I am somewhat shocked right now, although I know I probably should not be, I will explain in this post later.
All this information is contained in Carl Olof Jonsson's excellent book, The Gentile Times Reconsidered, 4th edition, pages 122-125.
It turns out that throughout the Neo-Babylonian time frame, a business firm named the Sons of Egibi conducted business, and left some three or four thousand record tables contained in earthen jars covered with bitumen.
These records provide a CONTINUOUS record from the time of Nebuchadnezzar up to the time of Darius I (521/520 BCE), and contain records of both business transactions and personal experiences of the firm's head.
These records show that from the third year of Nebuchadnezzar, a Mr. Shula acted as head of the Egibi firm, and was so for 20 years, up to the 23rd year of Nebuchadnezzar. He was succeeded by his son, Nabu-ahhe-iddina (call me "Nabu") who continued as head of the firm for 38 years, that is, until the 12th year of Nabonidus, when he was succeeded by his son Itti-Marduck-balatu ("Itti").
Itti remained as head of the firm until the first years of Darius I, which was the 23rd year of his head of the firm.
So we have the following total years, 20+38+23 = 81 years, from the 3rd year of Nebbie to the 1st year of Darius.
This means 604 BCE is the FIRST YEAR OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR!
These records are the records of people who lived at the time, they are just as valid as business receipts and legal documents people create today. These records are proof of events as they happened, and are just as good as if the people themselves were alive today. In fact, if they were alived today, they would USE these records to document their life back then.
So when were these Egibi records found? Must have been recent or the Watchtower would have certainly written about then, right?
The Egibi records were found in the years 1875-1876 in some mounds in the neighborhood of Hillah, about 4 miles southeast of the ruins of Babylon. An article was published concerning the Egibi tablets in 1878 in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, titled Babylonian Dated Tablets, and the Canon of Ptolemy."
In 1878, Charles Taze Russell was 26 years old, and was one year away from publishing the first issue of the Watchtower!
These banking tablets are essential to ANY discussion concerning the Ptolemy king list, they answer the question of how reliable the list is. But there is no mention of them in any Watchtower publication at all!
The reason I said I was shocked at the beginning of this post is that I had just did a search for the word "Egibi" in the WT-Library CD, and the search returned NOTHING!
The Watchtower does not want to consider the testimony of business records and documents, because, as I mention above, these records are the testimony of people who lived then, so how can they be refuted?
By leaving out any discussion of the Egibi Business tablets concerning the Neo-Babylonian chronology, the Watchtower shows itself as being very, very dishonest and, despite what they claim, that they are not at all interested in Truth, only in writing slanted propaganda!
--VM44