Note 985 — Chapter XXXVI · FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC.

From Astronomy many Assyrian dates have been ascertained. Kugler by stellar researches has settled the vexed question of the date of Hammurabi, and probably that of Abram, at about 2120 b.c., which unites within one year the latest conclusions of King, Jastrow, and Rogers, and so establishes an important degree of accord among Assyriologists on events subsequent to 2200 b.c. as regards which they have hitherto been wide apart. Then again modern astronomers have worked out that there was a total eclipse of the sun at Nineveh on June 15, 763 b.c. The importance of the fixing of this date can as regards Assyrian chronology hardly be exaggerated. The Assyrians, rejecting the Babylonian system of counting time, invented a system of their own, by naming the year after certain officers or terms of office, not unlike the system of the Archonates at Athens, and the Consulates at Rome. These were termed limus: a list of these functionaries during four centuries has come down to us. In the time of one of them, Pur Sagali, there is a mention of the eclipse of the sun. As this eclipse has now been fixed for the year 763 b.c., we possess an automatic date for every year after of the limus.