PaleoAstronomy, Eclipses and the Historical Dating

Prof. Léo Dubal

Common Chronology is nowadays so widely taken for granted, that ones usually forget it was been built up in 1583, - as an alternative system of dating to the Gregorian calendar - in my home town of Geneva, by the chronologist Joseph-Juste SCALIGER, and, criticized in 1728, by no less a person than Sir Isaac NEWTON.

Checking-up on Common Chronology with retro-prediction of ancient solar eclipses is a difficult challenge as the available records are mostly incomplete, without precise location, nor time of the day, nor time of the year.

Starting this review of ancient solar eclipses with those which led the genial astronomer Hipparchus to quantify the distance from Alexandria to the Moon, the various pieces of available information will be critically examined, including the poems of Plutarch and Pindar,
ending-up by redrafting the chronology of the city Akhetaten, now Tell el Amarna, the ephemeral capital of Akhenaten, Nefertiti and their daughter Merytaten.