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Onthe Available Lunarand Solar Eclipses and Baby
lonian Chronology
1 2
V.G.Gurzadyan and D.A. Warburton
(1) ICRA, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy and Yerevan Physics
Institute, Armenia; (2) University of Aarhus, Denmark
(Published in Akkadica, v.126 (2005) p.195.)
The recently shown two premises (Gurzadyan 2000), i.e. the absence of
56/64 year Venus cycle constraints, at the importance of the 8-year cycle in
the Venus Tablet, stimulated new studies on the Chronology of the Ancient
Near East (2nd millennium BC). The analysis by B.Banjevic using both
premises, however, did not provide anchors of strenght similar to those of Ur
IIIeclipses, whileavailable solar eclipses lack unambiguouslinkstohistorica
events. The Ultra-Low chronology (Gasche et al 1998), therefore, has to be
considered as currently the one most reliably based on ancient astronomica
records.
There are two premises at the base of Boris Banjevic’s (2005) chrono-
logical analysis. The first is that chronological proposals can no longer be
legitimately constrained by 56/64 Venus-cycles (which are the base of the
High, Middle and Low chronologies previously recognized), as these cycles
cannot be reliably established in the existing sources. The second premise
is that the 8-year cycles can be extracted from the Venus Tablet. Both
premises were shown in our work (Gurzadyan 2000).
Based on the historical records, the Ultra-Low chronology (Gasche et
al 1998) satisfied the 8-year Venus cycle condition, which is recognized by
all concerned. Furthermore, this was independently anchored via the lunar
eclipses, and thus with complementary astronomical sources linked to thecondition of the interval between the eclipses known from historical sources.
It was the final phase information of the records of the Ur III lunar eclipses
of EAE 20 IIIAand EAE 21 XII, includingboth the watch times and thead-
ditional condition in EAE20 IIIBaboutthe”weakly shiningstars”(showing
the absolute importance of the exit information), which allowed the chronol-
ogy to be fixed precisely.
In contrast to this procedure, Banjevic does notprovide any newanchors
of similar strength. To discuss ?T in order to fit the lunar eclipse of -1960
of twilight to the second Ur III eclipse seems unreasonable in principle,
particularly given the absence of an alternative link to historical events.
Furthermore, e.g., the recently reported lunar eclipse of -382 seems to pose
new problems for our understanding of ?T (Steele, 2005). Thus this subtle
issue must be approached cautiously.
Individual solar eclipses, as discussed previously in the literature, can
hardly act as anchors, without unambiguous information associating to his-
tory. Similarly, the Assur Solar eclipse of -1764 even though compatible to
Ultra-Low chronology (una?ected by ?T!), has never been used as a crucial
argument for the latter.
As an astrophysicist, one of us (V.G.) only commented on astronomical
aspects, where it would seem that additional astronomical support compat-
ible with the historical givens should be expected.
Making a contribution in this respect requires an interdisciplinary e?ort
combining a profound knowledge of texts, language, religion, history and
archaeology. Thus, caution might be advised when placing too much con-
fidence in statistical probabilities aligned with some possible correlations.
Banjevic highlights the di?culties in noting that even according to his own
interpretation (which need not correspond to the calculations of others), his
proposal involves a discrepancy of ”only 3 years” with respect to the Assyr-
ian Distanzangaben. In fact, however, the size of the gap is immaterial, as
it demonstrates (as Eder 2004 has already shown) that the Distanzangaben
are not compatible with any known astronomical data - even Banjevic’s.
References
BANJEVIC, B., 2005, Akkadica, 126, 169.
EDER, Ch., 2004 : ”Assyrische Distanzangaben und die Chronologie
Vorderasiens”, Altorientalische Forschungen 31, 191-236.
Gasche et al 1998 = GASCHE, H., ARMSTRONG, J.A., COLE, S.W.,GURZADYAN, V.G., 1998 : Dating the Fall of Babylon. A Reap-
praisalofSecond-MillenniumChronology(=MHEM4), Ghent, Chicago.
GURZADYAN, V.G., 2000 : On the Astronomical Records and Baby-
lonian Chronology, Just in Time. Proceedings of the International
Colloquium on Ancient Near Eastern Chronology (2nd Millennium
BC). Ghent 7-9 July 2000 (= Akkadica 119-120), Bruxelles, 177-186;
physics/0311035.
STEELE, J., 2005 : Ptolemy, Babylon and the Rotation of the Earth,
Astronomy & Geophysics 46, 5.11-5.15.
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