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Some Egyptians in Babylonia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

D. J. Wiseman
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Extract

In 1932 Sidney Smith published an article on ‘An Egyptian in Babylonia’ indicating a link between Egypt and Dēr where a brick inscription and drawing of the Amarna period was discovered. This interest in the relation between Egypt and her neighbours has long characterized his writings so that it would seem appropriate to publish here some fragmentary texts which offer evidence of Egyptian presence in Babylonia in the Neo-Babylonian period.

The Assyrian royal annals and administrative texts show that Egyptian prisoners were taken to Nineveh and Calah following the campaigns of Sargon II, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal in Palestine and the Delta. However, when compared with the Neo-Assyrian evidence, scant though it is, even less is known of Egypt's contacts with Babylonia in the second half of the first millennium B.C. The Babylonian Chronicle gives some notice of the military encounter between the two powers in the Middle Euphrates area, culminating in the heavy defeat of the Egyptian army by Nebuchadrezzar II at Carchemish in the late spring of 605 B.C, the survivors being picked up in the Hamath plain. The same source tells how the Egyptians had recovered sufficiently to inflict a damaging reverse on the Babylonians when they tried to invade four years later. It is not yet clear when, and how far, the Babylonians were able to revenge this defeat.

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1966 , pp. 154 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1966

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References

1 JEA 18 (1932), pp. 28–32Google Scholar

2 Smith, Sidney, Alalakh and Chronology (1940), pp. 13ffGoogle Scholar; The Statue of Idri-mi (1949), pp. 44–88Google Scholar.

3 By permission of the Trustees of the British Museum. Part of this paper was first read at the VIIIth Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale at Heidelberg, June 1959.

4 Unpublished Nimrud (FS) tablets; Iraq 17 (1952), p. 139Google Scholar (XIV.r.34’) for Egyptian captives during the reign of Sargon II. See also Vyeichl, W., JNES 23 (1964), pp. 280–284Google Scholar.

5 Cf. von Zeissel, H., Äthiopıen und Ässyrer in Agypten, (1944), p. 38 and n. 187Google Scholar.

6 The Babylonian claim that he annihilated the Egyptian army (adi la baše i[g-mu]r-šu-nu-tû; CCK, p. 66, l. 5) is modified by the subsequent statement that the remnant fled only to be overtaken and captured in the plain of Hamath (reading also (māt) ḫa[-ma-a]-tù in line 8, so also Grayson, A. K., Bibbia e Oriente 6 (1964), p. 205Google Scholar).

7 CCK, pp. 29, 71, ll. 6–8.

8 Ibid, pp. 94–95, plates XX–XXI (BM. 33041).

9 Posener, G., La première domination perse en Égypte (1936), pp. 186–7Google Scholar, identified Puṭ(u) with Libya (Pers. putiya; Bab. puṭa; Heb.) on Egyptian textual evidence of Persian and Ptolemaic date in which pyṭ is used instead of the earlier Eg. Ṯḥnw/Tmḥw— ‘Libyan(ns)’. Mr. Kitchen draws my attention to Edwards, I. E. S., Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, Fourth Series I (1960), p. 10, n. 23Google Scholar, where Pyd are named alongside, but distinct from, Syrians, Nubians and Egyptians.

10 The text may, however, simply describe a distant location—‘an inaccessible coastland amid the sea’, r.17—which could have been the homeland of the mercenary leader ([Ni ?]-ku-ù) or refer to a place linked with the civil war between Amasis and Apries. On Greek mercenaries in Egypt see Herodotus (ii. 152); Gardiner, A. H., Egypt of the Pharaohs (1961), p. 376Google Scholar.

11 The ‘rectangular area’ to which Jeremiah refers has been identified with a platform before the palace-fort built by Psammetichus I (664–610 B.C.) and uncovered by Petrie, F. (Nebesheh (Am) and Defenneh (Tahpanhes) (1888), pp. 50–51Google Scholar. Mr. K. A. Kitchen and Mr. A. R. Millard kindly inform me that the cylinders of Nebuchadrezzar II now in the Cairo Museum, and said to have been found at Tell Defneh, ate forgeries of cylinders of Nebuchadrezzar II.

12 So also Josephus, , Antiq. Jud. X. ix. 7Google Scholar.

13 AS 8 (1958), p. 76Google Scholar.

14 Smith, S., Isaiah chapters XL–LV, pp. 38ff., 140Google Scholar.

15 IV, 4, xxv. 52 quoted by Thompson, R. C., DACG, p. xxxivGoogle Scholar.

16 Strassmaier, J., Nbn 751, 7–8Google Scholar; 214, 3; Pinches, T. G., ZK, 2, 33Google Scholar; Ebeling, E., NB 21Google Scholar; cf. TCL 12, 84, 5Google Scholar the same substance being named in texts of the reign of Darius II.

17 YOS III, 14, 8Google Scholar.

18 Moore, E. W., NBBD 84, 3–4Google Scholar; YOS VI 168, 11Google Scholar.

19 Weidner, E. F., Mélanges Syriens offerts à M. R. Dussaud II, pp. 930ffGoogle Scholar. Egyptians were placed in the custody of the shipyard (EN.NUN.É sapanatu) and of the administrative offices (8 EN.NUN.É qipūtu).

20 E. F. Weidner, ioc. cit., p. 929.

21 Ranke, H., Die ägyptischen Personennamen (= PN) 1, 246, 23Google Scholar.

22 Cf. Erech texts, Keiser, C. E.Nies 1 24.10 (undated)Google Scholar.

23 Probably from the same archive as BM. 49785, 56348 & 78177.

24 CCK p. 71, BM. 21946, 3.

25 CT XLIV 89, pl. LGoogle Scholar. Since only 23 of the [5 ?]3 personal names listed in the four columns remain unbroken it is unwise to draw firm conclusions. However, it is to be noted that 25 of the names bear the divine element dUTU (= Rē‘?). 15 of the preserved names can be explained as Babylonian, possibly indicating that the common practice was to give a Babylonian name to a captive or to one born in captivity (of. Daniel i. 7). For this reason the dUTU names (e.g. Kī-dUTU, i. 3, 13, 28 (?); or AD. dUTU. MEŠ, i. 8, 24) borne by more than one individual are more likely to be Babylonian. This list, like BM. 56348, involves the issue of warm clothing to Egyptians in winter months.

26 E. F. Weidner, loc. cit, p. 928. A man from Samaria also bore this name (ibid. n. 1).

27 Ranke, H., PN I 253, 27Google Scholar.

28 Contra Griffiths, J. Gwyn, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Égypte 51 (1951), pp. 219–220Google Scholar. Professor J. Černý kindly informs me that he knows of at least one early Greek transcription where an h is rendered by X: Χάμψαι of Herodotus must be hn msḥ ‘crocodiles’ with the plural indefinite article hn.

29 Ward, W. A., Or. 33 (1962), p. 427Google Scholar (ḥr = ḫulu ‘street’).

30 Ranke, H., PN I 346, 9–10Google Scholar.

31 ibid., I 303, 9. Cf. Ranke, H., PN I 428, 1Google Scholar.

32 BASOR 171 (1963), pp. 64–67Google Scholar.

33 Borger, R., JNES 19 (1960), p. 53Google Scholar.

34 Yeivin, S., VT 2 (1952), pp. 164–168Google Scholar.

35 Kitchen, K. A. in Douglas, J. D. (ed.) The New Bible Dictionary (1962), p. 1201Google Scholar.

36 Ranke, H., PN I 26, 24Google Scholar; cf. II, 340.

37 Cowley, A. E., Aramaic Papyri, No. 35, 1–6Google Scholar; Kraeling, E. G., Brooklyn Aramaic Papyri, pp. 284–5, No. 13. 3Google Scholar.

38 I owe this tentative suggestion to Mr. Kitchen. Cf. ’Imn-rḫ; Ranke, , PN. I 30, 2, p. xxGoogle Scholar.

39 JADD III, p. 537Google Scholar; Nos. 763–9; 851.iv.3.

40 Ranke, , PN I 19, 16Google Scholar; 20, 5.16.19.

41 The family was noted by Langdon, S. H., Gaster Anniversary Volume, p. 346, n. 63Google Scholar. The references below the names in Fig. 1 are to abbreviations given in Tallqvist, K. L., Neubabylonisches Namenbuch (1905), pp. ix–xiGoogle Scholar.

42 See n. 25.