THE FIRST DYNASTY OF BABYLON 177

unduly lowering the dating of Samsi-Adad I's reign in Assyria and
Mari, and therefore, by implication, also the dating of Zimri-Lim's
reign in Mari and of Hammurabi's at Babylon. Indeed, if Poebel's
assumptions in regard to all the three points on which the Khorsabad
List was impugned by other scholars had all proved equally vulnerable
to attack, the result would have been, not only to discredit Poebel's re-
construction of Assyrian chronology on the basis of the Khorsabad List,
but also to demonstrate that any reconstruction on this basis would be
impracticable. As it happened, however, the point in Poebel's presenta-
tion of his case that proved to be the least convincing to his critics was
the point that introduced the smallest margin of arithmetical uncertainty
into a calculation based on the figures that the Khorsabad List furnished.
If it had been demonstrated that the phrase t/dupfnsu meant, when
used in this king-list, 'an indeterminate period' or £an unspecified
period', then the chronology of Assyrian history from reigns Nos. 84
and 83 upwards would have remained still subject to a considerable
possibility of error, while from reigns Nos. 47-42 upwards it would
have remained altogether incalculable. And a further element of uncer-
tainty would have been added if it had also been demonstrated that the
solar year had not been adopted for official purposes in Assyria until
the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (regnabat 1114-1076 B.C.), and that, before
that, the 'years' recorded in the Assyrian annals had been lunar years
which might or might not have been brought into step with the solar
years from time to time by rough-and-ready intercalations. On these
two latter points, however, Poebel's assumptions, while they were im-
pugned by Dr. Sidney Smith, were approved by a preponderance of
expert opinion, and the only point of the three in which Poebel had an
impressive majority against him was his assumption that the pair of
reigns for which the figures in the Khorsabad List had been lost through
an accidental defacement would have been found to have a zero value
if the figures had been preserved.

Dr. Sidney Smith's scepticism in regard to the use of solar years in
Assyrian official chronology before the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I did
not find favour with other contemporary scholars;1 and it was also
pointed out that, if Assyrian official years before that date were in truth
lunar years, the automatic effect would be, not to raise, but to lower, the
dating in solar years by about three years in each century, and that a
hypothetical excessive correction of this hypothetical automatic reduc-
tion by occasional intercalations was the only expedient by which the
lunar-year hypothesis could be made to serve as an argument in favour
of a higher dating. Moreover, there was one piece of positive evidence
which indicated both that tupfnsu had the numerical value of zero and

1 According to Van der Meer, P.: The Ancient Chronology of Western Asia and Egypt
(Leiden 1947, Brill), pp. 1-2, the Assyrians and the Babylonians both alike used lunar
years, and both alike adjusted these to the Julian solar year—thus, both alike, using
Julian solar years in practice. The Assyrians had had an automatic method of adjustment
—*the month whose beginning was the nearest to the Spring Equinox: was the first
month of the year'—whereas the Babylonians made the necessary intercalations by
decree. The only innovation that Tiglath-Kleser I of Assyria made, according to Van
der Meer, was to replace the previous Assyrian method of adjustment by the Babylonian
method.