The Cuneiform inscriptions and the Old Testament; - The Search For ...

SECOND BOOK OF KINGS XV. 235
it is not all the plates that have fallen victims to this fate,
and, moreover, the destruction of the inscriptions is often so
superficial that not infrequently entire sections are still
legible. From what has been preserved it may be gathered
that in these inscriptions, chiefly friezes of 7, 12 and 16
lines, we are dealing with the records of Tiglath-Pileser
(see above p. 240), in fact with his annals; comp. e. g. 67,
5: in a IX. pallja in "the ninth year of my reign". But
in Layard's "Inscriptions in the cuneiform character" these
plates are ranged in succession with utter disregard of
order, for Layard arranged them merely according to the
places where they were discovered (central palace and
South-West palace), and it so happens that the lines of one
plate, which in Layard's work stands as plate 50, are
continued on a plate which is now numbered as plate (5 7!
The following is the result of my examination of the
plates.*
I. Friezes of seven lines. Of these we may safely assign 244
a chronological position to Layard Plate 69 A, 1 (left, above)
69 A, 2 (right, above) which , according to the contents
and the express statement 69 A, 2 (right) line 3, x-efer to
the events of the 8*'' and 9'^^ years of the king's reign. The
friezes 69 B, 1
; 69 B, 2 ; 68, refer essentially to the same
period and have in part similar contents. These belong
to a parallel series of seven-lined friezes. Besides there
remain the seven-lined friezes III Rawl. 9 no. 1, a and b
foil.; Niniveh and Babylon pp. 617, 620, and comp. my essay Zur Kritik
der Inschriften Tiglath-Pilesers II, Berlin (Akad. der Wissensch.) 1879
(1880), VIII pp. 3 foil. 5 foil.
* Eespecting the prior question whether these inscriptions are really
those of Tiglath-Pileser II, see in "Zur Kritik der Insch. &c." pp.
5—12.