A “Dinner at the Palace” During Nebuchadnezzar's

A “DINNER AT THE PALACE” DURING NEBUCHADNEZZAR’S REIGN1

David B. Weisberg

Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion

This article, dedicated to Bustenay Oded, is a sequel to research on some political issues and international relations during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.2 In it we would like to concentrate upon the life and times of Nebuchadnezzar by reconstructing a “dinner at the palace” during Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, basing ourselves upon our best cuneiform evidence. There are several valuable sources from the Neo-Babylonian period dealing with “Dinner at the Palace”. At the same time, we might aug- ment the often-meager sources from the time of Nebuchadnezzar by drawing in a prudent manner from additional sources: (1) Relevant texts from the Neo-Assyrian period (and occasionally from other periods as well); (2) Neo-Babylonian texts dealing with meals that were sent over to and served in the temple, and (3) Parallels from other periods in history. With regard to Nebuchadnezzar’s palace, we might well ask, “to which palace do we refer?”3 We have in mind Nebuchadnezzar’s royal residence in Babylon, to which he refers as: ekallu bīt tabârti nišī

1 It is a pleasure to dedicate this paper to Bustenay Oded whose scholarly works have illumined our knowledge of Assyria. A version of this paper, “A ‘Dinner at the Palace’ during Nebuchadnezzar’s Reign”, was read at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, MA, on November 25, 2008. I am pleased to thank William Hallo and SungDuk Yun for their kind help. Steven Holloway, Shalom Paul, JoAnn Scurlock, and Lawson Younger, Jr. contributed valuable comments that enriched the paper, and Gershon Galil’s editorial guidance was most helpful. 2 “Notes on Nebuchadnezzar’s 37th Year” was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, San Diego, CA, November 19, 2007, and will be published in the Tikva Frymer Memorial Volume. 3 See M. Jursa, “Palast. Neubabylonisch,” RlA 10 (2004), pp. 209–212. 262 d. b. weisberg markasu māti “a palace, a building to be admired by the people, the center of the land”.4 In answer to the questions, “Who had dinner at the palace and what is the term for the meal they had?” we want to draw an anal- ogy from the situation at an Assyrian capital city in a period before the one of our central focus. In describing the king’s mess at Calah, Kinnier Wilson raises “the question of the membership of the king’s mess, in so far as it is possible to determine it from barely sufficient sources”.5 He notes that people who dined with the king would have been members of his inner circle, or, as he calls it, his “privy council.”6 He lists princes, members of the royal family and persons close to the king, including high-ranking military officers, court herald and other senior officials. We must assume a similar roster for Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian dinner table. The relevant Akkadian term for the meal at the palace is naptanu, a “sumptuous banquet”, specificallynaptan šarri. References relevant to our study are all from the Neo-Assyrian period and deal with setting the table, and serving and finishing the meal. šarru ina napteni uššab paššūra pan šarri išakkunu naptanšu ugammar “the king sits down for the meal, they place the table before the king, he finishes his meal”.7 On the use of the term naptanu, we cite the following note from the CAD: In earlier texts, naptanu is often parallel to kurummatu and denotes the food allotment (consisting of cereals, beer and meat) issued to troops and personnel as well as that served for the king or in the temples. In NA and NB, naptanu usually refers to the meal served to the gods and (as leftovers from the god’s meal) to kings, and thence comes to denote, as a literary term, a sumptuous meal or banquet.8 What was served at the dinner? We can assume that despite the fact that luxury foods (that must have been consumed at the court) were

4 S. Langdon and R. Zehnpfund, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (VAB 4; Liepzig, 1912), p. 136, vii 37, cited in CAD, M/1, p. 283 s.v. markasu and CAD, T, p. 31 s.v. tabrītu. 5 J. V. Kinnier Wilson, The Nimrud Wine Lists (CTN I; London, 1972), p. 34. 6 Idem, ibid., p. 34. 7 KAR 146 iv(!) 7, 9 (NA), cited in CAD, N/1, p. 323. 8 CAD, N/1, p. 323.