On the Early Bahyloniaii Eclipse of the Sun. 
249 
"to fifty lines were required to chronicle the events of the last ten years of 
his reign. This is not what would have been expected, for it can scarcely 
be supposed that the strictly chronological arrangement preserved on the 
other three columns should be departed from only on the fourth. From 
analogy these forty to fifty lines from the end of column III to the first 
legible lines of column IV would have been expected to cover a period of 
.at least forty to fifty years. There is a gap of some fifty to eighty years 
between the end of Nabu-mukin-apli's reign and that of the next king 
whose name is known, Shamash-mudammiq, corresponding to some four 
or five kings whose names are unknown. Is it improbable that one of 
these kings may have also borne the name Nabu-mukin-apli, in the same 
way as found in repeated other instances, and that it is to events of the 
reign of a second king of this name that the end of the column IV is 
'devoted ? If this supposition be permissible, then the events related in 
column II would be more likely to appertain to a king reigning about a 
hundred to a hundred and fifty years before Nabu-mukin-apli, rather than 
to one reigning only twenty to forty years before. 
From Mr. King's notes it has been seen that even if we adopted his 
identification of the unknown king as probably either Simmash-shikhu or 
Eulbar-shakin-shum, the eclipse may have been one occurring in any year 
between B.C. 954 and B.C. 1105 — a pretty wide limit. If, however, the 
unknown king is looked for in the Fourth Dynasty, rather than in the Fifth 
or Sixth Dynasty, a possibility which Mr. King admits (" Chronicles," 
vol. i., p. 235, note 2), then the limit must be extended from B.C. 954 to 
B.C. 1240. Mr. King considers the probable date to be within the eleventh 
century ; from the data given, I should have supposed it as not unlikely to 
have been the twelfth, or even earlier. 
The last point to be considered is the date. The record is clear that it 
was "on the 26th day of the month Sivan in the seventh year." What 
are the limiting days between which the 26th Sivan could occur from 
what is known of the Babylonian Calendar. Under ordinary conditions 
the 26th Sivan must have been some day between June 3rd and July 10th, 
and except through some altogether irregular interference with the 
Calendar, could not have occurred outside the limits May 23rd and 
July 16th. There seems no evidence whatever that the Calendar was 
.ever so manipulated that the 26th Sivan could have been delayed so 
•excessively late that it could have fallen on July 31st. On this point Mr. 
King remarks : — 
" The obvious objection to the acceptance of this identification is the 
equation Sivan 26th = July 31st. For it would follow from this equation 
that, although the equinox occurred about April 1st, yet the Babylonians did 
not begin that year till about May 4th. The only conceivable explanation 
of this would be that the month beginning about April 4th was an inter- 
