Eponym dating system

The earliest known attestations of a year eponyms are at Karum-Kanesh, and became used in other Assyrian colonies in Anatolia.

[2] A number of Old Assyrian limmu lists have been combined into the so-called Revised Eponym List (REL), which spans a period of 255 years in the early second millennium BCE (1972-1718 BCE in the Middle Chronology dating system).

[4][5] With the establishment of eponym lists, succinct statements about events were sometimes added in order to keep track of the sequence.

According to one limmu list, a solar eclipse occurred in the tenth reigning year of the Assyrian king Aššur-dan II, in the month of Sivan (May–June on the Gregorian calendar), by Bur-Sagale.

Thus, such lists provide historians a way of dating long stretches of the Neo-Assyrian history, and give us in details military exploits and which were considered the most important.