Reassessing the Bûr-Saggilê Eclipse

by Dan Bruce

The only mention of the eclipse is recorded in the Assyrian Eponym Canon, in the tenth year of Ashur-dan III during the eponymy when a man named Bûr-Saggilê was limmu (the title of the official appointed by the Assyrians to preside over the New-Year religious celebrations, and the name used to denote important events during the entire year), and reads as follows:

The 763 BCE date chosen by Rawlinson featured a partial solar eclipse of 0.987 magnitude. It was observable in Assyria, and occurred on June 15, 763 BCE. However, there is another possibility, an eclipse visible in Nineveh twenty-eight years earlier—a partial solar eclipse of magnitude 0.737 that occurred on June 24, 791 BCE—and it also totally agrees with the above textual description used by Rawlinson to identify his eclipse. No doubt, some will object that the 763 BCE eclipse, with its greater magnitude (almost a full eclipse), was the more spectacular choice to have been recorded in the Canon. However, the magnitude is irrelevant, since the only requirement is that the person named Bûr-Saggilê had to have been limmu at the time of the eclipse, something equally possible for either eclipse from our viewpoint today since the years when Bûr-Saggilê lived are not known, and were unknown by Rawlinson as well.

However, moving the Bûr-Saggilê eclipse back twenty-eight years does not achieve exact alignment between the Hebrew and Assyrian chronologies in every instance. One more adjustment of two years is necessary, since Assyrian inscriptions claim that Ahab was defeated at Qarqar in Shalmaneser III’s sixth regnal year, saying:

[from the Kurkh Monolith] “I destroyed, devastated [the king of] Karkar ... [he] brought twelve kings² to his support; they came against me to offer battle and fight: 1,200 chariots, 1,200 cavalry, and 20,000 soldiers belonging to Hadad-ezer of Damascus; 700 chariots, 700 cavalry, and 10,000 soldiers belonging to Irhuleni of Hama; 2,000 chariots, and 10,000 soldiers belonging to Ahab, the Israelite”³
[and from the Black Obelisk] “In my sixth year, I crossed the Euphrates ... and received gifts from all the kings of Hatti. At that time Hadad-ezer of Damascus, and Irhuleni the Hamathite, along with the kings of Hatti and the seacoast, relied on each other’s strength and came out against me to engage in battle ... I fought with them and was able to defeat them.”⁴
Adding twenty-eight years to the traditional dates for the reign of Shalmaneser III yields

881 BCE as his sixth regnal year, which is two years after the death of Ahab according to the chronology in my book that assumes Ahab died in the same year as the Battle of Qarqar, that is, in 883 BCE. Thus, Shalmaneser’s reign must be moved back two more years, but can such an adjustment be justified from Assyrian history? Yes, it can be. Shalmaneser’s eldest son, Ashur-danin-pal, led a revolt in his father’s final years, usurping the throne for possibly as long as five years. It took Shalmaneser’s younger son, the future king Shamshi-adad IV, two years after Shalmaneser’s death to dethrone his brother.⁵ Apparently, no eponyms were recorded during the brothers’ two-year contest for the throne, or, if they were recorded by Ashur-danin-pal, the victorious Shamshi-adad essentially considered his brother’s rule to be illegitimate by erasing any eponyms he may have appointed during the struggle. So, that two-year correction moves the reign of Shalmaneser III back to 889-854 BCE, which allows his sixth year to coincide with Ahab’s death in Syria⁶ at Qarqar/Ramoth-gilead in 883 BCE.

Inserting the twenty-eight years before the traditional dates for the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (r. 745-727) can be explained chronologically by the rise of the empire of Urartu and its expansion southward during this period of history. Urartu, under Argishti I (r. 785-753) and his son Sarduri II (r. 753-735), expanded its empire as far south as northern Syria. Herodotus of Halicarnassus, writing two-hundred years later, recorded a similar invasion of the same area by the Scythians circa 620 BCE, supposedly followed by a 28-year period of Scythian rule over Assyria and points south all the way to Egypt. Some scholars have doubted the veracity of the length of the Scythian rule based on the fact that they were a nomadic people, not capable of extended rule over such a vast fixed territory. That scholarly speculation raises another possibility, namely, that Herodotus conflated the Scythian invasion with the earlier invasion by Urartu, incorrectly assigning twenty-eight years of Urartun rule to the Scythians.

Of course, adding twenty-eight years to the dates of Assyrian kings who reigned prior to Tiglath-pileser III based on the Bible’s chronology raises questions about his identity and length of reign. Did Tiglath-pileser rule over the southern part of Assyria under the biblically specified name Pul (see 1 Chronicles 5:26), beginning in 773 BCE during Urartun domination of the north as assumed in this book, and then begin to reign under the throne name Tiglath-pileser III over all of Assyria at a later date, in the year 745 BCE after the Urartuns had been defeated and driven out of Assyria? Or, was there a king named Pul who reigned prior to Tiglath-pileser, but who is unknown to Assyriologists? Or, is there yet more data buried on undiscovered cuneiform tablets that will one day shed more light on that period of Assyrian history? Whatever the case, one thing is certain. The chronology for the Hebrew kings has been fixed in time by the more accurate Bible chronology, so Assyrian chronology must conform to it.

At least one scholar claims that Rawlinson’s 763 BCE date for the Bûr-Saggilê eclipse is unambiguously verified by a Babylonian eclipse in the first year of king Mukin-zeri, saying:
“Therefore it may be helpful to present independent astronomical evidence for the dating of Assyrian kings and thereby of the Eponym List ... In a collection of Babylonian lunar eclipses, an eclipse in Month 1, Year 1 of king Mukin-zeri is mentioned. By the structure of the text, the date of this eclipse (not visible in Babylon but calculated in advance) may unambiguously be established as April 9, 731 B.C. However, it is known that Mukin-zeri fought against Tiglath-pileser III and that his first regnal year coincided with the 14th year of the Assyrian king. This evidence is provided from the Babylonian Chronicle. Thus, the 14th year of Tiglath-pileser III is identified as 731/730 B.C.”⁷
The description of the Mukin-zeri eclipse is detailed on a cuneiform tablet in the British Museum [BM 35769 (= LBAT 1414)] that says:
"Year 1 Ukin-zer, month I, [lunar eclipse] which passes (sa DIB). (Began) at 1,0 (i.e., 60) degrees after sunrise."⁸

On that tablet, the Babylonian astronomers predicted that a lunar eclipse on April 9, 731 BCE, would “pass,” which was their way of saying that it would not be observable in Babylon. NASA records confirm that a partial lunar eclipse did occur over the Pacific Ocean on that date (see Diagram 2.3 below). If that eclipse was the eclipse predicted for Mukin-zeri’s first year, the one equated with Tiglath-pileser III’s fourteenth year, then it does, by validating that the first year of Mukin-zeri and the fourteenth year of Tiglath-pileser III occurred in 731 BCE, confirm the traditional chronology that has the reign of Tiglath-pileser beginning in 745 BCE. However, that Babylonian eclipse from 731 BCE does not provide any direct information at all about the year when Bûr-Saggilê was limmu in Nineveh, and thus it can neither confirm Rawlinson's date for the eclipse associated with him nor does it invalidate the biblically-supported assumption that Tiglath-pileser ruled over part of Assyria using the name Pul starting in 773 BCE, and it does not invalidate in any way this article’s main chronological proposition that the year for the Bûr-Saggilê eclipse was 791 BCE, not Rawlinson’s widely-accepted 763 BCE date.

An exposition revealing what the seven chrono-specific predictive prophecies in the Book of Daniel say about the history of the Jews, Jerusalem, and the Anointed One of Israel.

Paperback, 224 pages (6 x 9); ISBN 978-1489505415. (click here)
Sacred Chronology of the Hebrew Kings

A harmony of the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah, and how the chronologies and histories of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia synchronize with their reigns.

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Synchronized Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms of Israel, Judah, Egypt, Assyria, Tyre, and Babylon from 1006 BCE to 560 BCE.