Everyday Life in Exile : Judean Deportees in Babylonian Texts

When King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon conquered the kingdom of Judah in the early sixth century BCE, part of Judean population was deported to Babylonia. These events had a huge impact on the development of Judaism, and many books of the Hebrew Bible reflect the trauma of the exile. The Hebrew Bible offers, however, little information about the exilic life in Babylonia. A growing number of Babylonian cuneiform texts shed light on this question

Judean Merchants in Babylonia and Their Participation in Long-Distance Trade

This article focuses on Judean merchants in Babylonia, their social networks, and their business activities in the sixth century BCE. I argue that these people were integrated into the commercial sphere of Babylonian society and that they had native Babylonian merchants as well as traders of foreign origin among their acquaintances. Judeans participated in Babylonian long-distance trade, and documented evidence shows that some of them travelled as far as Iran for the purpose of trading. Furthermore, because travelling and the transportation of goods are an integral part of commercial activity, merchants provide an example of people who could have maintained connections between Judeans living in Judah and Babylonia.This article focuses on Judean merchants in Babylonia, their social networks, and their business activities in the sixth century BCE. I argue that these people were integrated into the commercial sphere of Babylonian society and that they had native Babylonian merchants as well as traders of foreign origin among their acquaintances. Judeans participated in Babylonian long-distance trade, and documented evidence shows that some of them travelled as far as Iran for the purpose of trading. Furthermore, because travelling and the transportation of goods are an integral part of commercial activity, merchants provide an example of people who could have maintained connections between Judeans living in Judah and Babylonia.Peer reviewe

Judeans in Babylonia : A Study of Deportees in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries BCE

In Judeans in Babylonia, Tero Alstola presents a comprehensive investigation of deportees in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. By using cuneiform documents as his sources, he offers the first book-length social historical study of the Babylonian Exile, commonly regarded as a pivotal period in the development of Judaism. The results are considered in the light of the wider Babylonian society and contrasted against a comparison group of Neirabian deportees. Studying texts from the cities and countryside and tracking developments over time, Alstola shows that there was notable diversity in the Judeans’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society.In Judeans in Babylonia, Tero Alstola presents a comprehensive investigation of deportees in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. By using cuneiform documents as his sources, he offers the first book-length social historical study of the Babylonian Exile, commonly regarded as a pivotal period in the development of Judaism. The results are considered in the light of the wider Babylonian society and contrasted against a comparison group of Neirabian deportees. Studying texts from the cities and countryside and tracking developments over time, Alstola shows that there was notable diversity in the Judeans’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society.Peer reviewe

Language and Dialect Identification of Cuneiform Texts

This article introduces a corpus of cuneiform texts from which the dataset for the use of the Cuneiform Language Identification (CLI) 2019 shared task was derived as well as some preliminary language identification experiments conducted using that corpus. We also describe the CLI dataset and how it was derived from the corpus. In addition, we provide some baseline language identification results using the CLI dataset. To the best of our knowledge, the experiments detailed here are the first time automatic language identification methods have been used on cuneiform data

Babylonialainen kronikka Nebukadnessar II:n valtakaudelta

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Johdanto nuolenpääteksteihin

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Kauppiasperhettä koskevia asiakirjoja Sipparista

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A Social Network of the Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire

The dataset is a social network of over 17,000 individuals who lived during the so-called Neo-Assyrian period of Mesopotamian history, primarily in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. The undirected network of individuals connected by co-occurrences in cuneiform documents was semi-automatically extracted from the Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In addition to two weighted versions of the one-mode co-occurrence network, the dataset also contains a two-mode person-text network and rich metadata for each individual. For the first time, the dataset allows large-scale computational analysis of social structures in the Assyrian Empire. The data is primarily stored as plain text and CSV files, inviting scholars to further expand and enrich it. The scripts and files used for creating and standardizing the data are also available in the Zenodo repository.Peer reviewe

Tell Fekheriyen piirtokirjoitus

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Judeans in Babylonia : A Study of Deportees in the Sixth and Fifth Centuries BCE

This dissertation investigates the life of Judean deportees in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The results from the study of Judeans are placed in the wider context of Babylonian society and are evaluated by using a group of Neirabian deportees as a point of comparison. The sources of this study consist of 289 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform, such as promissory notes, leases, receipts, and lists. The dissertation shows that there was considerable diversity in the deportees’ socio-economic status and integration into Babylonian society. The majority of deportees were settled in the countryside and integrated into the land-for-service system, which was aimed at increasing agricultural output and providing the state with labour, soldiers, and tax income. In addition, foreign professionals were employed in cities, and the worlds of commerce and royal administration were open to some deportees. A relatively small number of deportees were donated to Babylonian temples. The Babylonian practice of settling deportees in ethnically homogenous rural communities supported the survival of their culture and traditions in the countryside. Adoption of Babylonian names and culture was faster among those Judeans who lived in cities and were in regular contact with the native population