Tablet IM 65066 the Uruk King List

Bagdad Museum

The Uruk King List, also known as "King List 5", is an important historiographical document from ancient Babylonia. It mentions the length of the reigns of several kings.

Together the Babylonian King List of the Hellenistic Period, the Uruk King list is a useful text for those who are reconstructing the chronology of Babylonia in the late fourth to mid-second centuries, before our era.

The cuneiform tablet IM 65066 is in the Bagdad Museum. On this website, you will find a slightly adapted transcription by A.K. Grayson, from the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, s.v. "Königslisten und Chroniken".

Chronological notes have been added; the right-hand column is a modern approximation of regnal dates.

 

Description of the tablet

This list of kings of Babylonia and their reigning years, which appears on a fragment from the middle of a small tablet found at Uruk, covers in its preserved portion the period (obverse) from Kandalanu (647-627 BCE) to Darius I (522-486 BCE) and from (reverse) Darius III (336-331 BCE) to Seleucus II (246-225 BCE). The script is late Babylonian and the tablet was obviously inscribed some time after the reign of Seleucus II.

This tablet shows by itself, that the Neo-Babylonian period from Nebuchadnezzar to Nabonidus, run from the years 604 to 539 before our era.