Buying a Calf

Following the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Babylonian conquest of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, large numbers of the inhabitants of both were deported and were settled in Assyria, Babylonia, and elsewhere. They became part of the new societies in which they resided. We know of them from various legal documents, written in Ak-kadian on clay tablets, in which they are mentioned as participants or witnesses. Some of them are identifiable as Israelites or Jews from their Hebrew names, which contain forms of YHWH, the name of the God of Israel.1 Particularly well attested are Judeans living in Babylonia, where they engaged in farming and fishing or worked in minor government posts. Like other deportees there, they were sometimes led by their own elders. There was even a town called Al-Yahudu (“Judahtown,” although this might mean “Jerusalem” in the sense of naming a city in a new country after the city of the population’s origin). The information that these documents provide, sketchy though it is, shows that the exiles did not simply become slaves or live as an oppressed minority but were members of society, some even prosperous, who engaged in business with Jews, other deportees, and Babylonians.