More citation errors in this field involve the Babylonian chronicles than any other body of evidence, and almost all of them are the same error: citing the right corpus for the wrong tablet.
What kind of document a chronicle is
A Babylonian chronicle is an administrative record of reigns and campaigns, compiled in Babylonia, organised by regnal year. It records who ruled, who marched, what was taken, and when — in flat prose, without praise and usually without explanation.
That is why chronicles are worth more than royal inscriptions for dating. They were not composed to glorify anyone, and they had no interest whatever in Judah’s internal affairs. What they do have is gaps: the surviving tablets are fragments of a series, and long stretches are simply missing.
The tablets most often cited here
- Chronicle 1 (ABC 1) — from Nabonassar to Shamash-shuma-ukin, covering the eighth and seventh centuries. This is the tablet that credits Shalmaneser with the destruction of Samaria, against Sargon II’s own claim.
- Chronicle 3, the Fall of Nineveh Chronicle — Nabopolassar’s tenth to eighteenth years, roughly 616 to 608 BCE. It records the siege and fall of Nineveh in 612.
- Chronicle 5, the Jerusalem Chronicle — Nebuchadnezzar’s accession year to his eleventh. Its entry for the seventh year dates the capture of the city of Judah to a specific day in 597 BCE.
- The Nabonidus Chronicle — the reign of Nabonidus and the Persian capture of Babylon in 539 BCE.
The error that recurs
Chronicle 5 breaks off years before the destruction of Jerusalem in 587. It says nothing about the burning of the temple, and it cannot: the tablet ends first.
It is nevertheless cited for 587 constantly, in print and online, usually by writers who have read a summary rather than the tablet. A page that cites the Jerusalem Chronicle for the destruction of the temple has cited an object that does not contain the passage — which is a different and more serious failure than getting an interpretation wrong.
The same applies to the Nabonidus Chronicle and the events of Daniel 5. It records the fall of Babylon; it does not describe a feast, and its account of Belshazzar’s position has to be read against what it actually says rather than against what the biblical chapter needs.
How to cite one properly
A usable citation gives three things: the chronicle number in a standard edition, the museum number of the tablet, and the line or year entry. Grayson’s edition remains the reference point in English, and the tablets themselves are catalogued by the British Museum.
Every chronicle cited on this site carries its museum number and a permanent identifier, and the identifier is re-tested automatically. That is not thoroughness for its own sake — it exists because this specific corpus is the one most often cited at second hand.
Related: the dossiers on the fall of Nineveh, the fall of Jerusalem in 597, who took Samaria and Belshazzar.