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

28 THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS AND THE 0. T.
altogether different name. Thus the father of Merodaeh-
Baladan, the "son of Jakin", might very well have had
some such name as "Baladan"* which the Bible assigns to
him. And nothing stands in the way of the assumption
that the Merodach-Baladan who was dethroned by Sargon
took advantage of the change of ruler at Niniveh to attempt
once more to gain possession of the throne of Babylon and
to expel the viceroy, the successor of Sanherib's brother,
who had been placed there by the new Assyrian ruler.
The Bible, the inscriptions and the Ptolemaic canon are
thus in perfect agreement. Accordingly we henceforth
abandon ** the hypothesis of a Merodach-Baladan II. And
our position is sustained by the fact that the Merodach-
Baladan of Sanherib is never called the son of another
Merodach-Baladan. It is true that it is somewhat remark-
able that during the reign of four rulers in Assyria, viz.
Tiglath-Pileser, Salmanassar, Sargon and Sanherib, we
should have one and the same ruler sitting on the throne
of Chaldaea (with certain interruptions). But this circum-
stance taken by itself has no decisive importance.
The question arises : What
was the date of the despatch
of the embassy to Hezekiah by Merodach-Baladan narrated
in the Bible? According to the Bible it would appear as
344 though this event took place at the time of the Assyrian
invasion (see 2 Kings XX. 1, 1 2, and compare it with
* About these abbreviated names in Assyrian consult Assyrisch-
Babyl. Keilinsch. pp. 154 foil.
** So Lenormant in his valuable essay : Un patriote Babylonien
du VIII. siecle avant notre ere (Merodach-baladau), contained in his
work : Les premieres civilisations II (Paris 1874) pp. 202 foil. The
writer, however, does not enter further into the discussion of the
chief difficulty, to which he refers on p. 263.