Further Astronomical Fine-tuning of the Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian Chronologies

Recently much progress has been made in the absolute dating of the Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian chronologies by combining a new critical edition of the Old Assyrian eponym lists found at KültepeKaneš (Revised Eponym List) with radiocarbon and astronomical dating techniques. This has led to narrowing down the absolute dating of the Old Babylonian chronology to the two Middle Chronologies (Ammī-ṣaduqa year 1 = 1646 or 1638 BC) and to reducing the candidates for the solar eclipse recorded in the Mari Eponym Chronicle (REL 127) to three eclipses (in 1845 BC, 1838 BC, and 1833 BC). In this paper I use the results of a recent study of the intercalation of the Old Assyrian calendar at Kaneš (REL 81–110) to further refine the absolute dating of the chronology of the first half of the second millennium BC. The new evidence suggests that astronomical intercalation criteria like the heliacal rising of the bright star Sirius may have played an important role in establishing the intercalation pattern of the Old Assyrian calendar. Using the REL to create three different solutions of the Old Assyrian calendar at Kaneš (REL 81–110), one for each candidate solar eclipse, I propose that the observed intercalation pattern provides an additional independent argument in support of the Low Middle Chronology. According to the absolute dating of the Old Assyrian chronology proposed here Šamšī-Adad was born in 1839 BC (REL 126), in the year preceding the partial solar eclipse of 24 March 1838 BC (REL 127) and he died in December 1767 BC (REL 197), during the eighteenth year of the reign of king Hammurabi of Babylon. This chronology proposal implies that the eginning of the reign of the Old Assyrian king Erišum (REL 1) may be dated to 1964 BC