The
chronologyChronology is a chronicle or arrangement of events in their order of occurrence in time, such as a timeline. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...
of the Ancient Near EastThe Ancient Near East refers to early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia , ancient Egypt, ancient Iran , Armenia, Anatolia and the Levant...
is a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties of the
3rdThe 3rd millennium BC spans the Early to Middle Bronze Age.It represents a period of time in which imperialism, or the desire to conquer, grew to prominence, in the city states of the Middle East, but also throughout Eurasia, with Indo-European expansion to Anatolia, Europe and Central Asia. The...
and
2ndThe 2nd millennium BC marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.Its first half is dominated by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and Babylonia. The alphabet develops. Indo-Iranian migration onto the Iranian plateau and onto the Indian subcontinent propagates the use of the chariot...
millennia BC.
The following periods need to be distinguished:
- Early Bronze Age: A series of rulers and dynasties whose existence is based mostly on the Sumerian King List
The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript, originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and foreign dynasties. It records the location of "official" kingship, along with the rulers and their supposed reign lengths...
besides some that are attested epigraphicallyEpigraphy is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs engraved into stone or other durable materials, or cast in metal, the science of classifying them as to cultural context and date, elucidating them and assessing what conclusions can be deduced from them...
(e.g. En-me-barage-si). No absolute dates within a certainty better than a century can be assigned to this period.
- Middle to Late Bronze Age: Beginning with the Akkadian Empire around 2300 BC, the chronological evidence becomes internally more consistent. Essentially, for this period, a good picture can be drawn of who succeeded whom, and synchronisms between Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia "land between the rivers" is a name for the Tigris–Euphrates region in the eastern Mediterranean, largely corresponding to Iraq, as well as northeastern Syria, some parts of southeastern Turkey, and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern...
, the LevantThe Levant describes, traditionally, the Eastern Mediterranean at large, but can be used as a geographical term that denotes a large area in Western Asia formed by the lands bordering the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, roughly bounded on the north by the Taurus Mountains, on the south by...
and the more robust chronology of Ancient Egypt can be established. The assignment of absolute dates is a matter of dispute; the conventional middle chronology fixes the sack of Babylon at 1595 BC while the short chronology fixes it at 1531 BC.
- The Bronze Age collapse
The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive...
: a "Dark Age" begins with the fall of Babylonian Dynasty III (Kassite) around 1200 BC, the invasions of the Sea Peoples and the collapse of the Hittite Empire.
- Early Iron Age: around 900 BC, historical data, written records become more numerous once more, with the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 609 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as a great regional power, vying with Babylonia and other lesser powers for dominance of the region, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser...
, enabling the certain assignment of absolute dates. Classical sources such as the Canon of Ptolemy, the works of BerossusBerossus was a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, a priest of Bel and astronomer writing in Greek, who was active at the beginning of the 3rd century BC...
and the Hebrew BibleThe Hebrew Bible is a term referring to the books of the Jewish Bible as originally written mostly in Biblical Hebrew with some Biblical Aramaic...
provide chronological support and synchronisms. An eclipse in 763 BC which anchors the AssyrianAssyria was a civilization centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur...
list of imperial officials.
Variant Bronze Age chronologies
Due to the sparsity of sources throughout the "Dark Age", the history of the Near Eastern
Bronze AgeThe Bronze Age of a culture is the period when the most advanced metalworking in that culture utilised bronze. This could either have been based on the local smelting of copper and tin from ores, or trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere...
down to the end of the Third Babylonian Dynasty is a "floating chronology". In other words, it fits together internally as a "relative chronology" but not as a "absolute chronology".
The major schools of thought on the length of the Dark Age are separated by 56 or 64 years. This is because the key source for their dates is the
Venus tablet of AmmisaduqaThe Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa recovered from the library at Nineveh, is a 7th century BC cuneiform tablet that bears much older records of the rise times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise and sunset in the form of lunar dates...
and the visibility of Venus has a 56/64 year cycle. More recent work has suggested that the fundamental 8 year cycle of Venus is a better metric ". There have been other attempts to anchor the chronology using records of eclipses and other methods, but they are not yet widely supported. The alternative major chronologies are defined by the date of the 8th year of the reign of Ammisaduqa, king of Babylon. This choice then defines the reign of
HammurabiHammurabi Hammurabi Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ˤAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer," from ˤAmmu, "paternal kinsman," and Rāpi, "healer"; (ca. 1728 – 1686 BC middle chronology) was the sixth king of Babylon. He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire, extending Babylon's control over...
.
The current scholarly consensus is with the
short chronology (sack of Babylon 1531 BC) used in this article. In older literature, the most commonly encountered is the
middle chronology (sack of Babylon 1595 BC). There are also some scholars who discount the validity of the
Venus tablet of AmmisaduqaThe Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa recovered from the library at Nineveh, is a 7th century BC cuneiform tablet that bears much older records of the rise times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise and sunset in the form of lunar dates...
entirely.
The following table gives an overview of the competing proposals, listing some key dates and the deviation relative to the short chronology:
| Chronology | Ammisaduqa Year 8 | Reign of Hammurabi | Fall of Babylon I | ± |
|---|
| Ultra-Low |
1542 BC |
1696 BC – 1654 BC |
1499 BC |
+32 a Annum is a form of the Latin noun annus meaning year, from which are derived words such as annual and annuity. Annum is the accusative singular of the 2nd declension masculine noun annus , anni...
|
| Short or Low |
1574 BC |
1728 BC – 1686 BC |
1531 BC |
±0 a |
| Middle |
1638 BC |
1792 BC – 1750 BC |
1595 BC |
−64 a |
| Long or High |
1694 BC |
1848 BC – 1806 BC |
1651 BC |
−120 a |
The chronologies of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Anatolia depend significantly on the chronology of Ancient Egypt. To the extent that there are problems in the Egyptian chronology, these issues will be inherited in chronologies based on synchronisms with Ancient Egypt.
Inscriptional
Thousands of cuneiform tablets have been found in an area running from Anatolia to Egypt. While many are the modern equivalent of grocery receipts, these tablets, along with inscriptions on buildings and public monuments, provide the major source of chronological information for the ancient Middle East.
Underlying issues
While there are some relatively pristine objects, such as you might see in the Louvre or the British Museum, the vast majority of recovered tables and inscriptions are in much worse condition. They have been broken with only portions found, intentionally defaced, and damaged by weather or the effects of being buried underground. Many tablets were not even baked in antiquity and have to be carefully handled until they are heated properly.
The site of an item's recovery is an important piece of information for archaeologists. Unfortunately, two factors impinge on this. First, in ancient times old materials were often reused either as building material or fill, sometimes at a great distance from the original location. Secondly, looting has been a fact of life for archaeological sites, dating at least back to Roman times. The provenance of a looted object is difficult or impossible to determine.
Over time, key documents like the
Sumerian King ListThe Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript, originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and foreign dynasties. It records the location of "official" kingship, along with the rulers and their supposed reign lengths...
were repeatedly copied across the generations. As a result, there are sometimes multiple versions of a chronological source that differ from each other. It can be very hard to determine which version is correct.
The translation of cuneiform documents is quite difficult, especially given the damaged nature of much source material. Additionally, our knowledge of the underlying languages, like Akkadian and Sumerian, have evolved over time, so a translation done now may be quite different
than one done in AD 1900. The result of all this is that there can be honest disagreement what the document really says. Worse yet, many archaeological finds have not yet been published, much less translated. Those held in private collections may never be.
Many of our important source documents, such as the Assyrian King List, are the products of government and religious establishments. They often have a built-in slant in favor of the king or god in charge. A king may even take credit for a battle or construction project of an earlier ruler. The Assyrians in particular have a literary tradition of always putting the best possible face on history. The tablets or inscriptions in question still have value, though one does have to keep the slant in mind.
King Lists
Keeping historical lists of rulers was traditional in the ancient Near East.
- Sumerian King List
The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript, originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer from Sumerian and foreign dynasties. It records the location of "official" kingship, along with the rulers and their supposed reign lengths...
Covers rulers of Mesopotamia from a time "before the flood" up to the
fall of the Isin Dynasty. For many early city/states it is the only
source of chronological data. A major problem is that many early rulers
are listed with fantastically long reigns. There has been some speculation
that this stems from an error transcribing from the base 60 arithmetic
of the Sumerians to the decimal based system of the later Akkadians.
This list deals only with the rulers of Babylon. It has been found in two versions Babylonian King List A and Babylonian King List B.
The later dynasties in the list reflect the Kassite and Sealand periods of Babylon. There is also a Babylonian King List of the Hellenistic Period which covers the later part of the 1st millennium.
Found in multiple differing copies, this tablet lists all the kings of Assyria and their regnal lengths back into the mists of time, with the portions with reasonable data beginning at around the 14th century BC. When combined with the various Assyrian chronicles, the Assyrian King List anchors the chronology of the 1st millennium.
Chronicles
Many chronicles have been recovered in the ancient Near East. Most are partial or fragmentary, but when combined with other sources, they provide a rich source of chronological data.
Found in the library of Assurbanipal in Nineveh, it records the interaction of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, from the Assyrian point of view. While useful, the consensus is that this chronicle should not be considered reliable.
While quite incomplete, this tablet provides the same type of information as the Assyrian Synchronistic Chronicle, but from the Babylonian point of view.
- Royal Chronicle of Lagash
The Sumerian King List omits any mention of
LagashLagash is located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, Lagash was one of the oldest cities of Sumer and later Babylonia...
, even though it was clearly a major power during the period covered by the list. The Royal Chronicle of Lagash appears to be an attempt to remedy that omission, listing the kings of Lagash in the form of a chronicle.It should be noted that some scholars believe the chronicle to be either a parody of the Sumerian King List or a complete fabrication.
Royal inscriptions
As today, political figures in the ancient Near East liked to take credit for public works. Temples, buildings and statues built by a ruler are likely to have some sort of inscription mentioning his name. The kings also were sure to record major deeds like battles won, titles acquired, or gods appeased in some form of public inscription. These are very useful in tracking the reign of a ruler.
Year lists
Unlike current calendars, most ancient calendars were based on how long the current ruler had been in power. A year might be "the 5th year in the reign of Hammurabi". As part of this, each royal year was given a title, like "the year Ur was defeated". Most often this reflected a deed of the ruler. The compilation of these years are called date lists.
Eponym (limmu) lists
In Assyria, a royal official, or
LimmuLimmu was an Assyrian eponym. At the beginning of the reign of an Assyrian king, the limmu, an appointed royal official, would preside over the New Year festival at the capital. Each year a new limmu would be chosen. Although picked by lot, there was most likely a limited group, such as the men of...
was selected every year of a king's reign. Many copies of these lists have been found. . Naturally, details are not always clear cut. There are sometimes too many or few limmu for the length of a king's reign and sometimes the different versions
of the Eponym List disagree on a limmu.
Trade, diplomatic, and disbursement records
As is often the case in archaeology, it is everyday records that give the best picture of a civilization. Cuneiform tablets were constantly moving around the ancient Near East, offering
alliances (sometimes including daughters for marriage), threatening war, acting as shipping documents for mundane supplies or settling accounts receivable. Most were tossed away after use the way that we would discard unwanted receipts. Fortunately for us, tablets are durable and many are well-preserved even when used as material for wall filler in new construction.
- Amarna Letters
The Amarna letters are an archive of correspondence on clay tablets, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom...
The classic example. A number of cuneiform tablets were found at
Amarna in Egypt, the city of the pharaoh
AkhenatenAkhenaten was known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV . A Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, he ruled for 17 years and died in 1336 BC or 1334 BC...
. They were written mostly
in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time. Several named rulers in the region including the kings of Assyria and Babylon.
Assuming that the correct kings have been identified, it locks the chronology of the ancient Near East to that of Egypt, at least from the middle of the 2nd Millennium.
Classical
Some data sources are available to us from the classical period
- Berossus
Berossus was a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, a priest of Bel and astronomer writing in Greek, who was active at the beginning of the 3rd century BC...
Berossus was a Babylonian astronomer living during the Hellenistic period.
He wrote a history of Babylon which has not survived to modern times.
Luckily, portions of this work were preserved by other classical writers.
- Canon of Ptolemy or Canon of Kings
The Canon of Kings was a dated list of kings used by ancient astronomers as a convenient means to date astronomical phenomena, such as eclipses. The Canon was preserved by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, and is thus sometimes called Ptolemy's Canon. It is one of the most important bases for our...
This book provides a list of
kings starting at around 750 BC in Babylon and forward through the
Persian and Roman periods, in an astronomical context. It is used to help
define the chronology of the 1st millennium.
Not having the benefit of being written into clay and buried, the
records of the Hebrews have an additional layer of time
to work through in being used as a source for chronology. On the
other hand, the Hebrews did live pretty much in a territory directly
in the crosshairs of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt and the Hittites, giving them
a front row seat to actions in the area. Mainly of use in the 1st millennium
and with the Assyrian New Kingdom.
Astronomical
- Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa
The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa recovered from the library at Nineveh, is a 7th century BC cuneiform tablet that bears much older records of the rise times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise and sunset in the form of lunar dates...
A record of the movements of Venus during the reign of a king of the First Babylonian Dynasty. Using it, various scholars have proposed dates for the fall of Babylon based on the 56/64 year cycle of Venus. The mentioned recent work suggesting that the fundamental 8 year cycle of Venus is a better metric, lead to the proposal of a "ultra-low" chronology.
A number of lunar and solar eclipses have been suggested for use in dating the ancient Near East. Many suffer from the vagueness of the original tablets in showing that an actual eclipse occurred. At that point, it becomes a question of using computer models to show when a given eclipse would have been visible at a site, complicated by difficulties in modeling the slowing rotation of the earth,
Delta TΔT, Delta T, delta-T, deltaT, or DT is the time difference obtained by subtracting Universal Time from Terrestrial Time....
. One important event is the Ninevah Eclipse, found in an Assyrian limmu list q.e. "Bur-Sagale of Guzana, revolt in the city of Ashur. In the month Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place." This eclipse is considered to be solidly dated to 15 June 763 BC. Another important event is the Ur III Lunar/Solar Eclipse pair in the reign of
ShulgiShulgi of Urim was the second king of the "Sumerian Renaissance". He reigned for 48 years, dated to 2095 BC–2047 BC short chronology...
. Most calculations
for dating using eclipses have assumed that the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa is a legitimate source.
Dendrochronology
DendrochronologyDendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis of patterns of tree-rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year...
attempts to use the variable growth pattern
of trees, expressed in their rings, to build up a chronological
timeline. At present, there are no continuous chronologies for the Near East.
A floating chronology has been developed using trees in Anatolia for the
Bronze and Iron Ages. Until a continuous sequence is developed, the
usefulness for improving the chronology of the Ancient Near East is
limited. The difficulty in tying the chronology to the modern day lies primarily in the Roman period, for which few good wood samples have been found, and many of those turn out to be imported from outside the Near East..
Radiocarbon dating
As in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, radiocarbon dates run
one or two centuries earlier than the dates proposed by archaeologists.
It is not at all clear which groups is right, if either. Mechanisms
have been proposed for explaining why radiocarbon dates in the
region might be skewed. Equally logical arguments have been made
suggesting that the archaeological dates are too late. Time will
tell. The spread of accelerator based carbon dating techniques
may help clear up the issue. Another promising front is the dating
of lime plaster from structures.
Egypt
At least as far back as the reign of
Thutmose IIIThutmose III was the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. During the first twenty-two years of Thutmose's reign he was co-regent with his aunt, Hatshepsut, who was named the pharaoh...
, Egypt took a strong interest in the ancient
Near East. At times they occupied portions of the region, a favor returned in later days
by the Assyrians. Some key synchronisms:
- Battle of Kadesh
The Battle of Kadesh took place between the forces of the Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire under Muwatalli II at the city of Kadesh on the Orontes River, in what is now the Syrian Arab Republic....
, involving Ramses II of Egypt (in his 5th year of reign) and Muwatalli IIMuwatalli II was a king of the New kingdom of the Hittite empire . The eldest surviving son of Mursili II, he is best known as the Hittite ruler who fought Ramesses II to a standstill at the Battle of Kadesh around 1274 BC...
of the Hittite empire. Recorded by both Egyptian and Hittite records.
- Peace treaty between Ramses II of Egypt (in his 21st year of reign) and Hattusili III
Hattusili III was a king of the Hittite empire ca. 1267 – 1237 BC . He was the fourth and last son of Mursili II...
of the Hittites. Recorded by both Egyptian and Hittite records.
- Amenhotep III
Amenhotep III was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty. According to different authors, he ruled Egypt from June 1386 to 1349 BC or June 1388 BC to December 1351 BC/1350 BC after his father Thutmose IV died...
(Amenophis III) marries the daughter of Shuttarna II of Mitanni. There is also a record of messages from the pharaoh to Kadashman-Enlil I of Babylon in the Amarna Letter (EA1-5). Other Amarna letters link Amenhotep III to Burnaburiash II of Babylon (EA6) and Tushratta of Mitanni (EA17-29) as well.
- Akhenaten
Akhenaten was known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV . A Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt, he ruled for 17 years and died in 1336 BC or 1334 BC...
married the daughter of Tushratta of Mitanni (as did his father Amenhotep III) leaving a number of records on the matter.
- Amenhotep IV corresponded with Burnaburiash II of Babylon (EA7-11,15), and Ashuruballit 1 of Assyria (EA15-16)
Indus Valley
There is much evidence that the
HarappanHarappan can refer to:* Aspects related to Harappa an archaeological site and city in northeast Pakistan* The Indus Valley Civilization that thrived along Indus River...
civilization of the Indus Valley traded with the region. This is demonstrated by clay seals found at Ur III and in the Persian Gulf. In addition, if the land of
Meluhha' or Melukhkha is the Sumerian name of a prominent trading partner of Sumer during the Middle Bronze Age. Its identification remains an open question.-Meluhha, Dilmun, and Magan:...
does indeed refer to the Indus Valley, then there are extensive trade records ranging from the Akkadian Empire until the Babylonian Dynasty I.
Thera and Eastern Mediterranean
Goods from Greece made their way into the ancient Near East, directly in Anatolia and via the island of
CyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey and west of Syria and Lebanon....
in the rest of the region and Egypt. A Hittite king, Tudhaliya IV even captured Cyprus as part of an attempt to enforce a blockade of the Assyrians.
The eruption of the Thera volcano provides a possible time marker for the region. A large eruption, it would have sent a plume of ash directly over Anatolia and filled the sea in the area with floating pumice. This pumice appeared in Egypt, apparently via trade. Current excavations in the Levant may also add to the timeline. Unfortunately, the exact date of the volcanic eruption is subject of strong contest between the radiocarbon experts, who place it at around 1610 BC and archaeologists, who support a date around 1470 BC.
See also
- Short chronology timeline
The short chronology is one chronology of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728 BC – 1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC....
- Bronze Age collapse
The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition in the Near East and Eastern Mediterranean from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age, as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive...
- Egyptian chronology
The creation of a reliable chronology of Ancient Egypt is a task fraught with problems. While the overwhelming majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many of the details of a common chronology, disagreements either individually or in groups have resulted in a variety of dates offered...
External links