The cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament - The Search For ...

SECOND BOOK OF KINGS XX. 25
campaign against the Babylonian king. This campaign
ended in the dethronement as well as imprisonment of
Merodach-Baladan and also in the destruction by fire of the
city DUr-Jakin, into which the Babylonian king had beta- 340
ken himself for refuge*. This Merodach-Baladan, son of
Jaktn, is undoubtedly identical with the Babylonian king
of the same name, mentioned by Tiglath-Pileser; and he
is clearly the same king of Babel who is said in Botta's
Annals pi. 70 to have seized the dominion over Northern
Chaldaea and the capital Babylon, in the first year of
Sargon's reign. Sargon at that time had to maintain a
struggle with him, which ended in the recognition of
Merodach-Baladan as king of Babylon. This we may
infer, though the Babylonian king's name is obliterated
from the plate, from the fact that, in the very year in
question, viz. 721, we find in the Ptolemaic Canon that
Mardokempad or Merodach-Baladan ascended the throne
of Babel. This cannot be an accidental coincidence. More-
over there is an external confirmation of this hypothesis
in the discovery of several tablets in Khorsabad i. e. in
Sargon's palace, dated from the reign of "Marduk-abal-
iddina, king of Babylon". These tablets, which are pub-
lished complete in Oppert's Les inscriptions de Dour-
Sarkayan (Paris 1870) pp. 27. 28, are dated from the 9"',
10"\ 11"' and 12"' years of this Babylonian king. Accord-
ingly he must have reigned twelve years,—exactly the
period which the Ptolemaic Canon and Sargon's Annals
assign to him i. e. 721— 710 B. C. The tablets evidently
* Botta 151 no. 11 line 1 foil., 152 &c. Compare also the passages
quoted below from the annals (in the remarks on Isaiah XX. 1)
belonging to the 12'^ and 13tl> years of Sargon's reign.