Limmu List (Middle Bronze Age)

The Limmu List or Assyrian Eponym List was a list Assyrian officials (the limmus, or eponymous magistrates) whose names were given to the years. This list was the foundation of the chronology of ancient Assyria, and still is an important tool to reconstruct ancient Mesopotamian chronology. Two parts remain, one dealing with the first quarter of the second millennium (the Middle Bronze Age) and one dealing with years 858-699 BCE (the Iron Age).

On this page, you will find the oldest of the two fragments, which has been published as text #9 in Jean-Jacques Glassner's Chroniques Mésopotamiennes (1993). (The other, younger surviving Eponym List can be found here.) New finds in Kültepe (ancient Kanesh) have made it possible to expand this list, now called the Revised Eponym List. Absolute dates are now within reach.

1. In the first column, you will find a relative date (REL: Revised Eponym List).
2. In the second column, you will find the regnal years of several Assyrian kings; colors indicate their reigns. (E = Erišum; I = Ikunum; ŠK = Šarru-ken, PA = Puzur-Aššur II; NS = Naram-Sin; ŠA = Šamši-Adad I; ID = Išme-Dagan I.)
3. The third column contains the name of the official and (in the second part of this table) the events that were recorded. This list is based on G. Barjamovic, Th. Hertel, and M.T. Larsen in Ups and Downs at Kanesh. Chronology, History, and Society in the Old Assyrian Period (2012).
4. The final column offers proposed absolute dates, based on S.W. Manning e.a., “Integrated Tree- Ring-Radiocarbon High-Resolution Timeframe to Resolve Earlier Second Millennium BCE Mesopotamian Chronology” (published on 13 July 2016 in PLoS One).

The absolute dates are based on the trading post at Kültepe, which was destroyed after REL 138 and REL 141, which must be more or less contemporary with the construction of the nearby palace of king Waršama. This is confirmed by the solar eclipse in REL 127, which must be the one of 24 March 1838 BCE.