Successor Eponyms, Debt Notes, Intercalation, and the Old Assyrian Calendar during Kültepe Level II: A Critical Reappraisal

Different manuscripts of the eponym list disagree slightly, are imperfectly preserved, and breaks in communication during winter between Aššur and Anatolia introduce a 0-5 year error potential in the REL.

“These include the fact that different manuscripts of the eponym list disagree slightly, and are imperfectly preserved, and that there are breaks in communication during winter between Aššur and Anatolia, all of which allow for varying reconstructions of the sequence and introduce a 0–5 year error potential [5, 8–11].”

By separating the two fires, the tie between the REL sequence and the astronomical data (eclipses, Venus tablets), intercalations, and potentially the suggested link between a major volcanic dust veil and northern hemisphere tree-ring growth anomalies 1628-1627 BCE and poor atmospheric observation conditions in Mesopotamian records is retained.

“More importantly, by separating the two fires, we retain the tie between the REL sequence and the astronomical data (eclipses, Venus tablets), intercalations [5, 8–11, 15] and even potentially the suggested link between a major volcanic dust veil and several northern hemisphere tree-ring growth anomalies 1628–1627 BCE and poor atmospheric observation conditions as evident in Mesopotamian records [”