The Gentile Times Reconsidered Chronology Christ

96 THE GENTILE TIMES RECONSIDERED
X. Kugler, concluded that the so-called Ptolemy’s Canon “had
evidently been worked out by one or more experts on the
Babylonian astronomy and chronology, and through the use in the
Alexandrian school successfully had passed scrupulous indirect
tests.” 14 Dr. Eduard Meyer wrote in a similar vein about the canon
in 1899, pointing out that, “as it belonged to the traditional material
of knowledge of the astronomers, it was inherited from scholar to
scholar; not even Hipparchus [2nd century B.C.E.] could have gone
without the Babylonian list.” 15
This is the reason why Professor Otto Neugebauer termed the
expression “Ptolemy’s Canon” a misnomer:
It is a misnomer to call such chronological tables ‘Ptolemaic
canon.’ Ptolemy’s ‘Almagest’ never contained such a canon (in spite
of assertions to the contrary often made in modern literature), but
we know that a βασιλεων χρουογραφια [chronicle of kings] had
been included in his ‘Handy Tables’ . . . . On the other hand, there
is no reason whatsoever to think that royal canons for astronomical
purposes did not exist long before Ptolemy. 16
The canon, or kinglist, was therefore in use centuries before
Claudius Ptolemy. It was inherited and brought up-to-date from
one generation of scholars to the next.
It should be observed that the canon not only presents a
running list of kings and their reigns; in a separate column there is a
running summary of the individual reigns all the way from the first
king, Nabonassar, to the end of the list. This system provides a
double check of the individual figures, ensuring that they have been
correctly copied from one scholar to the next. (See “The Royal
Canon” on the preceding page.)
From what source did the compiler(s) of the Royal Canon get
the kinglist? It was evidently compiled from sources similar to
those used by Berossus. Friedrich Schmidtke explains:
14 Franz Xaver Kugler, Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel, II. Buch, II. Teil, Heft 2
(Munster in Westfalen: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1924), p. 390.
Translated from the German.
15 Eduard Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, Zweiter Band (Halle a. S.: Max
Niemeyer, 1899), pp. 453–454. Translated from the German. Emphasis added.
16 Otto Neugebauer, “`Years’ in Royal Canons,” A Locust’s Leg. Studies in honour of S.
H. Taqizadeh, ed. W. B. Henning and E. Yarshater (London: Percy Lund,
Humphries & Co., 1962), pp. 209, 210. Compare also J. A. Brinkman in A Political
History of Post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158–722 B.C. (Rome: Pontificium Institutum
Biblicum, 1968),p. 22.