The Assyrian Eponym Chronicle
The Assyrian list of the officials after whom each year was named, with a note of the main event of the year. Its entry for a solar eclipse in 763 BC fixes the whole sequence and, through it, the dates of Ahab and Jehu.
The Assyrians did not number their years. They named each one after an official, the limmu or eponym, and kept running lists of the names. The version called the Eponym Chronicle adds the eponym’s office and a short note of where the army campaigned that year. Ten copies survive in fragments, found at Nineveh, Assur and Sultantepe, and together they give a continuous sequence from 858 to 699 BC.
The entry for the year of Bur-Saggile, governor of Guzana, records an eclipse of the sun in the month Simanu. Astronomers identify it with the eclipse of 15 June 763 BC. Counting back along the list from that fixed point gives a calendar date for every earlier eponym, and so for every campaign that an Assyrian king dates by eponym or by regnal year.
Two of those dates anchor the chronology of the kings of Israel. Shalmaneser III dates his campaign to Qarqar to the eponymy of Dayan-Ashur, which is 853 BC, and his eighteenth year, in which he received tribute from Jehu, is 841 BC. See Ahab at the Battle of Qarqar and Jehu’s Revolt and Tribute to Assyria.
Cited in
- 853 BC, firm date
- 841 BC, firm date