Footnotes

1.

Eusebius/Jerome counted years from the first Olympiad, beginning in 776 B.C. They dated events as occurring during the first, second, third or fourth year of a specific Olympiad. The notion of counting years A.D.—that is, Anno Domini, or “in the year of the Lord”—from the birth of Jesus was the invention of Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little), a monk who lived in Rome in the sixth century A.D. (see Leonora Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, 03:01). The practice of dating the earlier era B.C.—or “Before Christ”—was not used until the 17th century A.D.

2.

Although Joseph Scaliger knew only a defective version of this king list, by the early 17th century a number of correct versions were available to scholars. The three earliest correct manuscripts, written in Byzantine uncial script, date from the eighth to tenth century A.D.; they are kept in Leiden (Leidensis BPG 78), the Vatican (Vaticanus graecus 1291) and Florence (Laurentianus 28–26).

3.

Obviously, on February 26, 747 B.C., there was neither a February 26 nor a 747 B.C. Our modern time-reckoning has been extended backward into the past, according to a convention first applied in the 17th century.

4.

These rulers of Egypt are of Macedonian descent, having come to power after Alexander’s conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C. The last and most famous of the rulers of this Greek/Egyptian dynasty, called the Ptolemaic dynasty, was Cleopatra.

5.

Kings normally don’t begin or end their reign on New Year’s Day. The Egyptians had an elaborate system for rounding off kings’ reigns.

6.

Although the Canon is a product of Alexandria, a city founded in the late fourth century B.C., Greek astronomers, including Ptolemy, relied upon Babylonian astronomical observations dating to before the city’s founding. The Canon thus shifts from rulers of Assyria and Babylonia to rulers of Egypt.

7.

See Harold Brodsky, “Ptolemy Charts the World,” Origins, Archaeology Odyssey, 01:02.

8.

The margin of error of dates obtained from Sothic dating is roughly 10 to 20 years for the second half of the second millennium B.C., 40 to 50 years for the first half of the second millennium B.C., and one to two centuries for the third millennium B.C.

Endnotes

1.

The decipherment of Babylonian astronomy began at the end of the 19th century. A milestone is Franz Xaver Kugler’s book on lunar motion according to the Babylonians (Die Babylonische Mondrechnung [1900]). With such studies as Astronomical Cuneiform Texts (1955) and History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy (1975), Otto Neugebauer of Brown University played an important role in this development.

2.

Only recently, however, have the Diaries become easily accessible, because of publications by Abraham Sachs and Hermann Hunger; the first three volumes of their Astronomical Diaries and Related Texts from Babylonia, containing most of the Diaries, appeared in 1988, 1989 and 1996.

3.

These texts can be found in Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Academon, 1986–1993).

4.

In these lists, each year is named after an official called the limu, whose main function was to lend his name to the year (eponymously). The Assyrian year-lists are not king lists, though sometimes kings act as the limu. These lists are collected in Alan Millard, The Eponyms of the Assyrian Empire, 910–612 BC (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1994).