![]() ![]() This study covers the period from 591 to 413, from the first until the last attestation of Judeans in Babylonian cuneiform sources. The data generated during the research project is freely available online. Chapter 8 concludes the study by offering a synthesis of the findings made in the preceding chapters and providing an up-to-date historical reconstruction of the life of Judean communities in Babylonia. They bear witness to the diversity of geographic location, socio-economic status, and integration 4 among the deportees and their descendants. ![]() ![]() Chapters 2 to 7 are case studies on Judeans and Neirabians in Babylonia. The first chapter introduces the subject, its historical context, previous research, available sources, and methods used in this study. Moreover, an understanding of migration as an ancient phenomenon and appreciation of cultural diversity in the ancient Near East offer perspectives on often heated debates on migration and remind us that the movement of people is an intrinsic part of world history. A study of deportees and their descendants sheds new light on the margins of Babylonian society, it enhances the understanding of the economic sectors in which deportees participated, and it allows a diachronic study of state involvement in deportees’ lives over two centuries. However, the majority of available sources originate from temple archives and private archives of the urban upper class, and life in the countryside or the workings of the state apparatus are worse understood. Despite their antiquity, many aspects of Babylonian society and economy are relatively well understood due to tens of thousands of extant cuneiform texts from the sixth and fifth centuries. A study of Judeans in Babylonia is especially timely at the moment, as the recent emergence of cuneiform sources from the environs of Yāhūdu, ‘(the town of) Judah’ in Babylonia, has more than doubled the number of sources relevant to this study.Īt the same time, the present study can enhance our knowledge of Babylonian society and early migration history in the Near East. Academic studies of this period have been primarily based on the Hebrew Bible despite the publication of relevant cuneiform sources already in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ![]() The deportations and exile started an interpretative process that contributed to the birth of Judaism and biblical literature, and, indirectly, to the emergence of Christianity and Islam. The end of the kingdom of Judah and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem was a catastrophe which required theological explanation. An important point of comparison is the case of the Neirabians, who were deported from Syria to Babylonia roughly at the same time as the Judeans, lived in the village of Neirab in the Babylonian countryside, and finally returned to their ancient hometown in Syria.Ī study of Judean deportees in Babylonia can provide new insights into a period commonly known as the Babylonian exile, which refers to Judean existence in Babylonia after the deportations in the early sixth century. 3 This book aims to fill this gap by conducting a case study of the Judean deportees and placing its results in a wider context of Babylonian society. Naming practices among immigrant groups have been thoroughly analysed, but there has been little interest in writing a social-historical study of Judeans or other immigrants in Babylonia based on cuneiform sources. These features of Babylonia in the mid-first millennium have been acknowledged for a long time and a significant amount of pertinent evidence has been made available. At the same time, voluntary and forced migration had shaped Babylonia over millennia, and continuous immigration had resulted in a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society. 2 Most of these people arrived in Babylonia in the early sixth century, being but one of numerous ethnic groups deported and resettled after King Nebuchadnezzar ii’s conquest of Syria and the Levant. This book is a study of Judeans 1 in Babylonia in the sixth and fifth centuries bce. ![]()
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