Chronology of the ancient Near East. The chronology of the Ancient Near East provides a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties.
Individual inscriptions and texts customarily record events in terms of a succession of officials or rulers, taking forms like "in the year X of king Y". Thus by piecing together many records a relative chronology is arrived at, relating dates in cities over a wide area. Short chronology timeline. The short chronology is one of the chronologies of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728–1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC.
The absolute 2nd millennium BC dates resulting from this decision have very little support in academia, particularly after more recent research. The middle chronology (reign of Hammurabi 1792–1750 BC) is still commonly encountered in literature and the most recent work has essentially disproved this short chronology.[1] Use of short chronology dates, however, is currently the standard practice in the English Wikipedia articles on the Ancient Near East (as discussed on the Ancient Near East project page). In general, middle chronology dates can be calculated by adding 64 years to the corresponding short chronology date (e.g. 1728 BC in short chronology corresponds to 1792 in middle chronology).