The Historians' History of the World 01

To make this year coincide with the course of the sun, an extra month was intercalated; in olden times this seems to have been done after the first or the sixth month.

This year, with the names of its months, was adopted by the Jews at the time of the Exile, and is still in use with them. The commencement of their year (Nisan) falls at the time of the spring equinox. The Babylonians had no continuous chronology; they dated according to the years of the kings, or, rather, they marked the year according to any important event which took place in it. Thus we see dates like “on the 30th Adar in the Sixth year after the conquest of Nisin by King Rim-Sin.”

Later on in Babylon, and also in Assyria, they reckoned simply the years of the kings, from the day of their accession to the throne. The remainder of the year, in the course of which the predecessor had died, was therefore considered the first part of the first year of the new reign, and was very often called “the beginning of the reign” of the king in question.

Chronological calculations were reckoned from the same starting-point as in Egypt. They reckon the calendar year in which a king comes to the throne as his first year, and hence his death takes place in the first year of his successor. This is the method of the Ptolemaic canon, one of the most important chronological monuments of antiquity. It is the list beginning with Nabonassar (about 747 B.C.) of the native and Persian kings of Babylonia, to which the Egyptian rulers up to Alexander are added. It is an addition to the astronomical work of Ptolemy, and was intended to throw light on the passages relating to the Babylonian, and later on to the Alexandrian chronological methods. It is authentic, and is confirmed by the monuments. Yet, in using the same, it must be recollected that all dates of the Egyptian “vague” year (and the Egyptian months) are reduced. Therefore the first year of the Nabonassar era begins on the 1st Tehuti, the 26th February, 747 B.C.

In Assyria there is also a second and far more common form of specifying the years. Since a very early date (as far back as the fourteenth century) it was customary to name the year after some high official. The year, as such, is called limmu, “eponymic year.” Of course, they had continuous lists of these eponyms; and we have recovered several fragments. The lists for the years 893 to 666 are complete, and with fragments we can go still farther back. The kings frequently used this system, and private persons regularly used this eponym.

Some copies of the lists contain accounts of the changes of reigns, and give short statements of important internal and external events of the particular years. Thus an eclipse of the sun June 15, 763 B.C., mentioned therein can be astronomically fixed, and the dates arrived at thereby concur exactly with the accounts of the Ptolemaic canon. The chronological history of this epoch is therefore perfectly determined.e

THE BABYLONIAN DAY AND ITS DIVISION INTO HOURS

This being the Babylonian method of reckoning dates, it is interesting to note on what plan they subdivided the day. Investigations were made in this line by that indefatigable Irishman, Edward Hincks, from whose article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, we quote.a

I begin with the day and its divisions.

Our knowledge on this subject is mainly derived from a tablet in the British Museum, marked K. 15. A paper of mine was read before the Royal Irish Academy in 1854, and was published in the twenty-third volume of the Transactions in which this tablet was discussed. As that paper contained some slight philological errors, I will here repeat the substance of it, correcting those errors.

I now translate the inscription on the Tablet as follows, omitting the customary benedictory formula. “On the sixth day of the month Nisan the day and the night are equal; six kazabs [kashbu] are the day; six kazabs [kashbu] are the night.” It is evident that this inscription records the observation of an equinox; and I will return to the consideration of it with that view. At present I will only remark that it points to a double division of the day, or Nycthemeron; viz., the first into the day properly so called, and the night; which were in this instance equal, though not generally so; the second into twelve equal kazabs [kashbu].