In the later periods
of Babylonian history tablets were dated in the year of the king who was
reigning at the time the document was drawn up, but this simple system
had not been adopted at this early period. In place of this we find that
each year was cited by the event of greatest importance which occurred
in that year. This event might be the cutting of a canal, when the year
in which this took place might be referred to as "the year in which
the canal named Ai-khegallu was cut;" or it might be the building of a
temple, as in the date-formula, "the year in which the great temple of
the Moon-god was built;" or it might be "the conquest of a city, such
as the year in which the city of Kish was destroyed." Now it will be
obvious that this system of dating had many disadvantages. An event
might be of great importance for one city, while it might never have
been heard of in another district; thus it sometimes happened that the
same event was not adopted throughout the whole country for designating
a particular year, and the result was that different systems of
dating were employed in different parts of Babylonia. Moreover, when a
particular system had been in use for a considerable time, it required
a very good memory to retain the order and period of the various events
referred to in the date-formulae, so as to fix in a moment the date of a
document by its mention of one of them.
Pages:
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266