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132-566: Nebuchadnezzar II ( / ˌ n ɛ b j ʊ k ə d ˈ n ɛ z ər / NEB -yuu-kəd- NEZ -ər ; Babylonian cuneiform : [REDACTED] Nabû-kudurri-uṣur , meaning " Nabu , watch over my heir"; Biblical Hebrew : נְבוּכַדְנֶאצַּר , romanized:  Nəḇūḵaḏneʾṣṣar ), also spelled Nebuchadrezzar II , was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire , ruling from the death of his father Nabopolassar in 605 BC to his own death in 562 BC. Historically known as Nebuchadnezzar

264-500: A [defeat] upon them (and) finished them off completely. In the district of Hamath the army of Akkad overtook the remainder of the army of [Egypt which] managed to escape [from] the defeat and which was not overcome. They inflicted a defeat upon them (so that) a single (Egyptian) man [did not return] home. At that time Nebuchadnezzar conquered all of Ha[ma]th. The story of Nebuchadnezzar's victory at Carchemish reverberated through history, appearing in many later ancient accounts, including in

396-485: A brand new palace, and beautified its ceremonial centre through renovations to the city's Processional Street and the Ishtar Gate . As most of Nebuchadnezzar's inscriptions deal with his building projects, rather than military accomplishments, he was for a time seen by historians mostly as a builder, rather than a warrior. There are very few cuneiform sources for the period between 594 BC and 557 BC, covering much of

528-401: A completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology . It was successfully deciphered by 1857. The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000 years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕 ). Stages: The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from

660-544: A cruel enemy, but also as God 's appointed ruler of the world and a divine instrument to punish disobedience. Through the destruction of Jerusalem, the capture of the rebellious Phoenician city of Tyre , and other campaigns in the Levant, Nebuchadnezzar completed the Neo-Babylonian Empire's transformation into the new great power of the ancient Near East. In addition to his military campaigns, Nebuchadnezzar

792-523: A crushing defeat on an Egyptian army led by Pharaoh Necho II , and ensured that the Neo-Babylonian Empire would succeed the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the dominant power in the ancient Near East . Shortly after this victory, Nabopolassar died and Nebuchadnezzar became king. Despite his successful military career during his father's reign, the first third or so of Nebuchadnezzar's reign saw little to no major military achievements, and notably

924-459: A dangerously vague title. Despite these possible fears, there were no attempts made at usurping his throne at this time. One of Nebuchadnezzar's first acts as king was to bury his father. Nabopolassar was laid in a huge coffin, adorned with ornamented gold plates and fine dresses with golden beads, which was then placed within a small palace he had constructed in Babylon. Shortly thereafter, before

1056-579: A disastrous failure in an attempted invasion of Egypt. These years of lackluster military performance saw some of Babylon's vassals, particularly in the Levant , beginning to doubt Babylon's power, viewing the Neo-Babylonian Empire as a " paper tiger " rather than a power truly on the level of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The situation grew so severe that people in Babylonia itself began disobeying

1188-618: A double meaning. Nabû-kudurri-uṣur is typically anglicised to 'Nebuchadnezzar', following how the name is most commonly rendered in Hebrew and Greek , particularly in most of the Bible . In Hebrew, the name was rendered as נְבוּכַדְנֶאצַּר ( Nəḇūḵaḏneʾṣṣar ) and in Greek it was rendered as Ναβουχοδονόσορ ( Nabouchodonosor ). Some scholars, such as Donald Wiseman , prefer the anglicisation "Nebuchadrezzar", with an "r" rather than an "n", following

1320-492: A fragmentary Babylonian inscription, given the modern designation BM 33041, from that year records the word "Egypt" as well as possibly traces of the name "Amasis" (the name of the then incumbent Pharaoh, Amasis II , r.   570–526 BC). A stele of Amasis, also fragmentary, may also describe a combined naval and land attack by the Babylonians. Recent evidence suggests that the Babylonians were initially successful during

1452-559: A given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological . Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets,

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1584-565: A huge number of casualties. Though Egypt was not conquered, the campaign did result in momentarily curbing Egyptian interest in the Levant, given that Necho II gave up his ambitions in the region. In 599 BC, Nebuchadnezzar marched his army into the Levant and then attacked and raided the Arabs in the Syrian desert. Though apparently successful, it is unclear what the achievements gained in this campaign were. In 598 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned against

1716-582: A language structure typical of the non-Indo-European agglutinative Sumerian language . The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I–II periods c.  2800 BC , and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian. This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names. Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and

1848-849: A million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are published . The largest collections belong to the British Museum ( approx. 130,000 tablets), the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection ( approx. 40,000 tablets), and Penn Museum . Writing began after pottery

1980-659: A phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing. Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century BC. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite . The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text

2112-432: A pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform". Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BC. In the mid-3rd millennium BC, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay. By adjusting

2244-483: A resemblance to Old Japanese , written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters. This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with

2376-548: A sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes. Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite. Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were

2508-564: A single Egyptian escaped alive. The account of the battle in the Babylonian Chronicle reads as follows: The king of Akkad stayed home (while) Nebuchadnezzar, his eldest son (and) crown prince mustered [the army of Akkad]. He took his army's lead and marched to Carchemish, which is on the bank of the Euphrates. He crossed the river at Carchemish. [...] They did battle together. The army of Egypt retreated before him. He inflicted

2640-576: A slightly different way. From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic , written in the Aramaic alphabet , but Akkadian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BC–226 AD). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until

2772-515: A son whose name is mostly missing. The desecration went so far as to drag Kudurru's body through the streets of Uruk. Kudurru can be identified with Nebuchadnezzar ( Nabû-kudurri-uṣur , "Kudurru" simply being a common and shortened nickname), a prominent official in Uruk who served as its governor under the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal ( r.   669–631 BC) in the 640s BC. In Assyrian tradition,

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2904-620: A stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk , at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East . An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing : Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay. The cuneiform writing system

3036-622: A third palace, the Summer Palace, built some distance north of the inner city walls in the northernmost corner of the outer walls. Babylonian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo - syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East . The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era . Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for

3168-428: Is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. c.  2600 BC ). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the arrival of Sargon, it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its king. Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script , and, probably, [were] invented under

3300-411: Is 64 years after 626 BC. The original Kudurru's second son, Nabu-shumu-ukin, also appears to be attested as a prominent general under Nabopolassar, and the name was also used by Nebuchadnezzar II for one of his sons, possibly honoring his dead uncle. Nebuchadnezzar's military career began in the reign of his father, though little information survives. Based on a letter sent to the temple administration of

3432-561: Is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC. Some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC. The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler Hita , as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy". The most famous Elamite scriptures and

3564-597: Is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the Hittite language and was used from the 17th until approximately the 13th century BC. More or less the same system was used by the scribes of the Hittite Empire for two other Anatolian languages , namely Luwian (alongside the native Anatolian hieroglyphics ) and Palaic , as well as for the isolate Hattic language . When the cuneiform script

3696-429: Is called gunû or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken , they are called šešig ; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu . "Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs);

3828-417: Is no longer mentioned in any sources after 602 BC. The damage to the text however makes this idea speculative and conjectural. In the 601 BC campaign, Nebuchadnezzar departed from the Levant and then marched into Egypt. Despite the defeat at Carchemish in 605 BC, Egypt still had a great amount of influence in the Levant, even though the region was ostensibly under Babylonian rule. Thus, a campaign against Egypt

3960-421: Is possible that the intensity of the destruction carried out by Nebuchadnezzar at Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Levant was due to the implementation of something akin to a scorched earth -policy, aimed at stopping Egypt from gaining a foothold there. Some Jewish administration was allowed to remain in the region under the governor Gedaliah , governing from Mizpah under close Babylonian monitoring. According to

4092-627: Is recorded in the Bible, but also in the Babylonian Chronicle, which describes it as follows: The seventh year [of Nebuchadnezzar], in the month of Kislimu, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Levant, and set up quarters facing the city of Judah [Jerusalem]. In the month of Addaru [early in 597 BC], the second day, he took the city and captured the king. He installed there a king of his choice. He colle[cted] its massive tribute and went back to Babylon. Jehoiakim had died during Nebuchadnezzar's siege and been replaced by his son, Jeconiah , who

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4224-549: Is remembered as a great builder king. The prosperity ensured by his wars allowed Nebuchadnezzar to conduct great building projects in Babylon, and elsewhere in Mesopotamia. The modern image of Babylon is largely of the city as it was after Nebuchadnezzar's projects, during which he, among other work, rebuilt many of the city's religious buildings, including the Esagila and Etemenanki , renovated its existing palace, constructed

4356-633: Is unclear how the Egyptian navy would have defeated the superior navies of the Phoenician cities, and even if some cities had been taken, they must have shortly thereafter fallen into Babylonian hands again. Tyre had rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar at around the same time as Judah, and Nebuchadnezzar moved to retake the city after his successful subduing of the Jews. The biblical Book of Ezekiel describes Tyre in 571 BC as if it had been recently captured by

4488-581: The Babylonian Chronicles , Nebuchadnezzar also commanded an army in an unspecified mountainous region for several months in 607 BC. In the war against the Babylonians and Medes, Assyria had allied with Pharaoh Psamtik I of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt , who had been interested in ensuring Assyria's survival so that Assyria could remain as a buffer state between his own kingdom and the Babylonian and Median kingdoms. After

4620-578: The Babylonian Chronicle , confirm some events of his reign, such as conflicts with the Kingdom of Judah , other events, such as the 586 BC destruction of Solomon's Temple and other military campaigns Nebuchadnezzar possibly conducted, are not covered in any known cuneiform documents. As a result, historical reconstructions of this period generally follow secondary sources in Hebrew , Greek and Latin to determine what events transpired at

4752-520: The Babylonian Empire from the 18th century BC; there was also a little lake which was named Abzu by the Babylonian priests. This Abzu was a representation of Marduk's father, Enki , who was god of the waters and lived in the Abzu that was the source of all the fresh waters. Esarhaddon , king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (681 – 669 BC), reconstructed the temple. He claimed that he built

4884-586: The Book of Jeremiah and the Books of Kings in the Bible. It is possible to conclude, based on subsequent geopolitics, that the victory resulted in all of Syria and Israel coming under the control of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, a feat which the Assyrians under Tiglath-Pileser III ( r.   745–727 BC) only accomplished after five years of protracted military campaigns. The defeat of Egypt at Carchemish ensured that

5016-458: The Iron Age (c. 10th to 6th centuries BC), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract: Babylonian cuneiform was simplified along similar lines during that period, albeit to a lesser extent and in

5148-420: The Kingdom of Judah , and its capital, Jerusalem . The destruction of Jerusalem led to the Babylonian captivity as the city's population, and people from the surrounding lands, were deported to Babylonia. The Jews thereafter referred to Nebuchadnezzar, the greatest enemy they had faced until that point, as a "destroyer of nations" (משחית גוים, Jer. 4:7). The biblical Book of Jeremiah paints Nebuchadnezzar as

5280-413: The Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin , the Louvre , the Istanbul Archaeology Museums , the National Museum of Iraq , the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum . Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world. The decipherment of cuneiform began with

5412-531: The Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are: Except for the Winkelhaken , which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called tenû in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ tenû a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this

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5544-477: The cuneiform script , but as Babylon was gradually abandoned under the Parthian Empire , the temple fell into decay in the 1st century BC. Under the enormous heap of debris that lay over it, Esagila was rediscovered by Robert Koldewey in November 1900, but it did not begin to be seriously examined until 1910. The rising water table has obliterated much of the sun-dried brick and other oldest material. Most of

5676-405: The "first" or "chief son" of Nabopolassar, and as Nabopolassar's "true" or "legitimate heir". The Neo-Babylonian Empire was founded through Nabopolassar's rebellion, and later war , against the Neo-Assyrian Empire , which liberated Babylonia after nearly a century of Assyrian control. The war resulted in the complete destruction of Assyria, and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which rose in its place,

5808-401: The 23rd century BC ( short chronology ). The Akkadian language being East Semitic , its structure was completely different from Sumerian. The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well: for example the character for "sheep"

5940-509: The 3rd millennium Sumerian script. Ugaritic was written using the Ugaritic alphabet , a standard Semitic style alphabet (an abjad ) written using the cuneiform method. Between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by

6072-480: The Akkadian period, at the time of the Uruk ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270 BC). The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium. Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700 BC. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from

6204-583: The Babylonian Empire. The outcome of these efforts was Zedekiah's open revolt against Nebuchadnezzar's authority. Unfortunately, no cuneiform sources are preserved from this time and the only known account of the fall of Judah is the biblical account. In 589 BC, Zedekiah refused to pay tribute to Nebuchadnezzar, and he was closely followed in this by Ithobaal III , the king of Tyre. In 587 BC, Ammon, Edom and Moab likewise rebelled. In response to Zedekiah's uprising, Nebuchadnezzar conquered and destroyed

6336-597: The Babylonian army. The supposed length of the siege, 13 years, is only given by Flavius Josephus, and is subject to debate among modern scholars. Josephus's account of Nebuchadnezzar's reign is obviously not entirely historic, as he describes Nebuchadnezzar as, five years after the destruction of Jerusalem, invading Egypt, capturing the Pharaoh and appointing another Pharaoh in his place. A stele from Tahpanhes uncovered in 2011 records that Nebuchadnezzar attempted to invade Egypt in 582 BC, although Apries' forces managed to repel

6468-563: The Bible, and the 1st-century AD Jewish historian Flavius Josephus , Zedekiah attempted to flee after resisting the Babylonians, but was captured at Jericho and suffered a terrible fate. According to the narrative, Nebuchadnezzar wanted to make an example out of him given that Zedekiah was not an ordinary vassal, but a vassal directly appointed by Nebuchadnezzar. As such, Zedekiah was supposedly taken to Riblah in northern Syria, where he had to watch his sons being executed before having his eyes gouged out and sent to be imprisoned in Babylon. Per

6600-589: The Books of Kings in the Bible, the campaign against Judah was longer than typical Mesopotamian wars, with the siege of Jerusalem lasting 18–30 months (depending on the calculation), rather than the typical length of less than a year. Whether the unusual length of the siege indicates that the Babylonian army was weak, unable to break into the city for more than a year, or that Nebuchadnezzar by this time had succeeded in stabilising his rule in Babylonia and could thus wage war patiently without being pressured by time to escalate

6732-609: The Eanna temple, it appears that Nebuchadnezzar participated in his father's campaign to take the city of Harran in 610 BC. Harran was the seat of Ashur-uballit II , who had rallied what remained of the Assyrian army and ruled the Neo-Assyrian rump state . The Babylonian victory in the Harran campaign and the defeat of Ashur-uballit in 609 BCE marked the end of the ancient Assyrian monarchy, which would never be restored. According to

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6864-546: The Egyptians and rushed back to Babylon, where he was proclaimed king on 1 Ulūlu (mid-August). The speed in which Nebuchadnezzar returned to Babylon might be due to the threat that one of his brothers (two are known by name: Nabu-shum-lishir and Nabu-zer-ushabshi) could claim the throne in his absence. Though Nebuchadnezzar had been recognised as the eldest son and heir by Nabopolassar, Nabu-shum-lishir, Nabopolassar's second-born son, had been recognised as "his equal brother",

6996-459: The Euphrates. The following year, Nebuchadnezzar marched his army along the Tigris river to do battle with the Elamites, but no actual battle happened as the Elamites retreated out of fear once Nebuchadnezzar was a day's march away. In 595 BC, Nebuchadnezzar stayed at home in Babylon but soon had to face a rebellion against his rule there, though he defeated the rebels, with the chronicle stating that

7128-581: The Great , he is typically regarded as the empire's greatest king. Nebuchadnezzar remains famous for his military campaigns in the Levant , for his construction projects in his capital, Babylon , including the Hanging Gardens of Babylon , and for the role he plays in Jewish history . Ruling for 43 years, Nebuchadnezzar was the longest-reigning king of the Babylonian dynasty . By the time of his death, he

7260-486: The Kingdom of Judah in 586 BC, one of the great achievements of his reign. The campaign, which probably ended in the summer of 586 BC, resulted in the plunder and destruction of the city of Jerusalem, a permanent end to Judah, and it led to the Babylonian captivity , as the Jews were captured and deported to Babylonia. Archaeological excavations confirm that Jerusalem and the surrounding area was destroyed and depopulated. It

7392-409: The Kingdom of Judah, succeeding in capturing the city of Jerusalem . Judah represented a prime target of Babylonian attention given that it was at the epicenter of competition between Babylon and Egypt. By 601 BC, Judah's king, Jehoiakim , had begun to openly challenge Babylonian authority, counting on that Egypt would lend support to his cause. Nebuchadnezzar's first, 598–597 BC, assault on Jerusalem

7524-416: The Levant, though little information survives beyond that a "vast" amount of booty was brought from the Levant to Babylonia in 602 BC. On account of the entry for 602 BC also referring to Nabu-shum-lishir, Nebuchadnezzar's younger brother, in a fragmentary and unclear context, it is possible that Nabu-shum-lishir led a revolt against his brother in an attempt to usurp the throne in that year, especially since he

7656-572: The Medes were beginning to be seen as "enemies". By 594 BC, the failure of the Egyptian invasion, and the lacklustre state of Nebuchadnezzar's other campaigns, loomed high. According to the Assyriologist Israel Ephʿal, Babylon at this time was seen by its contemporaries more like a " paper tiger " (i. e. an ineffectual threat) than a great empire, like Assyria just a few decades prior. From his appointment as king of Judah, Zedekiah waited for

7788-545: The Neo-Babylonian Empire would grow to become the major power of the ancient Near East, and the uncontested successor of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Nabopolassar died just a few weeks after Nebuchadnezzar's victory at Carchemish. At this point in time, Nebuchadnezzar was still away on his campaign against the Egyptians, having chased the retreating Egyptian forces to the region around the city of Hamath . The news of Nabopolassar's death reached Nebuchadnezzar's camp on 8 Abu (late July), and Nebuchadnezzar quickly arranged affairs with

7920-548: The Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semitic languages , the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Elamite cuneiform appears to have used far fewer signs than its Akkadian prototype and initially relied primarily on syllabograms, but logograms became more common in later texts. Many signs soon acquired highly distinctive local shape variants that are often difficult to recognise as related to their Akkadian prototypes. Hittite cuneiform

8052-471: The Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion. The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to know in which language they were written. Different languages have been proposed, though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets dating after c.  2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show

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8184-523: The Sumerians was not intuitive to Semitic speakers. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and

8316-500: The aforementioned rebellion in Babylonia itself, as well as records of a man being executed in 594 BC at Borspippa for "breaking his oath to the king". The oath-breaking was serious enough that the judge in the trial was Nebuchadnezzar himself. It is also possible that Babylonian–Median relations were becoming strained, with records of a "Median defector" being housed in Nebuchadnezzar's palace and some inscriptions indicating that

8448-436: The assumption that "Nebuchadnezzar" is a later, corrupted form of the contemporary Nabû-kudurri-uṣur . The alternate anglicisation "Nebuchadrezzar" derives from how the name is rendered in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel , נְבוּכַדְרֶאצַּר ( Nəḇūḵaḏreʾṣṣar ), a more faithful transliteration of the original Akkadian name. The Assyriologist Adrianus van Selms suggested in 1974 that the variant with an "n" rather than an "r"

8580-414: The beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol (𒋾). As a result, many signs gradually changed from being logograms to also functioning as syllabograms , so that for example, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti". Syllabograms were used in Sumerian writing especially to express grammatical elements, and their use

8712-469: The bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC . The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite , Elamite , Hurrian , Luwian , and Urartian . The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. Cuneiform

8844-490: The characteristic wedge-shaped impressions ( Latin : cuneus ) which form their signs . Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq ). Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up

8976-452: The chronicle excuses the king by stating that he stayed in Babylon to "refit his numerous horses and chariotry". Some of the years when Nebuchadnezzar was victorious can also hardly be considered real challenges. Raiding the Arabs in 599 BC was not a major military accomplishment and the victory over Judah and the retreat of the Elamites were not secured on the battlefield. It thus appears that Nebuchadnezzar achieved little military success after

9108-474: The city of Ascalon . According to the Babylonian Chronicle, Ascalon's king was captured and taken to Babylon, and the city was plundered and levelled to the ground. Modern excavations at Ascalon have confirmed that the city was more or less destroyed at this point in time. The Ascalon campaign was preceded by a campaign in Syria, which was more successful than Nebuchadnezzar's first, resulting in oaths of fealty from

9240-615: The city of Carchemish in Syria, where Necho established his base of operations. Nebuchadnezzar's greatest victory from his time as crown prince came at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, which put an end to Necho's campaign in the Levant by inflicting a crushing defeat on the Egyptians. Nebuchadnezzar had been the sole commander of the Babylonian army at this battle as his father had chosen to stay in Babylon, perhaps on account of illness. Necho's forces were completely annihilated by Nebuchadnezzar's army, with Babylonian sources claiming that not

9372-466: The city withstood numerous sieges, it would not be captured until Alexander the Great 's siege in 332 BC. In the end, the siege was resolved without a need of battle and did not result in the Tyre being conquered. It seems Tyre's king and Nebuchadnezzar came to an agreement for Tyre to continue to be ruled by vassal kings, though probably under heavier Babylonian control than before. Documents from Tyre near

9504-439: The city. In 2007, Michael Jursa advanced the theory that Nabopolassar was a member of a prominent political family in Uruk, whose members are attested since the reign of Esarhaddon ( r.   681–669 BC). To support his theory, Jursa pointed to how documents describe how the grave and body of "Kudurru", a deceased governor of Uruk, was desecrated due to the anti-Assyrian activities of Kudurru's two sons, Nabu-shumu-ukin and

9636-431: The compound IGI.A (𒅆𒀀) – "eye" + "water" – has the reading imhur , meaning "foam"). Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a symbol. For instance, the word 'raven' (UGA) had the same logogram (𒉀) as the word 'soap' (NAGA), the name of a city (EREŠ), and the patron goddess of Eresh (NISABA). To disambiguate and identify

9768-514: The decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform in 1836. The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times were copied from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the ruins of Persepolis , with the first complete and accurate copy being published in 1778 by Carsten Niebuhr . Niebuhr's publication was used by Grotefend in 1802 to make the first breakthrough – the realization that Niebuhr had published three different languages side by side and

9900-425: The desecration of a dead body showed that the deceased individual and their surviving family were traitors and enemies of the state, and that they had to be completely eradicated, serving to punish them even after death. The name of the son whose name is unpreserved in the letter ended with either ahi , nâsir or uṣur , and the remaining traces can fit with the name Nabû-apla-uṣur , meaning that Nabopolassar could be

10032-549: The development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter. But given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt". Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..." Early cuneiform inscriptions were made by using

10164-446: The early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC. Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persian cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to

10296-399: The end of Nebuchadnezzar's reign demonstrate that the city had become a centre for Babylonian military affairs in the region. According to later Jewish tradition, it is possible that Ithobaal III was deposed and taken as a prisoner to Babylon, with another king, Baal II, proclaimed by Nebuchadnezzar in his place. It is possible that Nebuchadnezzar campaigned against Egypt in 568 BC, given that

10428-434: The end of the month in which he had been crowned, Nebuchadnezzar returned to Syria to resume his campaign. The Babylonian Chronicle records that "he marched about victoriously", meaning that he faced little to no resistance, returning to Babylon after several months of campaigning. The Syrian campaign, though it resulted in a certain amount of plunder, was not a complete success in that it did not ensure Nebuchadnezzar's grasp on

10560-564: The failure of his invasion of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar's poor military record had dangerous geopolitical consequences. According to the Bible, in Zedekiah's fourth year as king of Judah (594 BC), the kings of Ammon , Edom , Moab , Sidon and Tyre met in Jerusalem to deal with the possibility of throwing off Babylonian control. Evidence that Babylonian control was beginning to unravel is also clear from contemporary Babylonian records, such as

10692-427: The fall of Harran, Psamtik's successor, Pharaoh Necho II , personally led a large army into former Assyrian lands to turn the tide of the war and restore the Neo-Assyrian Empire , even though it was more or less a lost cause as Assyria had already collapsed. As Nabopolassar was occupied with fighting Urartu in the north, the Egyptians took control of the Levant largely unopposed, capturing territories as far north as

10824-543: The finds at Babylon reflect the Neo-Babylonian period and later. This temple is square, and each side is two stadia in length. In the centre is a massive tower, of one stadium in length and breadth; on this tower stands another tower, and another again upon this, and so on up to eight. Data from the Esagila tablet, which was copied from older texts in 229 BC and describes Esagila in lines 1–15 before passing on to

10956-413: The influence of the latter", and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before

11088-430: The inner sanctum which contained the statues of Marduk and his consort Sarpanit . According to Herodotus , Xerxes had a statue removed from the Esagila when he flooded Babylon in 482 BC, desecrated the Esagila and sacked the city. Alexander the Great ordered restorations, and the temple continued to be maintained throughout the 2nd century BC, as one of the last strongholds of Babylonian culture, such as literacy in

11220-421: The invasion and gained a foothold in Egypt, but they were repelled by Amasis' forces. If Nebuchadnezzar did campaign against Egypt again, he was unsuccessful again, given that Egypt did not come under Babylonian rule. Nebuchadnezzar's campaigns in the Levant, most notably those directed towards Jerusalem and Tyre, completed the Neo-Babylonian Empire's transformation from a rump state of the Neo-Assyrian Empire to

11352-407: The invasion. Josephus states that Nebuchadnezzar besieged Tyre in the seventh year of "his" reign, though it is unclear whether "his" in this context refers to Nebuchadnezzar or to Ithobaal III of Tyre. If it refers to Nebuchadnezzar, a siege begun in 598 BC and lasting for thirteen years, later simultaneously with the siege of Jerusalem, is unlikely to have gone unmentioned in Babylonian records. If

11484-409: The king "put his large army to the sword and conquered his foe." Shortly thereafter, Nebuchadnezzar again campaigned in the Levant and secured large amounts of tribute. In the last year recorded in the chronicle, 594 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in the Levant yet again. There were several years without any noteworthy military activity at all. Notably, Nebuchadnezzar spent all of 600 BC in Babylon, when

11616-405: The king, some going as far as to revolt against Nebuchadnezzar's rule. After this disappointing early period as king, Nebuchadnezzar's luck turned. In the 580s BC, Nebuchadnezzar engaged in a successful string of military actions in the Levant against the vassal states in rebellion there, likely with the ultimate intent of curbing Egyptian influence in the region. In 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed

11748-407: The ligature KAxGUR 7 consists of 31 strokes. Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary , together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears

11880-443: The meaning and the other the pronunciation (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' was combined with the sign 𒉣 nun 'prince' to express the word 𒅻 nundum , meaning 'lip', formally KA×NUN; cf. Chinese phono-semantic compounds ). Another way of expressing words that had no sign of their own was by so-called 'Diri compounds' – sign sequences that have, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example,

12012-468: The near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak , and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. It has been suggested that

12144-450: The new dominant power of the ancient Near East. Still, Nebuchadnezzar's military accomplishments can be questioned, given that the borders of his empire, by the end of his reign, had not noticeably increased in size and that he had not managed to conquer Egypt. Even after a reign of several decades, Nebuchadnezzar's greatest victory remained his victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish in 605 BC, before he even became king. The Babylonian king

12276-477: The ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual Behistun inscriptions , commissioned by the Achaemenid kings. The inscriptions, similar to that of the Rosetta Stone 's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persian , which was deciphered in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after

12408-423: The opportune moment to throw off Babylonian control. After Pharaoh Necho II's death in 595 BC, Egyptian intervention in affairs in the Levant increased once again under his successors, Psamtik II ( r.   595–589 BC) and Apries ( r.   589–570 BC), who both worked to encourage anti-Babylonian rebellions. It is possible that the Babylonian failure to invade Egypt in 601 BC helped inspire revolts against

12540-462: The other son mentioned in the letter and thus a son of Kudurru. Strengthening this connection is that Nebuchadnezzar II is attested very early during his father's reign, from 626/625 to 617 BC, as high priest of the Eanna temple in Uruk, where he is often attested under the nickname "Kudurru". Nebuchadnezzar must have been made high priest at a very young age, considering that his year of death, 562 BC,

12672-483: The prospering economy during Nebuchadnezzar's reign, sustained by his conquests. His building inscriptions record work done to numerous temples, notably the restoration of the Esagila , the main temple of Babylon's national deity Marduk , and the completion of the Etemenanki , a great ziggurat dedicated to Marduk. Extensive work was also conducted on civil and military structures. Among the most impressive efforts

12804-402: The recognition of the word "king". Esagila The Ésagila or Esangil ( Sumerian : 𒂍𒊕𒅍𒆷 É -SAǦ-ÍL.LA , " temple whose top is lofty" ) was a temple dedicated to Marduk , the protector god of Babylon . It lay south of the ziggurat Etemenanki . In this temple was the statue of Marduk , surrounded by cult images of the cities that had fallen under the hegemony of

12936-399: The region. He had seemingly failed to inspire fear, given that none of the westernmost states in the Levant swore fealty to him and paid tribute. Though little information survives concerning them, the Babylonian Chronicle preserves brief accounts of Nebuchadnezzar's military activities in his first eleven years as king. In 604 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in the Levant once again, conquering

13068-426: The reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, and the reigns of his three immediate successors; Amel-Marduk , Neriglissar and Labashi-Marduk . This lack of sources has the unfortunate effect that even though Nebuchadnezzar had the longest reign of all of them, less is confidently known of Nebuchadnezzar's reign than of the reigns of almost all the other Neo-Babylonian kings. Though the handful of cuneiform sources recovered, notably

13200-449: The relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left. Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence

13332-502: The royal family he founded, and the term "Chaldean Empire" remains in use as an alternate historiographical name for the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Nabopolassar appears to, regardless of his ethnic origin, have been strongly connected to the city of Uruk , located south of Babylon. It is possible that he was a member of its ruling elite before becoming king and there is a growing body of evidence that Nabopolassar's family originated in Uruk, for instance that Nebuchadnezzar's daughters lived in

13464-446: The rulers of Phoenicia . In 603 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in a land whose name is not preserved in the surviving copy of the chronicle. The chronicle records that this campaign was extensive, given that the account mentions the construction of large siege towers and a siege of a city, the name of which does not survive either. Anson Rainey speculated in 1975 that the city taken was Gaza, whereas Nadav Na'aman thought in 1992 that it

13596-432: The seventh year of Ithobaal is intended, the beginning of the siege may conjecturally be placed after Jerusalem's fall. If the siege lasting 13 years is taken at face value, the siege would then not have ended before 573 or 572 BC. The supposed length of the siege can be ascribed to the difficulty in besieging the city: Tyre was located on an island 800 metres from the coast, and could not be taken without naval support. Though

13728-454: The siege, is not certain. It is possible that the Egyptians took advantage of the Babylonians being preoccupied with besieging Jerusalem. Herodotus describes Pharaoh Apries as campaigning in the Levant, taking the city of Sidon and fighting the Tyrians, which indicates a renewed Egyptian invasion of the Levant. Apries is unlikely to have been as successful as Herodotus describes, given that it

13860-415: The syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols. The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs. They could either derive their meaning from a combination of the meanings of both original signs (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' and 𒀀 a 'water' were combined to form the sign for 𒅘 nag̃ 'drink', formally KA×A; cf. Chinese compound ideographs ), or one sign could suggest

13992-448: The temple from the foundation to the battlements, a claim corroborated by dedicatory inscriptions found on the stones of the temple's walls on the site. The Esagila complex, completed in its final form by Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BC) encasing earlier cores, was the center of Babylon. It comprised a large court (ca. 40×70 meters), containing a smaller court (ca. 25×40 meters), and finally the central shrine, consisting of an anteroom and

14124-424: The third century AD. The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at

14256-466: The time, in addition to contract tablets from Babylonia. Though use of the sources written by later authors, many of them created several centuries after Nebuchadnezzar's time and often reflecting their own cultural attitudes to the events and figures discussed, presents problems in and of itself, blurring the line between history and tradition, it is the only possible approach to gain insight into Nebuchadnezzar's reign. Nebuchadnezzar II's name in Akkadian

14388-432: The time, such as Elamite , Akkadian, Hurrian , and Hittite cuneiforms. It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" ( 𐏎 ), "king" ( 𐏋 ) or "country" ( 𐏌 ). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by

14520-669: The token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs. Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr , Early Dynastic I Ur and Susa (in Proto-Elamite ) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BC. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with

14652-601: The two languages are related, their writing systems seem to have been developed separately. For Hurrian, there were even different systems in different polities (in Mitanni , in Mari , in the Hittite Empire). The Hurrian orthographies were generally characterised by more extensive use of syllabograms and more limited use of logograms than Akkadian. Urartian, in comparison, retained a more significant role for logograms. In

14784-565: The word more precisely, two phonetic complements were added – Ú (𒌑) for the syllable [u] in front of the symbol and GA (𒂵) for the syllable [ga] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird', MUŠEN (𒄷) was added to ensure proper interpretation. As a result, the whole word could be spelt 𒌑𒉀𒂵𒄷, i.e. Ú.NAGA.GA (among the many variant spellings that the word could have). For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before

14916-409: The ziggurat of Etemenanki, have aided in the temple's reconstruction. The tablet, described by George Smith in 1872, disappeared for some time into private hands before it resurfaced and began to be interpreted. The Esagila tablet hold Babylonian calculating methods considered to be sacred as they read in the back "let the initiate show the initiate, the non-initiate must not see this". On the front,

15048-437: Was Kummuh in south-eastern Anatolia . In the second half of the 5th century BC, some documents mentioned the towns Isqalanu (the name derived from Ascalon) and Hazzatu (the name possibly derived from Gaza) near the city of Nippur, indicating that deportees from both of these cities lived near Nippur, and as such possibly that they had been captured at around the same time. In both 602 BC and 601 BC, Nebuchadnezzar campaigned in

15180-434: Was Nabû-kudurri-uṣur , meaning " Nabu , watch over my heir". The name was often interpreted in earlier scholarship as "Nabu, protect the boundary", given that the word kudurru can also mean 'boundary' or 'line'. Modern historians support the 'heir' interpretation over the 'boundary' interpretation in terms of this name. There is no reason to believe that the Babylonians intended the name to be difficult to interpret or to have

15312-509: Was a renowned warrior-king, who appeared in a time of political upheaval and defeated the forces of Babylon's enemies, in Nebuchadnezzar I's case the Elamites . Although theophoric names using the god Nabu are common in texts from the early Neo-Babylonian Empire, the name Nebuchadnezzar is relatively rare, only being mentioned four times with certainty. Though there is no evidence that Nabopolassar named his son after Nebuchadnezzar I, Nabopolassar

15444-578: Was a rude nickname, deriving from an Akkadian rendition like Nabû-kūdanu-uṣur , which means 'Nabu, protect the mule ', though there is no concrete evidence for this idea. Van Selms believed that a nickname like that could derive from Nebuchadnezzar's early reign, which was plagued by political instability. Nebuchadnezzar II's name, Nabû-kudurri-uṣur , was identical to the name of his distant predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar I ( r.   c. 1125–1104 BC), who ruled more than five centuries before Nebuchadnezzar II's time. Like Nebuchadnezzar II, Nebuchadnezzar I

15576-561: Was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings, also known as Akkadograms, was added to the script, in addition to the Sumerian logograms, or Sumerograms, which were already inherent in the Akkadian writing system and which Hittite also kept. Thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown. The Hurrian language (attested 2300–1000 BC) and Urartian language (attested 9th–6th century BC) were also written in adapted versions of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. Although

15708-569: Was among the most powerful rulers in the world. Possibly named after his grandfather of the same name , or after Nebuchadnezzar I ( r.   c. 1125–1104 BC), one of Babylon's greatest ancient warrior-kings, Nebuchadnezzar II already secured renown for himself during his father's reign, leading armies in the Medo-Babylonian conquest of the Assyrian Empire . At the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, Nebuchadnezzar inflicted

15840-501: Was captured and taken to Babylon, with his uncle Zedekiah installed in his place as king of Judah. Jeconiah is recorded as being alive in Babylonia thereafter, with records as late as 592 or 591 BC listing him among the recipients of food at Nebuchadnezzar's palace and still referring to him as the 'king of the land of Judah'. In 597 BC, the Babylonian army departed for the Levant again, but appears to not have engaged in any military activities as they turned back immediately after reaching

15972-406: Was further developed and modified in the writing of the Akkadian language to express its sounds. Often, words that had a similar meaning but very different sounds were written with the same symbol. For instance the Sumerian words 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the original pictogram for mouth (𒅗). Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance,

16104-452: Was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BC down to the second century AD. The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80 AD. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing , in the general sense, in the course of the Roman era , and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as

16236-483: Was invented, during the Neolithic , when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes ( clay bullae ) and then stored in them. The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with

16368-403: Was knowledgeable in history and actively worked to connect his rule to the rule of the Akkadian Empire , which preceded him by nearly two thousand years. The significance of his son and heir bearing the name of one of Babylon's greatest kings would not have been lost on Nabopolassar. If Jursa's theory concerning Nabopolassar's origin is correct, it is alternatively possible that Nebuchadnezzar II

16500-471: Was logical in order to assert Babylonian dominance, and also carried enormous economic and propagandistic benefits, but it was also risky and ambitious. The path into Egypt was difficult, and the lack of secure control of either side of the Sinai Desert could spell disaster. Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Egypt failed – the Babylonian Chronicle states that both the Egyptian and Babylonian armies suffered

16632-438: Was named after his grandfather of the same name, as the Babylonians employed patronymics , rather than after the previous king. Nebuchadnezzar was the eldest son of Nabopolassar ( r.   626–605 BC), the founder of the Neo-Babylonian Empire . This is confirmed by Nabopolassar's inscriptions, which explicitly name Nebuchadnezzar as his "eldest son", as well as inscriptions from Nebuchadnezzar's reign, which refer to him as

16764-451: Was not needed. Most surviving cuneiform tablets were of the latter kind, accidentally preserved when fires destroyed the tablets' storage place and effectively baked them, unintentionally ensuring their longevity. The script was widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in

16896-438: Was powerful, but hastily built and politically unstable. As Nabopolassar never clarified his ancestry in lineage in any of his inscriptions, his origin is not entirely clear. Subsequent historians have variously identified Nabopolassar as a Chaldean , an Assyrian or a Babylonian . Although no evidence conclusively confirms him as being of Chaldean origin, the term " Chaldean dynasty " is frequently used by modern historians for

17028-428: Was rediscovered in modern times in the early 17th century with the publication of the trilingual Achaemenid royal inscriptions at Persepolis ; these were first deciphered in the early 19th century. The modern study of cuneiform belongs to the ambiguously named field of Assyriology , as the earliest excavations of cuneiform libraries – in the mid-19th century – were in the area of ancient Assyria . An estimated half

17160-406: Was retained, but was now pronounced immerum , rather than the Sumerian udu . Such retained individual signs or, sometimes, entire sign combinations with logographic value are known as Sumerograms , a type of heterogram . The East Semitic languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by

17292-613: Was the work done surrounding the city's northern ceremonial entrance, the Ishtar Gate . These projects included restoration work on the South Palace, inside the city walls, the construction of a completely new North Palace, on the other side of the walls facing the gate, as well as the restoration of Babylon's Processional Street, which led through the gate, and of the gate itself. The ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's North Palace are poorly preserved and as such its structure and appearance are not entirely understood. Nebuchadnezzar also constructed

17424-414: Was traditionally a builder and restorer, and as such large-scale building projects were important as a legitimizing factor for Babylonian rulers. Nebuchadnezzar extensively expanded and rebuilt his capital city of Babylon and the most modern historical and archaeological interpretations of the city reflect it as it appeared after Nebuchadnezzar's construction projects. The projects were made possible through

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