These ancient documents have piled up in museum storerooms faster than they can be translated and published. And the date lines, in terms of the numbered years of many successive kings, are of prime importance in dating the reigns. A series of dated receipts tells a story of graft at the capital. A mere inventory of personal property draws a vivid picture of a bride’s trousseau-her new dresses, one flounced, another striped, and so on-complete with her wicker clothes chest, her bronze mirror and bowls, and her little pots of cosmetics. They throw light on social customs-slavery, marriage, divorce-and occasionally reveal unexpected items of human interest. They furnish significant details about property, debts, wages, taxes, and the cost of living. These ancient original documents include contracts, deeds, other legal papers, letters, receipts, literary, historical, or religious texts, decrees, and diplomatic correspondence, written by professional scribes, but mostly relating to individuals. The latter were written mostly on clay tablets in Mesopotamia, with a smaller number on papyri in Egypt, some of which were found still rolled up and sealed.

This is possible because modern archaeologists have unearthed many monumental inscriptions and thousands of public and private documents. In this period, more than in any other, the Bible narrative can be aligned with the sequence of historical events and with the ebb and flow of political, religious, and social forces in the Near East. The chronology of the historical books included in this volume (aside from that of Chronicles, which is covered in the treatment of Kings in Volume II) embraces the Babylonian exile and the restoration-that is, from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar in the Neo-Babylonian Empire to that of Darius II in the Persian Empire that followed it.

Bible exile timeline