Chronology of the Ancient Near East

The Chronology of the Ancient Orient deals with the notoriously difficult task of assigning years of the Common Era to various events, rulers and dynasties of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.

The chronology of this region is based on five sets of primary materials. They are, from the most recent to the earliest:

1. The Canon of Ptolemy. This is a list of the kings of Babylon and the Persian Empire, from Nabonassar down to Alexander the Great, which Claudius Ptolemy added to one of his books because of the atronomical observations connected with this information.

2. An unbroken series of Neo-Assyrian king names ranging from Ashur-uballit II (died in 609) up to Adad-nirari II (ascended in 911). These years, all named for the official known as a limmu, and some bearing an important event for the previous year, are fixed with the precision of a year due to the mention of the solar eclipse of June 16, 763 BC. These two sets overlap for over a hundred years, and help to suppliment each other.

3. For the centuries between the previous two groups and the ones following, we depend upon a group of interrelated, yet incomplete, documents: the A and B Babylonian King Lists, the Synchronistic Chronicle, the Assyrian King List, and a number of shorter lists of year names recovered from Babylon and Assyria.

4. The First Dynasty of Babylon. Not only have all of the year names for Hammurabi and his descendants survived more or less intact, but a record of astronomical observations made during the eighth regnal year of Ammisaduqa, offer another opportunity to reliably fix these floating dates. Unfortunately, due to ambiguities in the test, as well as disagreements over the interpretation of these observations, there are three possibles dates for these observations, which have led to three different dating schemes for dates between the 10th and 21stcenturies:

The low or short chronology, most commonly used today, sets the eighth year of Ammisaduqa at the year 1531 BC as the end of the first dynasty (with a reign of king Hammurabi 1728 BC–1686 BC).

The middle chronology is 64 years (one period between identical conjunctions of Venus, Sun and Moon) earlier than the short chronology (Hammurabi 1792 BC–1750 BC).

long chronology 120 years earlier than the short chronology (Hammurabi 1848 BC–1806 BC).

5. The Sumerian King List.

The beginning of the third dynasty of Ur (Ur-Nammu; 2047 BC short ch.) is the earliest date that may be directly calculated from dates of Assyrian or Babylonian sources. Preceding this date is the Gutian period, variously estimated to have lasted between 45 and 120 years. The preceding Akkadian period is again well-documented, leading to a year of ca. 2235 BC for the ascension of Sargon of Akkad. Yet earlier dates are subjected to increasing uncertainty.

Contents

1 Synchronisms between Assur and Babylon

2 Synchronisms between Mesopotamia and Egypt

3 See also

4 External link

Synchronisms between Assur and Babylon

The chronology of Babylon and Assur can be aligned by the list of wars and treaties between the two cities from the time of king Ashurbanipal. Hittite chronology is dependent on Assyria and Egypt. For times earlier than 1500 BC, various systems based on the Venus tablets of Ammisaduqa have been proposed. The death of Shamshi-Adad I of Assur in the 17th year of the reign of Hammurabi (1712 BC short ch.)

Synchronisms between Mesopotamia and Egypt

This section is a .

Some authorities believed that Mesopotamian influence affected predynastic Upper Egypt (also known as the Mesopotamian Stimulation) between 34th–31st centuries BC.

See Egyptian chronology.