Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language in Mesopotamia during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
Nabû-nāṣir was the king of Babylon from 747 to 734 BC. He deposed a foreign Chaldean usurper named Nabu-shuma-ishkun, bringing native rule back to Babylon after twenty-three years of Chaldean rule. His reign saw the beginning of a new era characterized by the systematic maintenance of chronologically precise historical records. Both the Babylonian Chronicle and the Ptolemaic Canon begin with his accession to the throne. He was contemporary with the Assyrian kings Aššur-nirarī V and Tiglath-Pileser III, the latter under whom he became a vassal, and the Elamite kings Humban-Tahrah I and Humban-Nikaš I.
Nabu is the Babylonian patron god of literacy, the rational arts, scribes, and wisdom. He is associated with the classical planet Mercury in Babylonian astronomy.
Sîn-šumu-līšir or Sîn-šumu-lēšir, also spelled Sin-shum-lishir, was a usurper king in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, ruling some cities in northern Babylonia for three months in 626 BC during a revolt against the rule of the king Sîn-šar-iškun. He was the only eunuch to ever claim the throne of Assyria.
The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several pieces, on which is written an Achaemenid royal inscription in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of Persian king Cyrus the Great. It dates from the 6th century BC and was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon in 1879. It is currently in the possession of the British Museum. It was created and used as a foundation deposit following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was invaded by Cyrus and incorporated into his Persian Empire.
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets. It deals primarily with the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, covers the conquest of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and ends with the start of the reign of Cyrus's son Cambyses II, spanning a period from 556 BC to some time after 539 BC. It provides a rare contemporary account of Cyrus's rise to power and is the main source of information on this period; Amélie Kuhrt describes it as "the most reliable and sober [ancient] account of the fall of Babylon."
Babylonian astronomy was the study or recording of celestial objects during the early history of Mesopotamia. The numeral system used, sexagesimal, was based on sixty, as opposed to ten in the modern decimal system. This system simplified the calculating and recording of unusually great and small numbers.
Robartus Johannes (Bert) van der Spek is a Dutch ancient historian, specializing in the Seleucid Empire. He was a full professor in Ancient Studies at VU University Amsterdam from 1993 to his retirement in 2014, and is currently working on the Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenistic Age. He is also the author of the best-selling first-year book for ancient history: An introduction to the Ancient World.
The Babylonian War was a conflict fought between 311–309 BC between Antigonus I Monophthalmus and Seleucus I Nicator, ending in a victory for Seleucus. This conflict ended any possibility of restoration of the former empire of Alexander the Great, a result confirmed in the Battle of Ipsus. The battle also marked the birth of the Seleucid Empire by giving Seleucus control over the eastern satrapies of Alexander's former territory.
Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire.
The chronology of the ancient Near East is a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties. Historical inscriptions and texts customarily record events in terms of a succession of officials or rulers: "in the year X of king Y". Comparing many records pieces together a relative chronology relating dates in cities over a wide area.
Lullaia or Lullaya, inscribed in cuneiform phonetically mlu-ul-la-a-a, a hypocoristic name, was the 53rd king of Assyria to be added to the Assyrian King List. He was a “son of a nobody,” i.e. unrelated to a previous monarch, and reigned six years, from c. 1621–1616 BC, during a quiet and uneventful period in Assyrian history. Reade speculates that he may be identified with the earlier king, Aššūr-dugul, on the basis of their similar lengths of reign and lack of royal parentage.
The Dynastic Chronicle, "Chronicle 18" in Grayson's Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles or the "Babylonian Royal Chronicle" in Glassner’s Mesopotamian Chronicles, is a fragmentary ancient Mesopotamian text extant in at least four known copies. It is actually a bilingual text written in 6 columns, representing a continuation of the Sumerian king list tradition through to the 8th century BC and is an important source for the reconstruction of the historical narrative for certain periods poorly preserved elsewhere.
Chronicle P, known as Chronicle 22 in Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles and Mesopotamian Chronicle 45: "Chronicle of the Kassite Kings" in Glassner's Mesopotamian Chronicles is named for T. G. Pinches, the first editor of the text. It is a chronicle of the second half of the second millennium BC or the Kassite period, written by a first millennium BC Babylonian scribe.
The Eclectic Chronicle, referred to in earlier literature as the New Babylonian Chronicle, is an ancient Mesopotamian account of the highlights of Babylonian history during the post-Kassite era prior to the 689 BC fall of the city of Babylon. It is an important source of historiography from the period of the early iron-age dark-age with few extant sources to support its telling of events.
The Chronicle of Market Prices, designated "Chronicle 23" in Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles, its first publishing, and Mesopotamian Chronicle 50: “Chronicle of Market Prices” in Glassner’s Mesopotamian Chronicles is an ancient Mesopotamian Chronicle laconically recording the cost of various commodities from the beginning of the second until the early-mid first millennium BC. The moniker is a modern designation as it had no colophon to identify it in antiquity.
The Religious Chronicle is an ancient Mesopotamian register of portents such as the straying of wild animals into urban areas and extraordinary natural phenomena which presaged the disruptions which interfered with the Akītu or new year festival and the performance of its regular cultic activities which included the transport of the idols of the gods to the city of Babylon during the tumultuous years of chaos caused by the incursions of Aramean nomads.
The Chronicle of Early Kings, named ABC 20 in Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles and CM 40 in Glassner’s Chroniques mésopotamiennes is a Babylonian chronicle preserved on two tablets: tablet A is well preserved whereas tablet B is broken and the text is fragmentary. The text is episodic in character, and seems to have been composed from linking together the apodoses of omen literature, excerpts of the Weidner Chronicle and kings year-names. The Chronicle begins with events from the late third-millennium reign of Sargon of Akkad and ends, where the tablet is broken away, with the reign of Agum III, c. 1500 BC.
Nidin-Bel might have been a rebel king of Babylon who in the autumn of 336 BC and/or the winter of 336–335 BC attempted to restore Babylonia as an independent kingdom and end the rule of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in the region. The only known surviving reference which points to there being a ruler by this name in Babylon is the Uruk King List, which records rulers of Babylon from the 7th to 3rd centuries BC. In this list, the rule of Darius III, the last Achaemenid king, is immediately preceded by a fragmentary reference to Nidin-Bel.
