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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

The regnal year on VAT 4956 is not a modern restoration of one damaged line: “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon” opens the obverse, the left edge repeats “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar” as a label, and the top edge carries a catch-line giving the opening of year 38 followed by a second, broken “Year 37”.

Claim ID claim-chronology-vat4956-year-number-thriceConcerns 1988Context
Context · 1988 Verified

The regnal year on VAT 4956 is not a modern restoration of one damaged line: “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon” opens the obverse, the left edge repeats “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar” as a label, and the top edge carries a catch-line giving the opening of year 38 followed by a second, broken “Year 37”. electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, 1988Online review (no journal of publication stated), 2008

Show the evidence (2 sources)
Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), fragment VAT.4956, “Astronomical diary for year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar II: catch-line and left edge”

1988 · pp.46-53 (ADART I, No. -567) · Abraham J. Sachs and Hermann Hunger (edition); Reinhard Pirngruber (digital edition) · Oesterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna (print edition)

“Year 38 of Nebuchadnezzar, month I, the 1st (of which followed the 30th of the preceding month): dense clouds so that [I did not see the moon ...] ... [Year 37 of Nebuchad]nezzar”

The king’s name and regnal year are written on the tablet in more than one place. “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon” opens the obverse; the top edge carries a catch-line giving the opening of year 38 and then a second, broken “Year 37 …”; and the left edge repeats “Year 37 of Nebuchadnezzar” as a label. The regnal year is therefore not a modern restoration of a single damaged line.

Official source Archived or alternative copy

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the eBL API record on 19 September 2026, surface by surface (obverse, top, left). The structured record also lists two “dates in text”, year 37 and year 38, for the same king.

Scan provenance. electronic Babylonian Library (eBL), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen. The edition reproduced there is that of Sachs and Hunger, digitised by Reinhard Pirngruber for the Astronomical Diaries Digital project (Austrian Academy of Sciences), CC BY-SA 3.0.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-ebl-vat4956-line1

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-ebl-vat4956-year-numbers

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Supported

Online review (no journal of publication stated), “Review of Rolf J. Furuli, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian Chronology, Volume II (Oslo: Awatu Publishers, 2nd ed., 2008)”

2008 · Hermann Hunger

“As for someone adding the numbers 37 and 38, there is no way of successfully adding cuneiform writing to a dried tablet. ... I state that the accusation is utterly groundless”

Hermann Hunger, co-editor of the standard edition of the astronomical diaries, responds in detail to the argument of Rolf Furuli, a Witness and former lecturer in Semitic languages at Oslo, that VAT 4956 supports 588/587 rather than 568/567 BCE and that the tablet may have been altered. Hunger also grants Furuli's general point that truth is not decided by 'the consensus of the majority of scholars'.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The full review was fetched and read on 19 September 2026 and the quoted words read in context. It states the reviewer's name and city but names no journal, volume or pages, and it is hosted on a partisan website; no peer-reviewed publication of this text was located. Treat it as an authoritative specialist's signed opinion, not as a peer-reviewed citation.

Scan provenance. Hosted on kristenfrihet.se, a personal website maintained by Carl Olof Jonsson, a former Jehovah's Witness and author of The Gentile Times Reconsidered.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-ebl-vat4956-year-numbers

Notes. The review also reports that F. R. Stephenson and D. M. Willis, evaluating the lunar data in Under One Sky (Muenster, 2002), concluded that the date 568/7 BC can be 'confidently affirmed'.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-hunger-review-furuli

Claim page

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