Middle Chronology

The middle chronology is one chronology of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1792–1750 BCE and the sack of Babylon to 1595 BCE.

The chronology is based on a 56/64-year astronomical calculation determined by evidence from the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa and the Enuma anu enlil tablet 63. Conventional textbooks tend to use the middle chronology, but recent dendrochronological and astronomical evidence has presented various problems for it. This has led to increased adoption of the short chronologies by some.

The problem raised by using short chronologies is that a century or more needs to be added to some period of the second millennium BCE to accommodate it, and no-one so far has been able to make a suggestion as to which period to add it to. This has left second millennium BCE dates appearing artificially short and resulted in distortion and loss of accuracy for older dates as a sacrifice to provide greater accuracy for earlier ones.