Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar II (ca. 6th Century BCE) Brick Tablet (Walker 102)

[Quant.Geek]

As you may know, I also collect manuscripts of various types. Here is an interesting brick from an infamous person from history. The inscription on the brick is different than what is stated in several online museums. I guess they neither had Walker nor did they pay attention to the Cuneiform:

Babylon: Nebuchadnezzar II (ca. 6th Century BCE) Brick Tablet (Walker 102, 7-line Type)

Brick impressed with seven lines of cuneiform text:

𒀭𒀝𒆪𒁺𒌫𒊑𒌶 (Nebuchadnezzar (II))
𒈗 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 (King of Babylon)
𒍝𒉌𒅔 𒂍𒊕𒅍 (provider of Esagila)
𒅇 𒂍𒍣𒁕 (and Ezida)
𒌉𒍑 𒀀𒊭𒊑𒁺 (foremost seed)
𒊭 𒀭𒀝𒌉𒍑𒌶 (of Nabopolassar,)
𒈗 𒁀𒁉𒇻𒆠 𒀀𒈾𒆪 (King of Babylon, am I)

[Figleaf]

Yes, very interesting. I am impressed you found a way to reproduce cuneiform script. It's not clear how it served. I was taught in school (a long time ago) the awful Babylonians wrote on clay and that it was mostly commercial correspondence.

Wiki knows there are two rulers by that name, it has exact reign dates (605-562 BC) and a rather more neutral view of the king than the biblical authors. The jews were rebelling against the Babylonians, so they paid a visit to them who's the boss in the way of the times. Nebuchadnezzar is also king of the pretentious titles: king of the universe.

TFP

Peter

[JMP]

Hello Quant.Geek,
Yes, it was your ability to use cuneiform script in your message, what attracted me to this topic too.
Congratulations !
Mine, underneath, is of course simply a result of copying yours.
Where I cannot follow you is when you write: the brick is impressed with seven lines text.
From the seven lines cuneiform text, you show in your message, I can only see the upperleft part on the brick. The start of the first four lines.
So, do the musea give us the complete seven lines text, because it is known from somewhere else? Or how do we have to understand this?

[Quant.Geek]

That is a great question! It required analyzing several specimens from the CDLI Archive (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) to come up with that text as well as going through the Digital Corpus of Cuneiform Lexical Texts to translate the cuneiform inscriptions. As you well know, a hobby means you literally spend time!

Most of the museum pieces quote Cuneiform Brick Inscriptions in the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the City of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, the City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery by C. B. F. Walker. Unfortunately, this particular variation of the 7-line brick is not represented in Walker and thus some of the bricks in the CDLI have the wrong inscription!

The placement of the letters, even though I only have four-lines in the inscription is only represented by the following specimen in the University of Penn collection. It is on that basis that I came up with the inscription above.

[JMP]

While I am fully aware that one cannot expect to find back all the characters of a living script in a standardised font, I took a look what I could recognise from the seven lines text in the newly posted stone.
Probably the 7-lines text is a composition out of the inscriptions on several stones.
During a quick examination, I could find the first, third and sixth line on the stone as good as intirely back in your 7-lines text. The fifth line partially (from the "spider"). In lines two and four, only a character here and there.
On the other hand, there is quite a difference in what in the font-text is written in lines 2 and 7, and is translated as "King of Babylon".
Yes, cuneiform is a tantalizing script but unfortunately it came to early to be found on coins .