Good News in History, February 26
2,772 years ago today, Neo Babylonian king Nabonassar assumed the throne, 747 BCE a date of tremendous importance, it allowed scientist/historian Claudius Ptolemy (100-175 CE) to provide modern scholars a fixed date in history on which our conceptions of ancient years can be made accurate.
Good News On This Day in History – February 26
2,772 years ago today, Neo Babylonian king Nabonassar assumed the throne, 747 BCE a date of tremendous importance, it allowed scientist/historian Claudius Ptolemy (100-175 CE) to provide modern scholars a fixed date in history on which our conceptions of ancient years can be made accurate.
Good News On This Day in History – February 26
To reiterate, 747 BCE is a starting point for counting forward and backward in time because we know a lunar eclipse occurred on February 6th, 747 BCE, which is the same year that Ptolemy records that Nabonassar became king.
The Canon of Kings was used by Ptolemy to date the reigns of Babylon, the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the Hellenistic period, the Ptolemeic (no relation) Dynasty of Egypt, and the Roman Emperors until Antoninus Pius. Because the Canon lists the end of one king’s reign as one year before the reign of his successor, there is a time gap that historians...
...there is a time gap that historians today can try and granularize by using the dates of celestial events, primary sources, minted coins, and other evidence.
