Much of the Babylonian timeline is missing due to the lack of extant and intact king lists. Babylonian King List A (BKL-A) is the most complete, but it is missing large sections due to damage. Yet, most of Babylonia’s chronology is identifiable from the early second millennium BCE through the Neo-Babylonian period. Fully two-thirds of the second-millennium timeline is restorable to absolute dates through regnal period data and astronomical links. Moreover, all the kings who ruled Babylonia, including all of Lower Mesopotamia, are identifiable.However, some of their ruling periods are imprecise in both the lengths of their reigns (relative chronology) and the exact years BCE of their reigns (absolute chronology). Nevertheless, relatively accurate estimates are attainable for the entire period.
Counting backward with Babylonian King List B (BKL-B, see picture) from the astronomically anchored reign of Hammurabi assigns the first year of that dynasty to 1904 BCE. BKL-B has many inaccuracies, but this date is a fair estimate.
Hammurabi’s Amorite Dynasty ended in 1595 BCE, and the Kassite Dynasty succeeded it. Nonetheless, the chronology of that general period is not nearly that simple. King Lists A and B included the First Sealand Dynasty, which implies that a few of the Sealand monarchs sometimes controlled the entire region, including the capital city, Babylon. Although the Synchronic King List is of little value due to its inaccuracies, comparing it with accurate king list figures in the Assyrian King List suggests that some understandings need to be modified. That comparison shows that the only way to make sense of BKL-A’s First Sealand Dynasty reign length data is that their custom was to use half-year units! The early part of that king list is damaged. Yet, its dynastic summation of 368 units (184 years) is complete, and the latter part of the dynasty is astronomically datable. Thus, its relative and absolute timelines are virtually restorable.
Another complication of this Amorite-to-Kassite transition period is that the Kassites had three separate and contemporary ruling families governing different parts of Mesopotamia. Unfortunately, a later compiler listed those leaders as a single ruling family. Thus, the dynastic summary of 36 kings who reigned for 576 years and nine months includes almost a century of superfluous kings who did not rule all of Babylonia but only part of the region. Nevertheless, one of those monarchs of a parallel Kassite dynasty did rule over the entire region for a time. Thus, an accurate list of the rulers of Babylon would include not only Amorite and primary Kassite monarchs but also Second Sealand and secondary Kassite dynastic kings.
All the Babylonian rulers of the sixteenth century BCE are identifiable. Still, since no extant king list includes their regnal periods, it is necessary to use international synchronisms and generational estimates to approximate their reign lengths. “The Chronologies of the Early Kassite Dynasty before Burna-Buriaš II and the First Sealand Dynasty,” Appendix D in the forthcoming book The Six Pillars, reveals the timelines of this challenging period. Chapters 2 and 3 identify the absolute Babylonian chronology from the Amarna Period ruler Burna-Buriaš II through dynasties IV and V (the Second Isin and Second Sealand Dynasties).
Fortunately, the Babylonian monarchs from the middle of the Kassite Dynasty through the early part of Babylonian Dynasty VIII (Nabû-mukīn-apli and Ninurta-kudurrī-uṣur II) are precisely datable through king list data, ancient texts, and astronomical links. International synchronisms further confirm this timeline.
BKL-A is missing much of the latter part of the second millennium and preserves less than a century of the mid-Neo-Babylonian period. Nevertheless, complex astronomical depictions in Babylonian kudurrus make most of the timeline during these multiple centuries identifiable with absolute regnal periods; synchronisms with Assyrian chronology (also astronomically linked) confirm the timeline. Still, generational estimates are necessary for a few Babylonian kings from the early first millennium BCE. Most, but not all, of the remainder of the Neo-Babylonian list of rulers is precisely datable.
This brief discussion shows that some aspects of Babylonian chronology are complex and confusing. Still, nearly seven centuries of the second millennium BCE timelines are precisely datable with astronomical anchors, and the same is true of almost four centuries of the first millennium BCE. Nevertheless, the conventional understanding of much of those timelines, especially regarding the second millennium, is severely in error.