methodologically responsible historical study, but its information must be critically evaluated, like any other source.

When it comes to the fall of Judah and deportations to Babylonia, the Hebrew Bible is an important source for a historical reconstruction of the events. The general picture of destruction and deportation in 2 Kings 24–25 is corroborated by archaeology and cuneiform sources.²⁰⁹ In the same vein, the lists of Babylonian officials in conquered Jerusalem in Jeremiah 39 appear to be based on correct information of contemporary office holders.²¹⁰ At the same time, however, biblical books provide contradictory information on the number, date, and extent of the deportations to Babylonia.²¹¹ The use of this information is further complicated by the unstable textual traditions of these passages.²¹² Second Kings 25:27–30 can be seen as an epilogue to the fall of Judah: the Babylonian king Evil-merodach (Amēl-Marduk) releases King Jehoiachin of Judah from prison and raises him above other kings at Evil-merodach’s table. Cuneiform sources confirm that Jehoiachin was indeed taken to Babylon and received food rations, along with other Judeans. The account of Jehoiachin’s amnesty will be discussed together with the pertinent cuneiform sources in Section 2.5.

The Hebrew Bible provides us with a historical narrative which ends at the onset of the exile and begins again at the fall of the Babylonian Empire. Numerous biblical books resonate with the trauma of the exile, but life in exile is not the subject of these theological reflections. The exile serves as the setting for the prophecies in the Book of Ezekiel and for the narratives in Daniel and Esther, but, as the following discussion reveals, none of these books are particularly useful as a source for historical enquiry. The same applies to Jeremiah, Psalm 137, and Ezra-Nehemiah. All these accounts may shed light on the exilic experience and perceptions of life in exile,²¹³ but they are of little help in writing a social history of Judeans in Babylonia.

The Book of Ezekiel is situated in the context of the Babylonian exile, and the prophet is depicted as a Judean exile living in sixth-century Babylonia. The authors of the book certainly had information about Mesopotamian culture²¹⁴ and Babylonian geography, including the Kabaru canal (the river Chebar in Ezek 1:1, 3:15, etc.),²¹⁵ which is also referred to in a text from the environs of Yāhūdu (J7). It may well be that the references to the elders of Judah (8:1) and Israel (14:1),²¹⁶ as well as to the Judean settlement at Tel-abib (3:15), reflect historical reality, but the focal points of the book are Ezekiel’s prophetic visions and oracles. Apart from mentioning the river Chebar, Tel-abib, and the elders of Judah and Israel, the Book of Ezekiel contains hardly any information about Judean exiles in Babylonia.

Another prophetic book closely related to the exile is Jeremiah. However, the focus of the book is on early sixth-century Judah, and events in Babylonia are referred to only in Chapter 29, which describes the correspondence between the prophet Jeremiah and the Babylonian exiles. The historicity of the episode is disputed,²¹⁷ and even if it contained a kernel of truth, it is not very informative for our purposes. Two things can be noted: the chapter takes for granted that it was possible to send letters from Judah to Babylon and back, and, like the Book of Ezekiel, it suggests that prophets were active among the Judeans in Babylonia.

Psalm 137 has become a strong symbol, as its opening words are commonly used as a reference to the Babylonian exile of Judeans.²¹⁸ The psalm is a piece of powerful poetry which delicately expresses the trauma of being uprooted and placed in a foreign country. Many deportees of today can undoubtedly share the despair reflected in its verses, but one must be careful not to claim that the psalm represents the experience of every Judean in Babylonia.²¹⁹ Its message must be taken seriously, but it should not be used as a backdrop to the present study.

The Books of Daniel and Esther share several common themes, including their setting at a foreign court and the motif of Judeans who trust their God and gain favour with the king. The Book of Daniel has two main parts, the stories at the Babylonian court in Chapters 1–6 and the apocalyptic visions in Chapters 7–12. It is widely held that the latter part of the book reflects the historical situation in the 160s bce, when the actions of the Seleucid king Antiochus iv Epiphanes resulted in the Maccabean revolt.²²⁰ The stories in Chapters 1–6 are probably of older origin, and some of their motifs – such as the renaming of Judean youth and the presence of foreign specialists at the Babylonian court²²¹ – are historically accurate or plausible.²²² However, accidental historical accuracy does not mean that Daniel 1–6 can be used as a source for writing a history of Judeans in Babylonia. The stories are full of miracles, fantastic scenes, and thrilling adventures, which do not lend much support to historical reliability. It is also noteworthy that the authors of Daniel 1–6 were unaware of or did not care about the correct chronology of Babylonian and Persian kings: King Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 1–4) is succeeded by his son Belshazzar (5), and Darius the Mede seizes power after Belshazzar is killed (5:30–6:29). Finally, Cyrus the Persian ascends the throne after Darius (6:29). Given all these characteristics of literary fiction, the Book of Daniel cannot be used as a source for the present study.

The Book of Esther is not set in Babylonia but in the Persian capital of Susa. Nevertheless, the book suggests that Nebuchadnezzar’s deportations from Jerusalem led to the emergence of a Judean exilic community in Susa (2:6). Unlike the separate stories in Daniel, the Book of Esther narrates one coherent story about two Judeans, Esther and Mordecai, and their success in preventing the genocide of Judeans in the Persian Empire. The story has some features which are historically accurate or plausible, the most important being the Judean presence in Susa in the early fifth century bce confirmed by cuneiform sources.²²³ However, the story is clearly a literary fiction, and it resembles the Greek accounts which ridicule the Persian court life.²²⁴ The Book of Esther is a reflection of life in diaspora, but it cannot be used as a source for a study of Judeans in Babylonia.

Finally, the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah are not concerned with the Babylonian exile, but they narrate the story of the alleged return migrations to Judah and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem in the early Persian period. Although the use of these books is hampered by complex textual traditions and their historicity is debated,²²⁵ they have been widely used – due to the scarcity of other sources – to reconstruct the history of Yehud in the early Persian period and social conflicts between the returned exiles and the rest of the population in Yehud.²²⁶ Yet, as the present study is concerned with life in Babylonia, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah must be excluded from its sources.

This short overview has shown that although the Hebrew Bible is an important source for the study of the fall of Judah, very few biblical books explicitly describe the life of Judeans in Babylonia. The Books of Daniel and Esther narrate life in exile, but they are both widely regarded as literary fiction. The Book of Ezekiel does not focus on life in Babylonia but on prophecy, and Ezra-Nehemiah, Jeremiah 29, and Psalm 137 contribute very little to the question at hand. Accordingly, the study of Judeans in Babylonia must primarily rely on Babylonian cuneiform sources.

1.4.2 Cuneiform Sources

As the previous discussion reveals, the Hebrew Bible is an important source for the reconstruction of the events leading to the Babylonian exile, but it offers relatively little information on Judean life in Babylonia. On the contrary, hundreds of clay tablets written in Babylonian cuneiform shed light on the everyday lives of Judean deportees,²²⁷ although only a single chronicle relates to Nebuchadnezzar ii’s campaigns in the Levant.²²⁸ Babylonian legal and administrative texts from private and temple archives from the sixth and fifth centuries are a treasure trove for a student of social and economic history, and tens of thousands of such tablets are preserved in museums and private collections.²²⁹ At the same time, Babylonian state archives have almost completely disappeared,²³⁰ and Babylonian royal inscriptions are less interested in describing political events than their Assyrian counterparts.²³¹ Babylonian legal and administrative texts also have their limitations, the most significant being their origin. As noted above, these texts were written by members of the urban elite and they predominantly belong to temple archives and private archives of this same elite. The great majority of the population – women, peasants, children, and foreigners – are usually seen only in the margins of the text corpora. In any case, Babylonian sources are well-suited for the purposes of this study, as they are contemporary sources which originated in the course of everyday transactions and thus are not suspect of ideological colouring.

1.4.3 Archaeology

Apart from clay tablets, there are no other artefacts or archaeological remains that bear witness to the presence of Judeans in Babylonia. Of the four main texts groups, only the Palace Archive of Nebuchadnezzar ii (the ‘Palace Archive’) and the Murašû archive have a documented find-spot, whereas the tablets pertaining to the descendants of Arih primarily originate from Rassam’s badly documented excavations in Sippar. Most unfortunate is the fact that the tablets from the environs of Yāhūdu were acquired from the antiquities market and their provenance is thus completely unknown. Nor are the find-spots of the Palace and Murašû archives informative about Judean life in Babylonia: although the administrative office which produced the Palace Archive was probably situated in the South Palace of Babylon, this does not necessarily mean that Judeans resided on the same premises. In the same vein, texts from the Murašû archive make clear that the Murašûs themselves lived in Nippur where the archive was unearthed, but their Judean clients inhabited the surrounding countryside. The provenance of the Neirabian archive from a funerary context has important implications for the value of the tablets for their owners, but because the tablets were excavated in Syria but written in Babylonia, the find-spot does not shed any light on the nature of Neirabian life in Babylonia.²⁶⁵ However, all major Babylonian cities have been partially excavated and regional surveys have been carried out. Material aspects of urban life are thus known to us,²⁶⁶ and there are informative studies about settlement patterns and ancient water courses in the region.²⁶⁷ Unfortunately, the scope of the data is limited due to the lack of general treatments of Neo-Babylonian material culture.²⁶⁸

1.5.1 Naming Practices in Babylonia

Babylonian sources rarely make the ethnic or geographic origin of people explicit. There are some exceptions, like the foreign professionals in the Palace Archive of Nebuchadnezzar ii or the twin towns and haṭrus in the Nippur region, named after the hometowns and homelands of their residents.²⁶⁹ However, there are very few texts that describe an individual as Judean or Egyptian, and, in most cases, personal names are our primary means of identifying people of foreign origin in Babylonian sources.

In Neo-Babylonian legal texts, people are normally referred to by their name and patronymic. The standard formula in Babylonian cuneiform is PN a-šú šáPN2 (‘PN, son of PN2’), abbreviated in this study as PN/PN2. There are two notable exceptions: cases when no patronymic is given and cases when a family name is given in addition to a name and patronymic. The first exception applies to slaves and royal officials, who usually appear without a patronymic. Their owner’s name or their official title is often given instead.²⁷⁰ People working in or aiming for a career in the royal administration can often be identified by the so-called Beamtennamen, which include the element šarru (‘king’).²⁷¹ Three-tier genealogies involving a name, patronymic, and family name were borne by the members of the Babylonian urban upper class, the boundaries of which were partially defined by the use of these family names.²⁷² This group was exclusive, and families of deportees are not found among its ranks, even though women of foreign origin were occasionally able to marry into these families.²⁷³

Personal names are difficult markers of a person’s origin as they do not simply express ethnicity, beliefs, or cultural background. A person may choose a new name when he migrates to a new country in order to help his integration, but the practice of renaming slaves was also well known in Babylonia.²⁷⁴ Moreover, Aramaic was commonly spoken in Babylonia, and Aramaic names were not indicative of a person’s non-Babylonian origin.²⁷⁵ Consequently, people bearing Babylonian or Aramaic names and patronymics may have been native Babylonians but also immigrants of foreign origin. In some cases, there is also evidence of double-naming or fluidity in a person’s name. Some royal officials were apparently renamed when they entered their office, yet they still retained their original name.²⁷⁶ A rather interesting case is that of Bēl-šar-uṣur/Nubâ, who worked as a minor official in Yāhūdu in the mid-sixth century. He is twice named as Bēl-šar-uṣur (C2, 3, ‘Bēl, protect the king!’) but once as Yāhû-šar-uṣur (C4, ‘Yahweh, protect the king!’).²⁷⁷ Nicknames were also used in Babylonia and long personal names abbreviated.²⁷⁸

Despite the caveats described above, name-giving is not an arbitrary process. It is influenced by traditions, current trends, and practical considerations. Names of a certain type and language are usually favoured in a certain region, and names given in Egypt were rather different from the names given in Babylonia. The local pantheon had an effect on name-giving, and there are significant onomastic differences between Babylonian cities.²⁷⁹ Ancient Semitic names were often theophoric, that is to say, nominal or verbal clauses with the name of a deity as their subject. To cite an Akkadian and Hebrew example: Nabû-šum-iddin (‘Nabû has given a son’) and Zekaryāh(û) (‘Yahweh has remembered’). Despite the regional differences, the worship of a deity was not confined to a certain city or region, and theophoric names are often unreliable indicators of ethnic or geographic origin.

Practical considerations of a child’s parents also play a central role in name-giving: a name can give its bearer an advantage or disadvantage in social life, work, or education. The attractiveness of a certain name is closely related to power relations between different population groups. The names of a politically or economically stronger party are often attractive for a weaker one, whereas the stronger does not borrow names from the weaker. There is no evidence that any other population group borrowed Judean names, but foreign names of higher status, including Persian, Egyptian, and later Greek names, were attractive to other population groups as well.²⁸⁰

Accordingly, a Babylonian or Aramaic personal name or patronymic alone tells nothing about the ethnic origin of its bearer in Babylonia in the mid-first millennium. He or she might have been a native Babylonian or foreign deportee. Family names form an exception to this rule, for they indicate that the family in question had resided in Babylonia for a longer time. Iranian and Egyptian names are also complicated, as they are often indicative of their bearer’s Iranian or Egyptian origin, but sometimes they were borne by other people as well.

1.5.2 Yahwistic Names as the Criterion for Identifying Judeans

Yahwistic names – that is, personal names with the divine name Yahweh – are the main criterion for identifying people of Judean origin in Babylonian sources.²⁸¹ They can be rather easily discerned from other names used in Babylonia and they appear to be indicative of a person’s Judean origin in Babylonia in the mid-first millennium. This section discusses the main features of Yahwistic names, their connection to the people living in ancient Israel and Judah, and their usability as a criterion for identifying Judeans in Babylonian cuneiform sources.

The cult of Yahweh originated in the area south and east of the Dead Sea, but Israel and Judah became the centres of his worship in the first millennium.²⁸² This is reflected in Yahwistic names, which are not only found in the Hebrew Bible but are well attested in epigraphic finds from Israel²⁸³ and Judah.²⁸⁴ In a similar vein, Assyrian royal inscriptions refer to the kings of Israel and Judah who bore Yahwistic names.²⁸⁵ The Assyrian and Babylonian deportations from Israel and Judah in the eighth to sixth centuries resulted in the emergence of Yahwistic names in legal and administrative texts in Mesopotamia.²⁸⁶ Yahwistic names are also attested at Elephantine in Southern Egypt in the fifth century; a part of the soldiers there were of Judean origin.²⁸⁷ This evidence indicates a strong connection between a person’s Israelite or Judean origin and their use of Yahwistic names. However, there are some cases which appear to indicate that Yahweh was also worshipped by other population groups, and thus Yahwistic personal names would not necessarily indicate their bearers’ Israelite or Judean origin. Before turning to these cases, it is worthwhile to investigate how the Yahwistic theophoric element is written in West Semitic and Akkadian sources.

The pronunciation of the name Yahweh is a modern scientific reconstruction, as the religious prohibition against saying the name led to eventual ignorance of its original vocalisation. Only the consonants yhwh remain to us, vocalised in a deliberately wrong way in the Hebrew Bible to prevent the reader from voicing the name unintentionally.²⁸⁸ In personal names, abbreviated forms of the name were used.²⁸⁹ The form yw appears to be Israelite, whereas yhw and later yh were predominantly used in Judah.²⁹⁰ The Neo-Assyrian spelling of the Yahwistic element in initial position is usually Ia-u- and in final position similarly -ia-(a-)u, both with minor variations.²⁹¹ There is no major difference between the initial and final element, and the Israelite and Judean forms of the name Yahweh cannot be distinguished. The spellings are different in Babylonian cuneiform: the Yahwistic element is predominantly written as Ia-hu-ú- in initial position and as -ia-a-ma in final position, both with orthographical variation.²⁹² However, the initial element is occasionally written as Ia-(a)-mu- and the final element as -ia-hu-ú, both with orthographical variation.²⁹³ There are also abbreviated forms of the final element.²⁹⁴ The peculiar spelling ia-a-ma results from the Neo-Babylonian orthography, in which m represents also w.²⁹⁵ There is consensus that both ia-hu-ú and ia-a-ma represent the Yahwistic theophoric element, but pronunciation of the element ia-a-ma and its relation to ia-hu-u and to the alphabetic spellings of the divine name are disputed.²⁹⁶

The previous overview of orthographic practices helps one to evaluate possible attestations of Yahwistic theophoric names outside the Israelite and Judean onomasticon. It should first be noted that the ending -ia in cuneiform does not represent the Yahwistic theophoric element but is a common hypocoristic suffix in personal names.²⁹⁷ Accordingly, names such as Bānia and Zabdia are not Yahwistic, although it is possible that they are occasionally hypocoristics of Yahwistic names.²⁹⁸ The alleged attestations of the Yahwistic theophoric element in the Eblaite²⁹⁹ and Amorite³⁰⁰ onomastica and in documents from the Sealand and Nippur in the second millennium³⁰¹ need to be refuted as they are not supported by a closer linguistic analysis of the evidence. A reference to yw in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle (ktu 1.1 iv:14) does not bear evidence to the worship of Yahweh in Ugarit.³⁰²

In addition to the Israelites and Judeans, it has been suggested that Yahweh was worshipped in the first millennium by the Arameans, Philistines, Phoenicians, Nabateans, and Syrians. According to Jeaneane D. Fowler, identification of Judeans in Babylonian sources is difficult because Arameans tended to add new gods, including Yahweh, to their pantheon.³⁰³ Fowler claims that this is suggested by the Aramaic Yahwistic names in the Murašû archive and by the usage of Yahwistic names by ‘Arameans’ at Elephantine. First, the fact that a name is linguistically Aramaic does not mean that its bearer was ethnically ‘Aramean’. Aramaic was very widely spoken in the Near East and Babylonia in the late fifth century,³⁰⁴ and thus the use of Aramaic names was not confined to a certain population group.³⁰⁵ Judeans undoubtedly spoke Aramaic in Babylonia as well, and the distinction between Hebrew and Aramaic Yahwistic names does not reflect ethnic divisions among the population in the Murašû archive. Second, the situation at Elephantine is far more complicated than Fowler assumes. It is true that some people bearing Yahwistic names are explicitly called ‘Aramean’, but, surprisingly, some of them are referred to as ‘Judean’ on another occasion.³⁰⁶ This shows that the terms ‘Judean’ and ‘Aramean’ were not mutually exclusive and they did not simply demarcate the divisions between population groups.³⁰⁷ The worship of Yahweh and the use of Yahwistic names appear to be linked to the Judean origin of a part of the population at Elephantine.³⁰⁸

There is no evidence that Yahweh was worshipped by Philistines, Phoenicians, or Nabateans either. Niels Peter Lemche’s suggestion that Ṣidqâ, the king of Ashkelon attested in Assyrian sources,³⁰⁹ had a Yahwistic name was effectively disproven by K. Lawson Younger, Jr.³¹⁰ The spelling of the king’s name (Ṣi-id-qa-a) does not conform to the Assyrian conventions of writing the Yahwistic element, and it is actually a hypocoristic of a longer personal name. The single reference to the god Ιευώ in Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica 1.9.21 does not confirm that Yahweh was worshipped by the Phoenicians,³¹¹ and the word ˀhyw in Nabatean personal names cannot be identified as the Yahwistic theophoric element.³¹²

Finally, one needs to consider Stephanie M. Dalley’s suggestion that Yahweh was worshipped in Syria in the eighth century.³¹³ Her thesis is based on three names, Azri-Yau, Yau-biˀdi, and Joram, the first two being attested in Assyrian royal inscriptions and the latter one in the Hebrew Bible. The first of these people, Azri-Yau (Az-ri-a-ú; Az-ri-ia-a-ú), was a rebel in the area of Hamath, defeated by Tiglath-pileser iii in 738.³¹⁴ He should not be identified as the Judean king Azariah,³¹⁵ but his name appears to be undeniably Yahwistic in light of the Assyrian spellings surveyed above. It has been suggested that this Azri-Yau was of Israelite origin,³¹⁶ the son of an Israelite princess and a Hamathean ruler,³¹⁷ or a local Syrian ruler with a Yahwistic name.³¹⁸ If Azri-Yau was of Syrian origin, one would expect the Aramaic spelling ˁdr of the first element instead of the Canaanite form ˁzr found in the cuneiform.³¹⁹ These linguistic considerations point towards Azri-Yau’s Israelite or Judean origin, but it cannot be excluded either that he was a native of Northern Syria who worshipped Yahweh.

The second person with a possibly Yahwistic name was Yau-biˀdi or Ilu-biˀdi, a Hamathean rebel in the beginning of the reign of Sargon ii. His name is spelled two different ways in cuneiform, ^dIa-(ú)-bi-ˀ-di and I-lu-(ú)-bi-ˀ-di, both with small variations.³²⁰ The first name appears to be Yahwistic, but the second one replaces the divine name with the general word for ‘god’ (ilu). Dalley suggests, ‘The Assyrians thought of Yahweh as El…, and give a variant of Yau-biˀdi’s name as El-biˀdi’.³²¹ It is too far-fetched to assume that the Assyrians had such ideas about Yahweh and El, but it may be possible that the Yahwistic theophoric element was occasionally replaced with ilu in cuneiform, and the spelling Ilu-biˀdi does not exclude taking Yau-biˀdi as a Yahwistic name.³²²

The third person listed by Dalley is Joram, the son of the king of Hamath, who brings gifts to King David in 2 Sam 8:9–11. His name is given as Hadoram in 1 Chr 18:9–11 and Ιεδδουραν in the Septuagint (2 Kgdms 8:9–11). The account may not be based on any real historical event,³²³ but the idea of a Hamathean prince with a Yahwistic name is noteworthy in any case.

Apart from these three names there is no other evidence of native worship of Yahweh in Syria, and it is difficult to accept Dalley’s conclusion that there were ‘several cities in Syria where people worshipped Yahweh as a major god in the 8th century bc’.³²⁴ In the 730s and 720s something prompted the use of Yahwistic names among the rebel leaders in the region of Hamath, but the geographic origins of Azri-Yau and Yau-biˀdi remain unclear. Azri-Yau’s non-Aramaic name may indicate that he was a foreigner from Israel or Judah, and Sargon’s inscriptions make clear that Yau-biˀdi was not the legitimate heir to the throne.³²⁵ This evidence indicates that none of the rebels belonged to the local ruling dynasties. Prince Joram of Hamath is, first and foremost, a character in the narratives surrounding the mythical kingdom of David. It cannot be excluded that the Yahwistic names of the Syrian rebels of the late eighth century are reflected in the name of this literary character as well. Accordingly, the available evidence does not support the conclusion that Yahweh was worshipped among the native population of Syria in the eighth century or later.

In light of the previous discussion, the use of Yahwistic names was generally indicative of a person’s Judean or Israelite origin in the first millennium. The cult of Yahweh is well attested within the geographical boundaries of these two kingdoms, and Yahwistic names start to appear in Assyria after the deportations from Israel and Judah in the late eighth century.³²⁶ In Babylonia, Yahwistic names appear in cuneiform sources after the deportations in the early sixth century.³²⁷ Moreover, there are several instances that make the connection between a Yahwistic name and a person’s origin explicit. The correct identification of the Yahwistic element in cuneiform sources is confirmed by references to the kings of Israel and Judah in Assyrian royal inscriptions³²⁸ and by the presence of King Jehoiachin and other Judeans on the ration lists from Babylon.³²⁹ Yahwistic names are attested among a group of Samarian charioteers at Kalhu,³³⁰ and, finally, there is a great number of Yahwistic names in the village of Yāhūdu in the Babylonian countryside.³³¹ The same applies to Elephantine, where people characterised as ‘Judeans’ bore Yahwistic names.

In Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries, Yahwistic names indicated a person’s Judean origin. It is of course possible that some people of Israelite origin found their way to Babylonia or that some people in close contact with Judeans adopted Yahwistic names. However, these scenarios cannot involve a large number of people. Babylonian deportations from Judah and the advent of Yahwistic names in Babylonia are chronologically very closely related, and the majority of Yahwistic names can be found in rural communities where deportees were resettled. It is possible that some descendants of Israelite or Judean deportees migrated from Assyria to Babylonia after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and that some people from the territory of the former kingdom of Israel were deported to Babylonia.³³² However, the evidence remains inconclusive, and it can hardly explain the emergence of Yahwistic names in Babylonian cuneiform sources.

When it comes to the adoption of Yahwistic names, it is highly unlikely that the native population or other immigrants had any reason to do this. Immigrants can benefit from the adoption of local names, but others do not have an incentive to use the names of an unimportant minority. The situation is different when it comes to the names of a dominant minority: Iranian and perhaps Egyptian names were attractive to outsiders in Achaemenid Babylonia.³³³ However, Yahwistic names did not have such status. Admittedly, friendship, marriage, or business relationships may have affected the naming practices of a certain family and led to the adoption of Yahwistic names by non-Judeans, but there is no reason to assume that this was a common phenomenon. It should be also noted that the linguistic and socio-economic environment of Yahwistic names in Babylonia was peculiar: they are typically not found in the social sphere of temples or priestly families but in multicultural contexts where other West Semitic names also occur.

At the same time, we need to realise that a great number – perhaps even the majority – of Judeans cannot be identified in Babylonian sources. Only some Judeans bore Yahwistic names, and those with Babylonian and non-Yahwistic West Semitic names can only be identified as Judeans if they had relatives with Yahwistic names. Consequently, the picture is skewed in favour of those families which retained the practice of using Yahwistic names. This has important consequences for the study of identity and integration.

There are also some other names that have been regarded as being indicative of their bearer’s Judean origin. Hoshea (A-mu-še-e or Ú-še-eh in Babylonian cuneiform),³³⁴ Nubâ (Nu-ba-a or Nu-ba-ú-a),³³⁵ and Šillimu (Ši-li-im, Še-li-im-mu, etc.)³³⁶ were indeed used predominantly, if not exclusively, by Judeans in Babylonia in the mid-first millennium. The name Šabbatāya (Šá-ab-ba-ta-a-a and other forms with minor differences in spelling) is not common in Mesopotamian sources³³⁷ and it was used by Judeans, but it cannot be shown that the name was exclusively Judean.³³⁸ The same applies to Haggâ (Ha-ag-ga-a, Ha-ga-a).³³⁹ It cannot be confirmed that the name Minyamin (Mi-in-ia-a-me-en, etc.) was used by Judeans at all.³⁴⁰

In this study, people bearing Yahwistic names are identified as Judeans. Logically, their blood relatives can be identified as Judeans as well, regardless of their names. The business partners, acquaintances, debtors, or creditors of Judeans are identified as Judeans only if they or their family members had Yahwistic names. Names such as Hoshea, Nubâ, and Šabbatāya may have been exclusively Judean, but as this cannot be confirmed, these names will not be used as indicators of a person’s Judean origin. Using this set of criteria, 282 people can be identified as Judeans in Babylonian documents written in 591–413 bce. This number does not include persons who are referred to only as patronymics. My corpus of texts is primarily based on the list presented in Zadok 2002,³⁴¹ the documents published in Pearce and Wunsch 2014, and nos. 1–42 in Wunsch (forthcoming).

Unlike Judeans, people of Neirabian origin can be identified only in a single group of 27 texts, excavated in Neirab, near Aleppo, Syria. As explained in detail in Chapter 7, these texts were written in the twin town of Neirab in Babylonia, and when the descendants of Neirabian deportees returned to their ancestral hometown in Syria, they took the texts along. Although a significant proportion of inhabitants in the twin town of Neirab must have been of Neirabian origin, the example of Yāhūdu shows that other people also found their way to these settlements. Therefore, personal names are again the main criterion for identifying persons of Neirabian origin in this small corpus, a remarkable feature of which is the abundance of Sîn and Nusku names. Nusku, the son of the moon god Sîn/Sahr, is rarely attested in the Neo-Babylonian onomasticon,³⁴² but worship of the moon god, his consort, and his son was very popular in Northern Syria.³⁴³ Although Sîn or Nusku names are not reliable identifiers of Neirabians in the Babylonian text corpus in general, in this particular group of texts the families which used these theophoric elements and West Semitic names can be identified as Neirabian.³⁴⁴