Dating and Chronology

Texts edited in this volume occasionally mention contemporary dates and the charts in this section are intended to aid the reader in understanding those dates.

The month names in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions and their modern equivalents are:

I	Nisannu	March–April	VII	Tašrītu	September–October
II	Ayyāru	April–May	VIII	Araḫsamna	October–November
III	Simānu	May–June	IX	Kislīmu	November–December
IV	Duʾūzu	June–July	X	Ṭebētu, Kinūnu	December–January
V	Abu	July–August	XI	Šabāṭu	January–February
VI	Ulūlu	August–September	XII	Addaru	February–March
VI₂	Intercalary Ulūlu		XII₂	Intercalary Addaru

Unless stated otherwise, the dates given in this volume (excluding those in bibliographical citations) are all BC. Each ancient Mesopotamian year has been given a single Julian year equivalent even though the ancient year actually encompassed parts of two Julian years, with the ancient year beginning around the time of the vernal equinox. For example, Sargon ascended the throne of Assyria on the twelfth day of Ṭebētu of his accession year, which is indicated to be 722, although that event may have taken place in January 721. Thus, events that occurred late in the ancient year "722" actually happened early in the Julian year 721.

Grant Frame

Grant Frame, 'Dating and Chronology', RINAP 2: Sargon II, Sargon II, The RINAP 2 sub-project of the RINAP Project, 2021 [http://oracc.org/rinap/rinap2/rinap2introduction/datingandchronology/]

The RINAP 2 sub-project of the University of Pennsylvania-based RINAP Project, 2020-. The contents of RINAP 2 were prepared by Grant Frame for the University-of-Pennsylvania-based and National-Endowment-for-the-Humanities-funded Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period (RINAP) Project, with the assistance of Joshua Jeffers and the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative (MOCCI), which is based at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Historisches Seminar (LMU Munich, History Department) - Alexander von Humboldt Chair for Ancient History of the Near and Middle East. Content released under a CC BY-SA 3.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/] license, 2007-21.
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