Caroline Waerzeggers - Universiteit Leiden
About
Press
Papers
We're Hiring!
Caroline Waerzeggers
Universiteit Leiden
Leiden Institute of Area Studies, Assyriology
Faculty Member
Followers
4,872
Following
318
Co-authors
Public Views
Related Authors
Malgorzata Sandowicz
University of Warsaw
Radoslaw Tarasewicz
Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
Maarja Seire
Leiden University
Louise Quillien
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research
Tero Alstola
University of Helsinki
Cornelia Wunsch
Leipzig University (Universität Leipzig)
Yigal Bloch
Independent Scholar
Kristin Kleber
Universität Münster
Ran Zadok
Michael Kozuh
Auburn University
Interests
View All (13)
Uploads
all
Books
39
Papers
Calls for Papers
Books by Caroline Waerzeggers
Xerxes and Babylonia: the Cuneiform Evidence
by
Caroline Waerzeggers
and
Maarja Seire
Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 277
, 2018
In the summer of 484 BCE Babylonia revolted against Xerxes, king of Persia. In recent years, a de...
more
In the summer of 484 BCE Babylonia revolted against Xerxes, king of Persia. In recent years, a debate has crystallized around the nature of Xerxes’ response to this challenge. This volume continues and expands this debate. It collects nine essays on the cuneiform text corpus dated to the period before, during and after the revolts. This material enables the authors to evaluate the nature of Xerxes’ policies in the sphere of society, science, religion, law, administration and economy against the long-term history of the region. The contributions are by Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Johannes Hackl, Michael Jursa, Karlheinz Kessler, Mathieu Ossendrijver, Reinhard Pirngruber, Malgorzata Sandowicz and Caroline Waerzeggers.
The volume is published under a creative commons license and can be downloaded free of charge from the publisher's website:
The volume is financed by the European Research Council (CoG Persia & Babylonia, grant no. 682241)
De wilde jeugd der assyriologie
Inaugural lecture, Leiden University, 1 December 2017.
Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context
by
Jonathan Stökl
and
Caroline Waerzeggers
This collection of essays explores new ways of understanding the Babylonian Exile and the return ...
more
This collection of essays explores new ways of understanding the Babylonian Exile and the return to Yehud – a formative period in ancient Judaism. Drawing among others on new materials from cuneiform texts, the contributions study how Judeans and other exiles interacted with the host society and vice versa, the way in which various biblical books reflect Babylonian culture, and the return migration to Jerusalem.
Contributions by: Kathleen Abraham, Peter R. Bedford, Lester L. Grabbe, Johannes Hackl, Michael Jursa, Madhavi Nevader, Laurie E. Pearce, Jason M. Silverman, Katherine Southwood, Jonathan Stökl, Gauthier Tolini, Caroline Waerzeggers, Hugh Williamson, and Ran Zadok.
Marduk-rēmanni: Local Networks and Imperial Politics in Achaemenid Babylonia (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 233; Leuven: Peeters, 2014)
Marduk-rēmanni was a Babylonian man who lived in the provincial town of Sippar during the first d...
more
Marduk-rēmanni was a Babylonian man who lived in the provincial town of Sippar during the first decades of Persian rule in Mesopotamia (second half of the sixth century BC). His archive of c. 187 cuneiform texts was found in 1881 during excavations carried out on behalf of the British Museum, but since then it has received little attention. On first sight, the historical relevance of Marduk-rēmanni’s records seems minimal. They relate to his private assets, business enterprises, and legal concerns – matters that barely seem to transcend the personal and local spheres. But upon closer scrutiny, it becomes clear that Marduk-rēmanni was at the centre of a far-flung personal network and that his life, despite his having lived far from the political centre, reflects many of the developments and changes taking place at the highest imperial level. He was a child when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylonia, and although this regime change caused little upheaval outside the political arena at first, by the time of Marduk-rēmanni’s death several decades later, the world of his childhood had changed. His life had taken a completely different course than that of his father and grandfather. He had climbed the ranks of the temple administration and had participated in the provincial government. He had travelled near and far, visiting the Persian court at Susa on several occasions. No longer were the horizons of his world confined to the Babylonian heartland, as they had been for his father and grandfather. Marduk-rēmanni was born in provincial Babylonia, but he died as a citizen of a world empire. This book traces the social, economic and political dynamics that transformed his life.
The Ezida temple of Borsippa: priesthood, cult, archives. Achaemenid History vol. 15. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2010
Papers by Caroline Waerzeggers
The Day Before Cyrus Entered Babylon
Uri Gabbay and Shai Gordin (eds), Individuals and Institutions in the Ancient Near East: A Tribute to Ran Zadok (SANER 27)
, 2021
BM 60916 was written in Sippar one day before Cyrus entered Babylon as its new king. Together wit...
more
BM 60916 was written in Sippar one day before Cyrus entered Babylon as its new king. Together with BM 101100, also edited here, this text can be added to a very small group of cuneiform tablets that informs us about the situation on the ground during Cyrus's attack on Babylonia in 539 BCE. The historical significance of this group of texts is, at least, twofold. On the one hand, the documents bear witness to the fractured nature of the Babylonian kingdom during its final moments, as inhabitants of Sippar, Babylon and Uruk experienced the takeover very differently. On the other hand, they show the quick adoption of new rhetoric in the exercise of power over Babylonia, as the defunct royal title of the Assyrians-"king of the lands"-was reintroduced for Cyrus, even before he had entered Babylon.
Writing History Under Empire: The Babylonian Chronicle Reconsidered
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History
, 2021
This article proposes to read the Babylonian Chronicle as historical literature. It argues that t...
more
This article proposes to read the Babylonian Chronicle as historical literature. It argues that the text was composed in response to Babylonia's integration in the Persian Empire. The text presents itself as a self-conscious departure from the chronographic tradition by tracing the roots of Babylon's fate to the mideighth century, when a triangle of power is said to have emerged between Assyria, Babylonia and Elam, a configuration that reduced the Babylonian monarch to inaction and incompetence from the very start.
Een wandeling door 100 jaar assyriologie in Leiden
Phoenix: Tijdschrift voor de archeologie en geschiedenis van het Nabije Oosten
, 2019
A festive lecture about 100 years of Assyriology in Leiden, in Dutch.
Changing Marriage Practices in Babylonia from the Late Assyrian to the Persian Period
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History
, 2020
Based on an analysis of marriage contracts, this paper argues that at the
time of the Persian con...
more
Based on an analysis of marriage contracts, this paper argues that at the
time of the Persian conquest (539 BCE) Babylonians practiced two types of marriage depending on their social status. Non-elite families negotiated different terms of marriage than elite families, in three areas: bridal wealth, household creation, and regulations about adultery and divorce. However, these divergent marriage practices became less pronounced and eventually obsolete in the course of the Persian period. This article first presents the evidence for the two marriage types and then seeks to find an answer, albeit a partial one, to the question why these traditions changed from c. 490 BCE onwards.
The Network of Resistance: Archives and Political Action in Babylonia before 484 BCE
in: C. Waerzeggers and M. Seire (eds.), Xerxes and Babylonia: the Cuneiform Evidence. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 277. Leuven: Peeters, pp. 89-133
, 2018
This paper seeks to interpret the cuneiform text corpus from Babylonia (long 6th century BCE) as ...
more
This paper seeks to interpret the cuneiform text corpus from Babylonia (long 6th century BCE) as a product, and a reflection, of collective action against the Persian Empire under Xerxes.
corrigenda:
- p. 121 at archive 61: note that the lifespan of this archive reaches only until Nbn 11 (545 BCE) instead of the reign of Cambyses. The archive-keeper Bel-supê-muhur is attested in Eanna texts until Cambyses, but he closed off a part of his archive long before his death. Before Nbn 2, the archive contains three older texts whose connection to the main group of tablets is, however, unclear. See Kessler 1991.
Manuscript and archive: who wrote and read Babylonian chronicles?, pp. 335-346 in Conceptualizing Past, Present and Future: Proceedings of the Ninth Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Helsinki / Tartu, May 18-24, 2015 , eds S. Fink and R. Rollinger. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2018.
“Licht op de Babylonische Ballingschap,” Met Andere Woorden 37/1 (2018), 46-55.
“Herodotus, Xerxes en de Babylonische opstanden van 484 v. Chr.,” Phoenix 63/2 (2017), 48–61.
Collations of CUSAS 28, NABU 2017/86.
PhD, Senior Research Fellow in Ancient Near Eastern studies, University of Tartu 86) Collations o...
more
PhD, Senior Research Fellow in Ancient Near Eastern studies, University of Tartu 86) Collations of CUSAS 28 -Volume 28 of the Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology series contains editions of 105 unprovenanced tablets in the collection of David Sofer by Laurie E. Pearce and Cornelia Wunsch (Documents of Judean Exiles and West Semites in Babylonia in the Collection of David Sofer, Bethesda: CDL Press, 2014). The tablets are currently kept at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem where I collated the following numbers (bold face indicates improved or divergent readings from the edition): 5,
“The Prayer of Nabonidus in the Light of Hellenistic Babylonian Literature.” Pages 64-75 in M. Popović, M. Schoonover, M. Vandenberghe (eds), Jewish Cultural Encounters in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern World. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
The Babylonian cuneiform texts that are usually named as possible models, templates or sources of...
more
The Babylonian cuneiform texts that are usually named as possible models, templates or sources of Jewish Hellenistic tales about Nabonidus are invariably thought of as products of the sixth century BCE: the Verse Account, the Nabonidus Chronicle, the Harran Stela, and the Letter of Samsu-iluna. As a consequence, the chains of transmission or processes of adaptation that enabled their reception among later Jewish authors are often said to have begun in the sixth century BCE. For instance, in a recent article Carol Newsom suggested that the memory of a public recitation of the Harran Stela in the reign of Nabonidus helped shape the narratives found in Daniel and Qumran through a process of cognitive blending (C. Newsom, “Why Nabonidus? Excavating Traditions from Qumran, the Hebrew Bible, and Neo-Babylonian Sources,” in S. Metso et al (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls: Transmission of Traditions and Production of Texts. Leiden 2010, 57-79).
What has been overlooked, however, is that Babylonian scholars, too, were engaged in a lively and productive debate about Nabonidus in the Hellenistic period. This debate took place in several Babylonian cities, allowed for divergent appraisals of Nabonidus’ reign, and led to the creation of a variety of literary texts. In this paper, I present the evidence for the vitality and diversity of this debate. This includes some of the texts that have been so confidently, but uncritically, dated to the sixth century BC so far.
In brief, the Babylonian-Jewish interactions that are behind such texts as Daniel 4 or the Prayer of Nabonidus may well have occurred in a 3rd or 2nd century BC context rather than three centuries earlier.
The silver has gone... Temple theft and a divided community in Achaemenid Babylonia. Pp 73-85 in Silver, Money, and Credit. A Tribute to Robartus J. van der Spek on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday on 18th September 2014. Edited by K. Kleber and R. Pirngruber. PIHANS 128. Leiden: NINO, 2016.
In 521 BC, the city of Sippar in northern Babylonia found itself on the verge of civil war. Less ...
more
In 521 BC, the city of Sippar in northern Babylonia found itself on the verge of civil war. Less than twenty years earlier, its inhabitants had stood by passively as the troops of Cyrus the Great of Persia annexed the vast kingdom of Babylonia to his expanding territory. Now, the Persian Empire was itself struggling to remain on its feet. Usurpation and assassination had weakened the imperial family and the only strong man to emerge from the fractured core, a Persian nobleman named Darius, faced severe opposition in nearly all territories of the fledgling Empire.
The events at Sippar can be seen as a microcosm of these wider, imperial ruptures. Here, we find two fractions pitted against each other: those who remained loyal to the Persian cause and those who longed for independence and the return of a native king on the throne of Babylon. In the midst of the confusion, three silver vessels went missing from the ziggurrat of Sippar’s temple.
This event, though seemingly unremarkable, leads to an investigation of how one local community tried to come to grips with its legacy of disobedience and incipient civil war. Darius did persist in the end, and all those involved - whether on the wrong side or on the right side of the fence - faced the challenge of rebuilding their damaged community bonds. Several years after the disappearance of the vessels, the temple’s authorities launched a large-scale investigation into their theft, forcing them to address the messy legacy of a torn community head-on. Their report is preserved on a unique cuneiform tablet in the Dortmond Collection of the University of Amsterdam. The edition of this tablet is included in the article.
format_quote
In 515 BC, Sippar's temple administrators threatened priests to find missing silver vessels or bear their cost, reflecting temple accountability issues.
format_quote
The Neo-Babylonian chronicle about Sabium and Apil-Sîn: a copy of the text (BM 29440), N.A.B.U. 2015/82
The tablet contains a brief chronicle about the Old-Babylonian dynasty, besides a number of astro...
more
The tablet contains a brief chronicle about the Old-Babylonian dynasty, besides a number of astronomical and metrical notitions. The tablet hails from Borsippa and dates roughly to the Neo-Babylonian or early Persian period.
Facts, Propaganda, or History? Shaping Political Memory in the Nabonidus Chronicle (pp. 95-124 in Jason M. Silverman and Caroline Waerzeggers (eds), Political Memory in and after the Persian Empire. SBLANEM 13. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015)
Babylonian Kingship in the Persian Period: Performance and Reception. Pp. 181–222 in Exile and Return: The Babylonian Context (ed. J. Stökl and C. Waerzeggers; BZAW 478; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).
The Persian conquest of Babylon set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the partia...
more
The Persian conquest of Babylon set in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the partial return of Judah’s exilic community and to the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem. Despite Cyrus’ prominent role in the biblical narrative
about these events – and despite the historical reality of Yehud’s place within the Persian Empire – the Hebrew Bible constructs the context of the return as a kingless arena which required a profound reworking and re-interpretation of the traditional alignments between the Davidic king and Yahweh.¹ In this paper, I will contextualize these reflections by asking how Babylonian audiences responded to their loss of indigenous kingship following the Persian conquest – for, even
though the institution of ‘King of Babylon’ with its rituals and symbols survived into the Persian period, there is evidence of profound change during the Empire’s two hundred years of existence. After an introduction, the first part of this paper deals with contemporary responses to Persian rule in Babylonia; the second part moves on to a discussion of the reception of Persian period kingship by later generations of Babylonians.
format_quote
Evidence shows that the Persian king was rarely present in Babylon during 200 years of rule, indicating a disconnect with local governance.
format_quote
Locating Contact in the Babylonian Exile: Some Reflections on Tracing Judean-Babylonian Encounters in Cuneiform Texts
Published in: Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians...
more
Published in: Encounters by the Rivers of Babylon: Scholarly Conversations Between Jews, Iranians and Babylonians in Antiquity. Edited by Uri Gabbay and Shai Secunda. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014, 131-146.
The question of how Judean deportees experienced life in Babylonia during the exile has most often received answers in the economic, geographic, legal, cultural, and administrative
spheres: what was their standard of living, where did they live, were they enslaved, did they adapt to local culture and religion, and how did they organize their communities? Social interactions with Babylonians have not yet been studied in any detail, yet contact plays an important role in many evaluations of (post-)exilic Judean culture and identity. This article explores  some methodological issues involved in studying Judean-Babylonian contact in the cuneiform texts that are presently at our disposal.
or
or
reset password
Need an account?
Click here to sign up
About
Press
Papers
Topics
Academia.edu Journals
work
We're Hiring!
help
Find new research papers in:
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Health Sciences
Ecology
Earth Sciences
Cognitive Science
Mathematics
Computer Science
Content Policy
Academia ©2026