The Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242)
Four Aramaic fragments from Qumran Cave 4. Nabonidus, king of Babylon, tells how he was afflicted for seven years at Tayma until a Jewish exorcist pardoned his sins. The story resembles Daniel 4.
See the object at deadseascrolls.org.il ↗English translation with line numbers (Livius) ↗
The fragments come from Cave 4 at Qumran and preserve the opening of a first-person account by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. He says that he was struck with a disease for seven years while he was at Tayma, lived apart from other people, and was told by a Jewish exile to write his story down to the honour of the Most High God. The text breaks off as he describes praying to gods of silver, gold, bronze, iron, wood and stone.
The copy was made some five centuries after Nabonidus, and it is a Jewish story, not a Babylonian record. It matters for Daniel at the Babylonian Court because Daniel 4 tells a similar story of Nebuchadnezzar, while Babylonian sources place Nabonidus, not Nebuchadnezzar, away from his capital for years. Much of the published text is restored from small fragments.
Cited in
- about 605 BC to 536 BC, traditional date