r of years
each of them reigned, from the accession of Nabonassar in 747 B.C. to the
conquest of Babylon by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. The accuracy of this
list is confirmed by the larger List of Kings and by the principal
Babylonian Chronicle; the latter, like the Canon, begins with the reign of
Nabonassar, who, it has been suggested, may have revised the calendar and
have inaugurated a new epoch for the later chronology. The Ptolemaic Canon
is further controlled and its accuracy confirmed by the Assyrian Eponym
Lists, or lists of _limmi_ (see sect. II.), by means of which Assyrian
chronology is fixed from 911 B.C. to 666 B.C., the solar eclipse of June
15th, 763 B.C., which is recorded in the eponymy of Pur-Sagale, placing the
dead reckoning for these later periods upon an absolutely certain basis.

Thus all historians are agreed with regard to the Babylonian chronology
back to the year 747 B.C., and with regard to that of Assyria back to the
year 911 B.C. It is in respect of the periods anterior to these two dates
that different writers have propounded differing systems of chronology,
and, as might be imagined, the earlier the period we examine the greater
becomes the discrepancy between the systems proposed. This variety of
opinion is due to the fact that the data available for settling the
chronology often conflict with one another, or are capable of more than one
interpretation.

Since its publication in 1884 the Babylonian List of Kings has furnished
the framework for every chronological system that has [v.03 p.0109] been
proposed. In its original form this document gave a list, arranged in
dynasties, of the Babylonian kings, from the First Dynasty of Babylon down
to the Neo-Babylonian period. If the text were complete we should probably
be in possession of the system of Babylonian chronology current in the
Neo-Babylonian period from which our principal classical authorities (see
sect. II.) derived their information. The principal points of uncertainty,
due to gaps in the text, concern the length of Dynasties IV. and VIII.; for
the reading of the figure giving the length of the former is disputed, and
the summary at the close of the latter omits to state its length. This
omission is much to be regretted, since Nabonassar was the last king but
two of this dynasty, and, had we known its duration, we could have combined
the information on the earlier periods furnished by the Kings' List with
the evidence of the