CHIEFLY FROM NIPPUR. 



39 



Bel-nadin-aplu, king of Babylon, in the fourth year of his reign (II, 6-10). The 

 document closes with a blessing for the official who in time to come shall respect 

 the decision (II, 11-20), and with a curse against him who shall remove the boundary 

 again (II, 21-24). 



Apart from the fact that the stone furnishes us with the name of one of the early 

 kings of the " Sea-land," with that of a hitherto unknown province or county of the 

 land of Kaldi, 1 and with other details of interest, it is of the greatest importance for 

 its chronological bearings. For the following reasons, the stone must be assigned to 

 the Pashe dynasty : (1) The cuneiform characters are those which are characteris- 

 tic of the documents of that period, and especially they resemble those of the charter 

 (Freibrief) of Nebuchadrezzar 1. 2 (2) Ekarra-ikisha, son of Ea-iddina, is mentioned 

 as an official 3 both on our stone (I, 10, 11 ; II, 6) and on that of Za'aleh (II, 6). 

 From this it follows that our stone belongs to about the same time as the other 

 which bears the date of the first year of King Marduknadinahe. (3) But we are 

 able to fix the date of our stone even more exactly from the statement in col. I, 7-15, 

 according to which the piece of land in question was in possession of the family of 

 Nabu-shum-iddina until the time of Nebuchadrezzar I, but in the fourth year of King 

 Belnadinaplu was unlawfully encroached upon by the governor, Ekarra-ikisha. The 

 result naturally is that the stone dates from the reign of Belnadinaplu, and that the 

 latter was the immediate successor of Nebuchadrezzar I. This proves, at the same 

 time, that the supposition made by Winckler 4 and Delitzsch, ' that Marduknadinahe 

 was the immediate successor of Nebuchadrezzar I, is wrong, and that the order is 

 rather Nebuchadrezzar I, Belnadinaplu, Marduknadinahe. 



The question arises, What place must be assigned to this group of three kings 

 in the dynasty of Pashe ? This, in my opinion, can be answered with entire certainty. 

 For although the Babylonian list" has been broken off at the very place where the 

 names of the rulers of this dynasty once stood, yet the characters which remain of the 

 last three kings serve us in solving the question. Of the five known kings of this dy- 

 nasty, 1. Nebuchadrezzar I, 2. Belnadinaplu, 3. Marduknadinahe, 4. Mardnkshapik- 

 zirim (sic!) (not Marduktabikzirim) 7 5. Rammanapluiddina, none of them fit into the 



1 Delitzsch, Paradies, p. 202 seq.; Winckler, Unters., p. 51 seq. 

 - Cf. Hilprecht, Freibrief Nebukadnezar' s I, and V R. 55-57. 



3 On our stone he appears as " governor of Bit-Sinmagir ;" on that of Za'aleh as "governorof the city of Ishin ;" 

 so that he probably had been transferred on the accession of Marduk-nadin-ahe, or possibly a little earlier. The pre- 

 vious "governor of Ishin " was Shamash-nadin-shumu, son of Atta-iluma (cf. Freibrief JSfebukadnezar' s I, col. ii, 17). 



4 QescJi., p. 96. 5 Gesch., p. 93. 

 c Winckler, Unters., p. 146 seq. 



1 A cylinder fragment of this king, in possession of Mr. Talcott Williams, of Philadelphia, was transliterated and 

 translated in Z. A. IV, 301-323. Paleographic reasons are decisive in fixing the date of this cylinder. Mr. Williams 

 has given me his kind permission to publish the cuneiform text in the second part of the present volume. Cf. below, p. 44. 



