THE BABYLON EXHIBITION at the British Museum is reviewed again in the London Times. Excerpt:

There can be few more daunting artefacts to include successfully in a show than a cuneiform tablet. Who among us can stare at one of these jumbles of incisions and see meaning in it? Certainly not me. So considerable acclaim should be heaped on the heads of these particular exhibition-makers for daring to include so many writing tablets and for making them so damn interesting. To see names and situations made familiar by the Bible being described so vividly from another angle is such an eye-opener.

I was particularly intrigued by a religious tablet in which an attempt is made to explain how the many Babylonian gods are actually different manifestations of Marduk, the supreme god. A nascent monotheism is clearly emerging. And a brave man even might argue that, on this evidence, the Jewish belief in a single supreme being must originally have been influenced by Babylonian thinking.

Well maybe. But the Judean exiles took the idea and ran with it while the Babylonians only played with it a little.

Background here.