This chronicle covers the reign of Nabonidus, the last Neo-Babylonian king, and ends with the entry of Cyrus into Babylon. It is a damaged tablet and much of it is lost, which is worth saying first: a chronicle with gaps supports narrower conclusions than a complete one.
Why it matters here
Two things in it bear directly on the biblical text. First, it records that the king was absent from Babylon for years, at Tema in Arabia, while his son was left in charge with the army. That son is named in other Babylonian documents as Belshazzar.
Second, it dates the Persian capture of the city, which is the setting of Daniel 5 and the background to the return described in Ezra.
Before these documents were read, Belshazzar was known only from Daniel and was widely treated as an invention, since no king of that name appeared in the Babylonian king lists. The Babylonian record establishes that he existed and held authority. It also establishes that he was the son of Nabonidus and never king in his own right — which is not what Daniel 5 says.
How to use it without overreaching
This is a case where the external record both vindicates and contradicts a biblical passage, in different particulars, and reporting only one half is the standard failure on both sides of the argument.
How it is cited here
By CDLI P-number, which resolves to the artefact record and returns the museum number the citation claims. The standard critical edition is Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, where it is Chronicle 7.