# Babylonian Chronicles

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The **Babylonian Chronicles** are a loosely defined series of about 45 [tablets](/source/Clay_tablet) recording major events in [Babylonian](/source/Babylon) history.[1]

They represent one of the first steps in the development of [ancient](/source/Ancient) [historiography](/source/Historiography). The Babylonian Chronicles are written in Babylonian [cuneiform](/source/Cuneiform) and date from the reign of [Nabonassar](/source/Nabonassar) until the [Parthian Period](/source/Parthian_Empire). The tablets were composed by Babylonian astronomers ("Chaldaeans") who probably used the [Babylonian astronomical diaries](/source/Babylonian_astronomical_diaries) as their source.

Almost all of the tablets were identified as chronicles once in the collection of the [British Museum](/source/British_Museum), having been acquired via antiquities dealers from unknown excavations undertaken during the 19th century. Only three of the chronicles are [provenanced](/source/Provenance).[1]

The Chronicles provide the "master narrative" for large blocks of current Babylonian history.[1]

## Discovery and publication

The chronicles are thought to have been transferred to the [British Museum](/source/British_Museum) after 19th century excavations in Babylon, and subsequently left undeciphered in the archives for decades. The first chronicle to be published was BM 92502 (ABC1) in 1887 by [Theophilus Pinches](/source/Theophilus_Pinches) under the title "The Babylonian Chronicle." This was followed in 1923 by the publication of the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle (ABC 3), in 1924 by [Sidney Smith](/source/Sidney_Smith_(Assyriologist))'s publication of the Esarhaddon Chronicle (ABC 14), the Akitu Chronicle (ABC 16) and the [Nabonidus Chronicle](/source/Nabonidus_Chronicle) (ABC 7), and in 1956 by [Donald Wiseman](/source/Donald_Wiseman)'s publication of four further tablets including the [Nebuchadnezzar Chronicle](/source/Nebuchadnezzar_Chronicle) (ABC 5).[2]

## Chronicles

### Numbering systems

ABC – A.K. Grayson, *Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles* (1975)

CM – Jean-Jacques Glassner, *Chroniques Mésopotamiennes* (1993) (translated as *Mesopotamian Chronicles*, 2004)

BCHP – R. J. van der Spek, Irving L. Finkel, Reinhard Pirngruber & Kathryn Stevens, *Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Period* (2025)

BM – British Museum Number

### List

Chronicle ABC CM BCHP BM Provenanced Dynastic chronicle (translation) (another version of Column 5) 18 3 Yes Royal chronicle of Lagaš 6 Weidner chronicle (translation) 19 38 Yes Early kings chronicle (translation) 20 39,40 Tummal chronicle 7 Uruk chronicle of the kings of Ur 48 Assyrian Eponym List (2nd millennium) 8 Market prices chronicle (translation) 23 50 Synchronic history (translation and another translation) 21 10 Yes Chronicle P (translation and another translation) 22 45 Enlil-nirari chronicle 11 Arik-den-ili chronicle 12 Walker chronicle 25 46 Tukulti-Ninurta chronicle 13 Aššur-reša-iši chronicle 14 Tiglath-pileser I chronicle 15 Eclectic chronicle (translation) 24 47 Religious chronicle (translation) 17 51 Assyrian Eponym List (1st millennium) 9 Nabu-šuma-iškun 52 From Nabu-Nasir to Šamaš-šuma-ukin (translation) 1 16 92502 From Nabu-Nasir to Esarhaddon 1B 17 75976 Esarhaddon chronicle (translation) 14 18 25091 Šamaš-šuma-ukin chronicle (translation) (another translation) 15 19 96273 Akitu chronicle (translation) 16 20 86379 Early Years of Nabopolassar chronicle (translation) 2 21 25127 Fall of Nineveh chronicle (translation) 3 22 21901 Late years of Nabopolassar chronicle (translation) 4 23 22047 Early Years of Nebuchadnezzar chronicle (translation) 5 24 21946 Third year of Neriglissar chronicle (translation) 6 25 25124 Nabonidus chronicle (text and translation) 7 26 35382 Chronographic document on Nabonidus 53 Artaxerxes III chronicle (translation) 9 28 Cyrus cylinder 17 90920 Alexander chronicle (text and translation) 8 29 1 Alexander and Arabia chronicle (text and translation) 2 Diadochi chronicle (text and translation) 10 30 3 Alexander and Artaxerxes (translation) 4 Antiochus I and Sin temple chronicle (text and translation) 11 32 5 Ruin of Esagila chronicle (text and translation) 6 Antiochus, Bactria, and India chronicle (text and translation) 13A 36 7 Juniper garden chronicle (text and translation) 8 End of Seleucus I chronicle (text and translation) 12 33 9 Seleucid Accessions chronicle (text and translation) 13 34 10 Invasion of Ptolemy III chronicle (text and translation) 11 Seleucus III chronicle (text and translation) 13B 35 12 Politai chronicle (text and translation) 13 Greek Community chronicle (text and translation) 14 Gold theft chronicle (text and translation) 15 Document on land and tithes (text and translation) 16 Judicial chronicle (text and translation) 37 17 Bagayasha chronicle 18 Chronicle concerning an Arsacid king (text and translation) 19 Euphrates chronicle (text and translation) 20

## See also

- [List of artifacts significant to the Bible](/source/List_of_artifacts_significant_to_the_Bible)
- [Chronology of the ancient Near East](/source/Chronology_of_the_ancient_Near_East)

## References

1. Waerzeggers, Caroline (2012). ["The Babylonian Chronicles: Classification and Provenance"](https://www.academia.edu/3268307). *Journal of Near Eastern Studies*. **71** (2): 285–298. University of Chicago Press. [doi:10.1086/666831](https://doi.org/10.1086/666831). [ISSN 0022-2968](https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0022-2968). [S2CID 162396743](https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:162396743) The "Babylonian Chronicles" are a miscellaneous, ill-defined group of texts… The most influential classification is that of A. K.Grayson. His book Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (ABC) is the starting point of any study undertaken on the topic. It assembled a variety of chronographic texts, including Assyrian chronicles and other writings which may not belong to the ill-defined chronicle genre (see below)… About forty-five Babylonian chronicles are now known. This includes the twenty-four texts published by Grayson in Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles and several new additions. The exact number is unclear because the genre is ill-defined… Most chronicles are preserved on clay tablets retrieved from Iraqi soil during illicit diggings at the end of the nineteenth century. In the corpus presented by Grayson, only three chronicles (in most of their copies) are provenanced, but these texts are atypical and their attribution to the chronicle genre is disputed… Despite the lack of formal provenance, most chronicles are regarded as products of the city of Babylon.

1. [Wiseman, 1956, pages 1+2](https://etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/20337.pdf)

## Literature

- Leo Oppenheim's translation of the [Nabonidus Chronicle](/source/Nabonidus_Chronicle) can be found in [J. B. Pritchard](/source/James_B._Pritchard) (ed.) *[Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament](/source/Ancient_Near_Eastern_Texts_Relating_to_the_Old_Testament)* (= *ANET*; 1950, 1955, 1969).
- The standard edition is [A.K. Grayson](/source/Albert_Kirk_Grayson), *Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles* (= *ABC*; 1975; ISBN 978-1-57506-049-1).
- A translation of Chronicle 25, discovered after the publication of *ABC*, was published by C.B.F. Walker "Babylonian Chronicle 25: A Chronicle of the Kassite and Isin Dynasties", in G. van Driel e.a. (eds.): *Zikir Šumim: Assyriological Studies Presented to F.R. Kraus on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday* (= *Fs. Kraus*; 1982).
- John Brinkman revises Grayson's reading of [*ABC* 1](https://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/abc1/abc1_col_i.html) [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20160304074617/http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/abc1/abc1_col_i.html) 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine in: "The Babylonian Chronicle revisited" in T. Abusch, J. Huehnergard, P. Steinkeller (eds.): *Lingering over Words. Studies in Ancient Near Eastern literature in Honor of William L. Moran* (1990 Atlanta; ISBN 978-1-55540-502-1).
- Fragments of the chronicles that are relevant to the study of the [Bible](/source/Bible), can be found in [William W. Hallo](/source/William_W._Hallo) (ed.), *The Context of Scripture*, volume 1 (2003 Leiden and Boston; ISBN 978-90-04-10618-5). This book also contains the Weidner Chronicle.
- A recent update of *ABC* is [Jean-Jacques Glassner](/source/Jean-Jacques_Glassner), *Mesopotamian Chronicles* (= *CM*; 2004, ISBN 978-1-58983-090-5; French version 1993, ISBN 978-2-251-33918-4).
- An even more recent update of *ABC* is [Amélie Kuhrt](/source/Am%C3%A9lie_Kuhrt), *The Persian Empire: A Corpus of Sources of the Achaemenid Period* (Routledge, 2007; ISBN 978-0-415-55279-0).
- The chronicles of the Hellenistic Period are published in [R. J. van der Spek](/source/R._J._van_der_Spek), [Irving L. Finkel](/source/Irving_L._Finkel), Reinhard Pirngruber & Kathryn Stevens, *Babylonian Chronographic Texts from the Hellenistic Period* (SBL Press, 2025; ISBN 978-1-62837-589-3).
- An exposition that the Babylonian Chronicle should be regarded as a literary interpretation of the past in Waerzeggers, Caroline. "Writing History Under Empire: The Babylonian Chronicle Reconsidered", *Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History*, vol. 8, no. 1-2, 2021, pp. 279-317.

## External links

- [Mesopotamian Chronicles](https://web.archive.org/web/20121031053335/http://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/chron00.html), all Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles
- [Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, and King Lists](https://web.archive.org/web/20040410174038/http://www.geocities.com/farfarer2001/chronicles/chronicle_index.html)
- [Babylonian chronicles: literature](https://web.archive.org/web/20121001014629/https://www.livius.org/cg-cm/chronicles/chron_literature.html), a list of relevant secondary literature
- [Synchronistic King List, Assyrian King List](https://web.archive.org/web/20070208202143/http://utenti.lycos.it/homegape/mesopot/histor/index.html): translations and bibliographies
- [Cuneiform sources for the history of Hellenistic Babylonia. Edition and Analysis](http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/nod/onderzoek/OND1297087/) [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20110412142144/http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/nod/onderzoek/OND1297087/) 2011-04-12 at the Wayback Machine: information about the BCHP Project

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