The Babylonian Chronicle — Jerusalem taken, 16 March 597 BC
The first fall of Jerusalem is datable to a single day — 16 March 597 BC — from Babylon's own records, and the replacement of one king by another matches 2 Kings 24 exactly.
Fixed dateAncient writer6th century BC
A Babylonian court chronicle, terse and administrative, recording year by year what the army did. For Nebuchadnezzar's seventh year it records the siege of "the city of Judah", its capture on the second day of the month Adar, the seizure of its king and the appointment of a king of Babylon's own choosing.
In the seventh year, the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to Hatti-land, and encamped against the city of Judah. On the second day of the month Adar he captured the city and seized the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice.
- Found
- Babylonia — Acquired by the British Museum; published by D. J. Wiseman, 1956
- Now held at
- British Museum, London (BM 21946)
- Language
- Akkadian
- How it reached us
- Dug up, or still standing where it was built.
What it shows
The date conversion is astronomically secure. The chronicle names no king personally, but the sequence matches Jehoiachin's removal and Zedekiah's installation.
How historians use it
One of the most precisely dated events in the Hebrew Bible, used in secular scholarship as a fixed anchor for the chronology of Judah's last decades.
In Scripture
Connects to
Sources
- Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626–556 BC) in the British Museum (1956)
- ABC 5, the Jerusalem Chronicle — text and translation
These summaries are written in English for now. Translations follow.