SPECIAL
THE CHRONOLOGY OF MESOPOTAMIA
The Synchronistic Chronicle,
now in the British Museum.
40 Ancient History Magazine 6
ahm_6.indd 40
DEEPER AND
DEEPER
The study of Antiquity is not famous for spectacular break-
throughs, but occasionally, fundamental discoveries are made.
Recently, one of the greatest puzzles was solved: the chronol-
ogy of Mesopotamia in the Middle Bronze Age.
By Jona Lendering
T
here are many definitions of the
historian’s job, but few people
will deny that it has something to
with establishing past facts and
explaining them. Any explanation, how-
ever, presupposes that we know in which
sequence the events took place. That
is why the study of ancient chronology,
boring as it may seem, is actually quite
important: it is fundamental for all other
subjects of historical research.
Unfortunately, the ancient sources are
not very helpful. Back then, people were
usually not interested in fixing dates cor-
rectly. There was no standard calendar
with a fixed era. If someone needed to
date something, he would merely refer to
the regnal year of a king or mention the
name of an “eponymous” magistrate: an
official whose name was given to a year.
Not infrequently, politicians adapted the
calendar to their ambitions: during the
siege of Tyre, Alexander the Great added
two days to a month to make a prophecy
come true, while Roman politicians were
not above adding an intercalary month to
extend their terms of office.
As a consequence, ancient chronol-
ogy is complex and it is understandable
that many scholars are not particularly
interested. If your subject happens to be
Athens in the fourth century BC or Rome
in the first century AD, this poses no prob-
lems, but it is different for the Iron and
Bronze Ages. One of the most important
puzzles is the chronology of the Middle
Bronze Age in Mesopotamia – let’s say the
first half of the second millennium BC.
Until recently, this was a real problem.
To understand it, we will first focus on
the “solid part” of Mesopotamian chronolo-
gy: the period down to 1430 BC. After that,
we will focus on a “floating part” of some
five centuries: the Middle Bronze Age, a
well-documented period that could not be
dated in our own years BC. We know of
important events and have heard of famous
kings like Hammurabi, but until recently,
we could not establish when those events
had taken place and when those rulers had
lived. At the end of this piece, we will see
how the puzzle was solved.
The solid part
The Babylonians were excellent astrono-
mers, who designed a very accurate cal-
23/08/16 17:32

endar. Its years had twelve lunar months of
29 or 30 days, which were synchronized
with the seasons by expanding a year with
a thirteenth month seven times in a nine-
teen-year cycle. In this way, spring festivals
continued to take place in spring. The “in-
tercalation” of an extra month was formal-
ly announced by the Babylonian king. In
539 BC, however, the Persians conquered
Babylonia and there was no longer a king
in Babylon. At that moment, intercalation
became standardized and because of this,
dates according to the Babylonian calen-
dar can easily be converted to dates ac-
cording to our own calendar.
There is one problem, however: a
typical date formula looks like “on the
sixth day of the second month in the fifth
year of King Nebuchadnezzar”. You need
to have a reliable list of kings and regnal
years to identify Nebuchadnezzar’s fifth
regnal year. Fortunately, we do have sev-
eral independent king lists, like the Can-
on of Ptolemy of Alexandria, who knew
the regnal years of all Hellenistic, Persian,
and Babylonian rulers since the reign of
Nabonassar (r.747-734). A king list from
Uruk and the large collection of astro-
nomical observations known as Astro-
nomical Diaries confirm what we know
from Ptolemy. The Canon is therefore as-
tronomically calibrated and reliable.
We can go deeper: the Assyrians named
every year after an eponymous magistrate,
the limmu. Substantial parts of the limmu list
survive and help us establish the regnal years
down to 892 BC. Again, we can astronomi-
cally check this information, because the
solar eclipse of 15 June 763 is mentioned.
So, we know that our information is more
or less reliable until 892, which is defined as
“the twentieth year of King Adad-Nirari II”. It
is easy to calculate that his first regnal year
must have been 911 BC.
Deeper: to 1420 and 1359 BC
If we want to go deeper, things become a bit
more complicated: we only have king lists
and cannot compare them to astronomical
observations. Still, we can proceed.
ahm_6.indd 41
MESOPOTAMIA: 2104-1587 BC
The Assyrian King List is the key. It
mentions 109 kings and because it is
based on the list of limmu officials, we
may assume that the numbers of regnal
years are correct. The most recent king
is Šalmaneser V (r. 726-722), which
means that there is a substantial overlap
with the chronology described above.
Another useful thing is that there are
three copies, which allows us to check
for scribal errors. Using the Assyrian
King List, we can go deeper and deep-
er, until the reign of King Assur-Dan I
(r.1178-1133). Information about older
kings is impossible to verify because the
copies start to contradict each other.
Fortunately, there is Babylonian
King List A, which sums up all rulers
of Babylonia from the beginning of the
First Dynasty of Babylon – somewhere
in the first half of the second millenni-
um BC – until the seventh century BC.
This list is badly damaged, but there
are synchronisms between Assyrian
and Babylonian history, which allow us The kings of this period of the
to compare the fragments of this Babylonian Late Bronze Age wrote to each
King List to its Assyrian counterpart. One other, allowing us to anchor
document, called the Synchronistic King our reconstruction of Assyri-
List, even enumerates some ninety pairs of an-Babylonian chronology to
Assyrian and Babylonian kings. Egyptian history. Burnaburiaš of
By combining all this information, we Babylonia (r.1359-1333) wrote
can continue to go deeper and establish that to Pharaoh Akhenaten (r.1353-
the Assyrian king Enlil-Nasir II ruled from 1336), who in turn exchanged
1420 to 1415. In Babylonia, the oldest dat- letters with Assur-uballit I of As-
able king is Burnaburiaš II (r.1359-1333). syria (r.1353-1318). These are
(There is a margin of a couple years, which important synchronisms. This
we will disregard.) We would prefer to check is a letter from Burnaburiaš to
our chronology against an eclipse or another Amenhotep III (r.1391-1353),
astronomical observation, but we are in fact now in the British Museum.
quite lucky to have a solid block of entangled
chronologies down to 1420 and 1353.
The floating part
The real problem is the chronology of the
first half of the second millennium, the
Middle Bronze Age. Fortunately, there is
no lack of sources. The damaged Babylo-
nian King List A can now be supplemented
by the Babylonian King List B, which in-
cludes information on the First Dynasty of
Ancient History Magazine 6 41
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 SPECIAL
One of the letters from Kaneš,
now in the museum of Kayseri
(Turkey).
Ancient remains at the Assyr-
ian trading post at Kaneš.
42 Ancient History Magazine 6
ahm_6.indd 42
Babylon. The most famous ruler of this age
was Hammurabi, who subjected all rival
kings and unified Mesopotamia.
Fortunately, he boasted about his
conquests and named the kings he had
defeated, which offers us synchronisms
with several other cities. So, we learn
that in Hammurabi’s thirteenth year, King
Rim-Sin of Larsa had ruled sixty years.
Another contemporary was Šamši-Adad
of Assyria, to whose death in Hammura-
bi’s eighteenth year we will return below.
For the moment, the synchronism of
Hammurabi and Rim-Sin is more impor-
tant, because it allows us to match the
kings of Babylon’s First Dynasty with rul-
ers on the king lists Larsa, Isin, and Ur. All
in all, we have a block of 518 years with
kings from four cities in southern Iraq.
However, this part is not connected to
the “solid part” mentioned above. There is
a gap of unknown width. The five centuries
are therefore called a “floating” block.
As luck would have it, in the eighth
regnal year of Ammisaduqa of Babylon,
astronomers regularly observed the plan-
et Venus. In 1906, the Italian astronomer
Giovanni Schiaparelli realized that these
observations could only have been made
on a limited number of occasions. The
eighth year of Ammisaduqa could only be
1543, 1575, 1631, 1639 or 1695, which
means that the last year of our floating
block of five centuries can only be 1499,
1531, 1587, 1595 and 1651 BC. These
chronologies are called “ultra-low”, “low”,
“low middle”, “high middle” and “high”.
For a long time, there was no way to
choose and the high middle chronology was
accepted. It was conveniently in the middle
and as long as everybody knew that it was
merely a convention, no damage was done.
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 MESOPOTAMIA: 2104-1587 BC

Kanes
The solution to this Mesopotamian puzzle
came from Anatolia. Kültepe, some 200
kilometers southeast of modern Ankara,
used to be an Assyrian trading post called
Kaneš. The merchants dated their exten-
sive correspondence with the common
dating formulas: the names of the epony-
mous limmu officials. Scholars already
knew some hundred Assyrian year names
from the first half of the second millen-
nium, but in 2012, this set had expanded
to 255, mostly from the Kaneš letters. The
entries in the “Revised Eponym List” are
indicated as REL 1 to 255.
They did not overlap with the younger
part of the Limmu List mentioned above, so
they could not help us choose between the
five possible chronologies, but still, progress
was possible: the trading post was, at some
point, rebuilt and archaeologists found only
texts with year names up to REL 138 in the
destroyed lower level, while in the new up-
per level, the year names started with REL
141. At more or less the same time, the
nearby palace of King Waršama was rebuilt
and archaeologists were able to date the
wooden beams by counting tree rings (see
Ancient History Magazine 5 for an explana-
tion of dendrochronology). In other words,
by dating a building phase in Kaneš, 255
Assyrian year names became convertible to
our own calendar – provided that the den-
drochronological curve was correct.
And to be honest, there were some
doubts. There is an excellent dendrochro-
nological curve for Anatolia, but the overlap
with the wood from Waršama’s palace was
rather fragile. In July 2016, however, this
problem was solved by radiocarbon dating
the wood. We now know that the palace
was rebuilt somewhere around 1840 (with
a margin of some ten years) and that the
list of 255 year names covers a period from
died, and we already saw that this hap- © Kees Huyser
about 1965 until about 1710 BC.
So, what is the breakthrough? Cru- pened in the eighteenth year of Hammu-
cial is REL 197, which we can now place rabi of Babylon. The only possible conclu-
somewhere near 1770 BC. This is the year sion is that we must reject the ultra-low,
in which the Assyrian king Šamši-Adad low, and high chronologies, which placed

Ancient History Magazine 6 43

ahm_6.indd 43 23/08/16 17:32

 SPECIAL
Hammurabi’s eighteenth regnal year in
1679, 1711, and 1831. The new date of
REL 197 is only compatible with the two
middle chronologies, which identify Ham-
murabi’s eighteenth year as 1767 or 1775.
Low middle or high middle?
Can we choose between the two remaining
chronologies? Yes, because REL 127 men-
tions an eclipse. In the low middle chronol-
ogy, there is a suitable candidate: 24 March
1838 BC. In the high middle chronology,
there is another candidate, but this eclipse
started just before sunset and was barely
noticeable. This is a very strong argument
for the low middle chronology.
Another argument is that the Venus ob-
servations best suit the lower chronology.
The upper part of the famous
There is even one aspect that is only com-
Code of Hammurabi, now in the
prehensible if this chronology is accepted.
Louvre, shows the king praying
The text of the Venus observations contains
to the sun god Šamaš. The laws
errors, but some of them disappear if we
of Hammurabi date to his sec-
assume that there was a lot of dust in the
ond regnal year, which we can
atmosphere. This event, usually dated to
now identify as 1783 BC.
1627/1626, is also known from the narrow
tree rings from Irish bog oaks and bristle-
cone pines from Sweden and the United
States. It may or may not have something to
do with the eruption of Thera, for which we
have a radiocarbon date of 1613 BC ±14.
This is another tantalizing clue that the low
middle chronology is correct.
So, a century after Schiaparelli, we
finally understand the Mesopotamian
chronology of the Middle Bronze Age: we
have to subtract eight years from the con-
ventional dates. The no longer floating
block of five centuries covers the years
2104-1587, the Venus Observations of
Ammisaduqa started in 1638, Hammu-
rabi reigned from 1784 to 1742, Šamši-
Adad died in 1767 and the Third Dynasty
of Ur reigned from 2104 to 1996.
Prospect
Whether this was a fun puzzle is a mat-
ter of taste, but chronology is a funda-
mental prerequisite for much other re-
search. The recent discovery ought to
have received as much publicity as the
44 Ancient History Magazine 6
ahm_6.indd 44
discovery of gravitational waves, quan-
tum entanglement, or the Higgs boson.
One final question: can we go any
deeper? We do have a Sumerian King List,
which starts with some mythological rulers
and ends with the kings of Isin that were
contemporaries of Hammurabi. If we ac-
cept the information of this list, we can go
deeper, to Sargon of Akkad, the first king
to unite Mesopotamia. He would have as-
cended to the throne in 2328 BC. We can
also establish that the period of chaos after
the fall of Akkad lasted from 2185 to 2105.
We have to take this with a pinch of
salt: this reconstruction is based on only
one source. However, we possibly have
confirmation from outside Mesopotamia,
because that age of chaos has a near-con-
temporary parallel in Egypt, where the year
2181 BC marks the beginning of the First
Intermediate Period. Sources from Meso-
potamia and Egypt refer to famine and pro-
longed drought. We do not know the nature
of this event and the synchronism may be
just coincidence, but it is also possible that
the climate was disturbed. Whatever this
may be, it makes one eager to hear about
further chronological research. AHM
Jona Lendering is editor of Ancient His-
tory Magazine.
FURTHER READING
If you are interested in ancient
chronology, the book to read is
Bickermann’s Chronology of the
Ancient World (1980²). After that,
there is only the specialized sci-
entific and scholarly literature. You
will find more literature at http://ti-
nyurl.com/AHM6-12tables but the
breakthrough itself is the subject of
S.W. Manning e.a., “Integrated Tree-
Ring-Radiocarbon High-Resolution
Timeframe to Resolve Earlier Sec-
ond Millennium BCE Mesopota-
mian Chronology”, which was pub-
lished on 13 July 2016 in PLoS One.
23/08/16 17:32