| In conclusion, the tablet obviously gives an annual count of the herd, with no years missing. Furuli’s claim (p. 248) that “we cannot know that the tablet represents accounts of successive years” is nothing but wishful thinking. That the tablet gives annual reports is also confirmed by the calculations, as summarized in the Table 1 above. As the “Grand total” of the previous year is the same as the BF (balance brought forward) of the next year during the whole tenyear period, it is impossible to add any “unknown kings” or “extra years” to the period. The BF CF totals tie each year directly to the next year without break. Any insertion of “extra years” or “unknown kings” would immediately destroy these obvious connections and require more annual increases. This is also confirmed by the annual increase of the herd. Furuli discusses this on page 257, but Iris calculation is invalid because he includes the 104 animals in line 27 in the annual increase of the herd, while in fact it was added from an external source as shown above. Zawadzki, on the other hand, who takes this into consideration, finds that “the average yearly growth of the herd (excluding the addition of new animals in AmM 1) was about 18%.” (Zawadzki, pp. 104, 105) Thus the tablet NBC 4897 does show, clearly, that Nebuchadnezzar ruled for 43 years, and that his son and successor AmlMarduk ruled for 2 years and was succeeded by Neriglissar. Part IV: Were there unknown Neo [Note: The first edition of Rolf Furuli’s volume 2 was published in the autumn of 2007. Later in that year Part I of my critical review was published on this website. It was demonstrated that Furuli’s attempt (in chapter 6 and Appendix C) to redate the lunar observations recorded in the astronomical diary VAT 4956 was untenable. Evidently due to my criticism, Furuli rewrote parts of his discussion of VAT 4956 and quickly had a second revised edition of his book published in May, 2008. He even reclaimed copies of the first edition he had sent out about that time, telling the recipients that he would send them a copy of the new edition. |
