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.
'Aho pauTohi tangata motu'a6th 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.
- Na'e 'ilo'i
- Babylonia — Acquired by the British Museum; published by D. J. Wiseman, 1956
- 'Oku tauhi 'i
- British Museum, London (BM 21946)
- Lea
- Akkadian
- Na'e a'u mai fēfē kiate kitautolu
- Na'e keli hake, pe 'oku kei tu'u 'i he potu na'e langa ai.
Ko e me'a 'oku ne fakahā
The date conversion is astronomically secure. The chronicle names no king personally, but the sequence matches Jehoiachin's removal and Zedekiah's installation.
Founga hono ngāue'aki 'e he kau hisitōlia
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.
'I he Folofola
Fekau'aki mo
Ngaahi ma'u'anga fakamatala
- Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626–556 BC) in the British Museum (1956)
- ABC 5, the Jerusalem Chronicle — text and translation
'Oku 'i he lea faka-Pilitānia 'a e ngaahi fakamatala ko 'eni he taimi ni. 'E muimui mai 'a e liliu.