Chronological systems of Babylonia and Assyria

The extreme divergence in the chronological schemes employed by different writers on the history of Babylonia and Assyria has frequently caused no small perplexity to readers who have no special knowledge of the subject. In this section an attempt is made to indicate briefly the causes which have led to so great a diversity of opinion, and to describe in outline the principles underlying the chief schemes of chronology that have been suggested; a short account will then be given of the latest discoveries in this branch of research, and of the manner in Which they affect the problems at issue. It will be convenient to begin with the later historical periods, and then to push our inquiry into the earlier periods of Babylonian and Sumerian history.

Up to certain points no difference of opinion exists upon the dates to be assigned to the later kings who ruled in Babylon and in Assyria. The Ptolemaic Canon gives a list of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian kings who ruled, in Babylon, together with the number of years each of them reigned, from the accession of Nabonassar in 747 BC to the conquest of Babylon by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The accuracy of this list is confirmed by the larger List of Kings and by the principal Babylonian Chronicle; the latter, like the Canon, begins with the reign of Nabonassar, who, it has been suggested, may have revised the calendar and have inaugurated a new epoch for the later chronology. The Ptolemaic Canon is further controlled and its accuracy confirmed by the Assyrian Eponym Lists;, or lists of limmi, by means of which Assyrrian chronology, is fixed from 911 BC[?]. to 666 BC, the solar eclipse of June 15, 763 BC, which is recorded in the eponymy of Pur-Sagale or Bur-Sagale, placing the dead reckoning for these later periods upon an absolutely certain basis.

Thus most historians are agreed with regard to the Babylonian chronology back to the year 747 BC, and with regard to that of Assyria back to the year 911 BC. (For different new opinions see Wikipedia's Chronology of Babylonia and Assyria.) It is in respect of the periods anterior to these two dates that different writers have propounded differing systems of chronology, and, as might be imagined, the earlier the period, we examine the greater becomes the discrepancy, between the systems proposed. This variety of opinion is due to the fact that the data available for settling the chronology often conflict with one another, or are capable of more than one interpretation.

Since its publication in 1884 the Babylonian Lhtof Kinga (maybe a typo for List of Kings?) has furnished the framework for every chronological system that has been proposed. In its original form this document gave a list, arranged in dynasties, of the Babylonian kings, from the First Dynasty of Babylon down to the Neo-Babylonian period. If the text were complete we should probably be in possession of the system of Babylonian chronology current in the NeoBabylonian period from which our principal classical authorities derived their information. The principal points of uncertainty, due to gaps in the text, concern the length of Dynasties IV and VIII; for the reading of the figure giving the length of the former is disputed, and the summary at the close of the latter omits to state its length. This omission is much to be regretted, since Nabonassar was the last king but two of this dynasty, and, had we known its duration, we could have combined the information on the earlier periods furnished by the Kings' List with the evidence of the Ptolemaic Canon. In addition to the Kings' List, other important chronological data consist of references in the classical authorities to the chronological system of Berossus[?]; chronological references to earlier kings occurring in the later native inscriptions, such as Nabonidus's estimate of the period of Khammurabi (or Hammurabi); synchronisms, also furnished by the inscriptions, between kings of Babylon and of Assyria; and the early Babylonian date-lists.

In view of the uncertainty regarding the length of Dynasties IV. and VIII. of the Kings' List, attempts have been made to ascertain the dates of the earlier dynasties by independent means. The majority of writers, after fixing the date at which Dynasty III closed by means of the synchronisms and certain of the later chronological references, have accepted the figures of the Kings' List for the earlier dynasties, ignoring their apparent inconsistencies with the system of Berossus and with the chronology of Nabonidus. Others have attempted to reconcile the conflicting data by emendations of the figures and other ingenious devices. This will explain the fact that while the difference between the earliest and latest dates suggested for the close of Dynasty III is only 144 years, the difference between the earliest and latest dates suggested for the beginning of Dynasty I is no less than 622 years. A comparison of the principal schemes of chronology that have been propounded may be made by means of the preceding table. The first column gives the names of the writers and the dates at which their schemes were published, while the remaining columns give the dates they have suggested for Dynasties I, II and III of the Kings' List (These three dynasties are usually known as the First Dynasty of Babylon, the Dynasty of Sisku or Uruku, and the Kassite Dynasty). The systems with the highest dates are placed first in the list; where a writer has produced more than one system, these are grouped together, the highest dates proposed by him determining his place in the series.

Omitting that of Oppert, which to some extent stands in a category by itself, the systems fall into three groups. The first group, comprising the second to the sixth names, obtains its results by selecting the data on which it relies and ignoring others. The second group, comprising the next four names, attempts to reconcile the conflicting data by emending the figures. The third group, consisting of the last two names, is differentiated by its proposals with regard to Dynasty II. It will be noted that the first group has obtained higher dates than the second, and the second group higher dates on the whole than the third.

Oppert's system represents the earliest dates that have been suggested. He accepted the figures of the Kings' List and claimed that he reconciled them with the figures of Berossus~ though he ignored the later chronological notices. But there is no evidence for his "cyclic date" of 2517 BC[?], on which his system depended, and there is little doubt that the beginning of the historical period of Berossus is to be set, not in 2506 B.c., but in 2232 B.C. The two systems of Sayce, that of Rogers, the three systems of Winckler, both those of Delitzsch, and that of Maspero, may be grouped together, for they are based on the same principle. Having first fixed the date of the close of Dynasty III, they employed the figures of the Kings', List unemended for defining the earlier periods, and did not attempt to reconcile their results with other conflicting data. The difference of eighteen years in Sayce's two dates for the rise of Dynasty was due to his employing in 1902 the figures assigned to the first seven kings of the dynasty upon the larger of the two contemporary date-lists, which had meanwhile been published, in place of those given by the List of Kings. It should be noted that Winckler (1905) and Delitzsch (1907) gives the dates only in round numbers.

A second group of systems may be said to consist of those proposed by Lehmann-Haupt, Marquart, Peiser, and Rost, for these writers attempted to get over the discrepancies in the data by amending some of the figures furnished by the inscriptions. In 1891, with the object of getting the total duration of the dynasties to agree with the chronological system of Berossus and with the statement of Nabonidus concerning Khammurabi's date, Peiser proposed to emend the figure given by the Kings' List for the length of Dynasty III. The reading of "9 soss and 36 years," which gives the total 576 years, he suggested was a scribal error for "6 soss and 39 years"; he thus reduced the length of Dynasty III. by 177 years and effected a corresponding reduction in the dates assigned to Dynasties I and II. In 1897 Rost followed up Peiser's suggestion by reducing the figure still further, but he counteracted to some extent the effects of this additional reduction by emending Sennacherib's date for Mardukriadin-akhe's defeat of Tiglath-Pileser I[?] as engraved on the rock at Bavian, holding that the figure 418, as engraved upon the rock, was a mistake for "478." Lehmann-Haupt's first system ~1898 resembled those of Oppert, Sayce, Rogers, Winckler, Delitzsch and Maspero in that he accepted the figures of the Kings' List, and did not attempt to amend them. But he obtained his low date for the close of Dynasty III by amending Sennacherib's figure in the Bavian inscription; this he reduced by a hundred years, instead of increasing it by sixty as Rost had suggested. Lehmann-Haupt's influence is visible in Marquart's system published in the following year; it may be noted that his slightly reduced figure for the beginning of Dynasty I. was arrived at by incorporating the new information supplied by the first date-list to be published. When revising his scheme of chronology in 1900, Rost abandoned his suggested emendation of Sennacherib's figure, but by decreasing his reduction of the length of Dynasty III, he only altered his date for the beginning of Dynasty I by one year. In his revised scheme of chronology, published in 1903, Lehmann-Haupt retained his emendation of Sennacherib's figure, and was in his turn influenced by Marquart's method of reconciling the dynasties of Berossus with the Kings' List. He continued to accept the figure of the Kings' List for Dynasty III, but he reduced the length of Dynasty II by fifty years, arguing that the figures assigned to some of the reigns were improbably high. His slight reduction in the length of Dynasty I was obtained from the recently published date-lists, though his proposed reduction of Ammizaduga's reign to ten years has since been disproved.

A third group of systems comprises those proposed by Hommel and Niebuhr, for their reductions in the date assigned to Dynasty I. were effected chiefly by their treatment of Dynasty II. In his first system, published in 1886,i Hommel, mainly with the object of reducing Khammurabi's date, reversed the order of the first two dynasties of the Kings' List, placing Dynasty II before Dynasty I. In his second and third systems (1895 and 1898), and in his second alternative scheme of 1901 (see below), he abandoned this proposal and adopted a suggestion of Halévy that Dynasty III followed immediately after Dynasty I; Dynasty II, he suggested, had either synchronized with Dynasty I, or was mainly apocryphal (eine spdtere Geschichtskonstruction) Niebuhr's system was a modification of Hommel's second theory, for, instead of entirely ignoring Dynasty II, he reduced its independent existence to 143 years, making it overlap Dynasty I by 225 years. The extremely low dates proposed by Hommel in 1898 were due to his adoption of Peiser's emendation for the length of Dynasty III, in addition to his own elimination of Dynasty II. In 1901 Hommel abandoned Peiser's emendation and suggested two alternative schemes. According to one of these he attempted to reconcile Berossus with the Kings' List by assigning to Dynasty II an independent existence of some 171 years, while as a possible alternative he put forward what was practically his theory of 1895.

Such are the principles underlying the various chronological schemes which had, until recently, been propounded. The balance of opinion was in favour of those of the first group of writers, who avoided emendations of the figures and were content to follow the Kings' List and to ignore its apparent discrepancies with other chronological data; but it is now admitted that the general principle underlying the third group of theories was actually nearer the truth. The publication of fresh chronological material in 1906 and 1907 placed a new complexion on the problems at issue, and enabled us to correct several preconceptions, and to reconcile or explain the apparently conflicting data.

From a Babylonian chronicle in the British Museum we now know that Dynasty II. of the Kings' List never occupied the throne of Babylon, but ruled only in the extreme south of Babylonia on the shores of the Persian Gulf; that its kings were contemporaneous with the later kings of Dynasty I. and with the earlier kings of Dynasty III. of the Kings' List; that in the reign of Samsu-ditana, the last king of Dynasty I, Hittites from Cappadocia raided and captured Babylon, which in her weakened state soon fell a prey to the Kassites (Dynasty III); and that later on southern Babylonia, till then held by Dynasty II. of the Kings', List, was in its turn captured by the Kassites, who from that time onward occupied the whole of the Babylonian plain. The same chronicle informs us that Ilu-shuma, an early Assyrian patesi, was the contemporary of Su-abu, the founder of Dynasty I. of the Kings' List, thus enabling us to trace the history of Assyria back beyond the rise of Babylon.

Without going into details, the more important results of this new information may be summarized: the elimination of Dynasty II. from the throne of Babylon points to a date not much 'earlier than 2000 or 2050 B.C. for the rise of Dynasty I., a date which harmonizes with the chronological notices of Shalmaneser I; Nabonidus's estimate of the period of Khammurabi, so far from being centuries too low, is now seen to have been exaggerated, as the context of the passage in his inscription suggests; and finally the beginning of the historical period of Berossus is not to be synchronized with Dynasty I of the Kings' List, but, assuming that his figures had an historical basis and that they have come down to us in their original form, with some earlier dynasty which may possibly have had its capital in one of the other great cities of Babylonia (such as the Dynasty of Isin).

New data have also been discovered bearing upon the period before the rise of Babylon. A fragment of an early dynastic chronicle from Nippur gives a list of the kings of the dynasties of Ur and Isin. From this text we learn. that the Dynasty of Ur consisted of five kings and lasted for 117 years, and was succeeded by the Dynasty of Isin, which consisted of sixteen kings and lasted for 2251/2 years. Now the capture of the city of Isin. by Rim-Sin, which took place in the seventeenth year of Sin-muballit, the father of Khammurabi, formed an epoch for dating tablets in certain parts of Bahylonian and it is probable that we may identify the fall of the Dynasty of Isin with this capture of the city. In that case the later rulers of the Dynasty of Isin would have been contemporaneous with the earlier rulers of Dynasty I. of the Kings' List, and we obtain. for the rise of the Dynasty of Ur a date not much earlier than 2300 B.c.

These considerable reductions in the dates of the earlier dynasties of Babylonia necessarily react upon our estimate of the age of Babylonian civilization. The very high dates of 5000 or 6000 BC, fcrmerly assigned by many writers to the earliest remains of the Sumerians and the Babylonian Semites, depended to agreat extent on the statement of Nabonidus that 3200 years separated his own age from that of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Agade; for to Sargon, on this statement alone, a date of 3800 BC has usually been assigned. But even by postulating the highest possible dates for the Dynasties of Babylon and Ur, enormous gaps occurred in the scheme of chronology, which were unrepresented by any royal name or record. In his valiant attempt to fill these gaps Radau was obliged to invent kings and even dynasties, the existence of which is now definitely disproved.

The statement of Nabonidus has not, however, been universally accepted. Lehmann-Haupt suggested an emendation of the text, reducing the number by a thousand years; while Winckler has regarded the statement of Nabonidus as an uncritical exaggeration. Obviously the scribes of Nabonidus were not anxious to diminish the antiquity of the foundation-inscription of Nargm-Sin, which their royal master had unearthed; and another reason for their calculations resulting in so high a figure is suggested by the recent discoveries: they may in all good faith have reckoned as consecutive a number of early dynasties which were as a matter of fact contemporaneous. But, though we may refuse to accept the accuracy of this figure of Nabonidus, it is not possible at present to fix a definite date for the early kings of Agade. All that can be said is that both archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicates that no very long interval separated the empire of the Semitic kings of Agade from that of the kings of Sumer and Akkad, whose rule was inaugurated by the founding of the Dynasty of Ur.

To use caution in accepting the chronological notices of the later kings is very far removed from suggesting emendations of their figures. The emenders postulate mechanical errors in the writing of the figures, but, equally with those who accept them, regard the calculations of the native scribes as above reproach. But that scribes could make mistakes in their reckoning is definitely proved by the discovery at Shergat of two totally conflicting accounts of the age and history of the great temple of Assur. This discovery in itself suggests that all chronological data are not to be treated as of equal value and arranged mechanically like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle; and further, that no more than a provisional acceptance should be accorded any statement of the later native chronologists, until confirmed by contemporary records. On the other hand, the death-blow has been given to the principle of emendation of the figures, which for so long has found favour among a considerable body of German writers.

See also: Babylonia and Assyria, Chronology of Babylonia and Assyria

This article was originally based on content from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. Update as needed.