Al-Yahudu Tablets

[4] The tablets are named after the central settlement mentioned in the documents, āl Yahudu (Akkadian "The town of Judah"), which was "presumably in the vicinity of Borsippa".

[5] The earliest document in the collection dates back to 572 BCE, about 15 years after the destruction of the Temple, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.

Some of the documents were presented in 2004 at ANU – Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv and were investigated in part by Kathleen Abraham of Bar-Ilan University.

In principle, it can be said that the documents attest to the tension between the preservation of Jewish identity, language, culture and religion and the need, and sometimes the will, to integrate into life in Babylon.

Based on other documents dealing with payment of tax and service to the kingdom after their settlement, it seems that other exiles were employed in physical labor.

Some (such as Raphaiah Ben Smachiho and his son) acted as intermediaries and credit providers to the Jewish population and managed to accumulate substantial capital.

The documents do not show signs of people leaving for Judea, but at least two Jews have been found who had a desire to return to Zion:[citation needed] The Al-Yahudu Tablets provide among the first Babylonian transcriptions of Israelite names.

Earlier, the Assyrians, whom the Babylonians had usurped, had made several inscriptions which featured names of Israelite or Judahite provenance, including Omri,[9] Hezekiah,[10] Pekah and Hoshea,[11] Jehoiachin,[12] and Yahu-Bihdi.

[13] In particular, the common Hebrew theophoric elements Yah- and -yahu are variously transliterated as ya-ma and ya-ḫu, instead of the historic Assyrian form ya-ú.