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Chronology and 607 BCE · Claim record

The kings the organisation says Ptolemy’s canon omits do not lengthen the stretch that matters. Ashur-etel-ilani and Sin-sharra-ishkun were recognised in Babylonia before Nabopolassar took the throne there in 626 BCE, so adding them lengthens the period before the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, not the span between Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year and the fall of Babylon; the Adad-guppi inscription already counts Ashur-etel-ilani’s third year separately, and before Nabopolassar. The one omitted king who does fall inside the dynasty, Labashi-Marduk, is named by the article itself, and Parker and Dubberstein date his first and last tablets to 22 May and 20 June 556 BCE and conclude that he “seems to have been recognized as king only in May and June, 556” - weeks, not years.

Claim ID claim-chronology-ptolemy-omissions-are-pre-dynasticConcerns 1 October 2011Context
Context · 1 October 2011 Verified

The kings the organisation says Ptolemy’s canon omits do not lengthen the stretch that matters. Ashur-etel-ilani and Sin-sharra-ishkun were recognised in Babylonia before Nabopolassar took the throne there in 626 BCE, so adding them lengthens the period before the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, not the span between Nebuchadnezzar’s eighteenth year and the fall of Babylon; the Adad-guppi inscription already counts Ashur-etel-ilani’s third year separately, and before Nabopolassar. The one omitted king who does fall inside the dynasty, Labashi-Marduk, is named by the article itself, and Parker and Dubberstein date his first and last tablets to 22 May and 20 June 556 BCE and conclude that he “seems to have been recognized as king only in May and June, 556” - weeks, not years. The Watchtower, 1 October 2011Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, 1956RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, 2020Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), 1942

The organisation’s position or later explanation: 'In general, Ptolemy's canon is regarded as accurate. But in view of its omissions, should it really be used to provide a definite historical chronology?'

Show the evidence (4 sources)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Watchtower, “When Was Ancient Jerusalem Destroyed?-Part One, 'The Canon of Ptolemy'”

1 October 2011 · pp.30-31 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

“Notice that Ptolemy lists only four kings between the Babylonian rulers Kandalanu and Nabonidus. However, the Uruk King List-a part of the cuneiform record-reveals that seven kings ruled in between. ... In general, Ptolemy's canon is regarded as accurate. But in view of its omissions, should it really be used to provide a definite historical chronology?”

The organisation's argument that Ptolemy's canon omits kings. Its examples, Sin-sharra-ishkun and Ashur-etel-ilani, belong to the Assyrian succession before Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon in 626 BCE.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the Watchtower Online Library text on 19 September 2026; page markers place the passage across pages 30 and 31. Notes 8 and 9 of the article name Sin-sharra-ishkun and Ashur-etel-ilani.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-wiseman-1956-p6-assyrian-kings, src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-i29

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-w11-1001-ptolemy

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

Chronicles of Chaldaean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum, “Introduction: the fall of Assyria”

1956 · p.6 · D. J. Wiseman · The Trustees of the British Museum, London

“Kandalanu appears to have rebelled against his overlord during the period of uncertainty over the succession which followed the death of Assur-etil-ilani, the successor of Ashurbanipal.”

Wiseman places Ashur-etel-ilani, and elsewhere Sin-shar-ishkun 'the king of Assyria', in the Assyrian succession before Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylon in 626 BCE.

Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. Read in the ETANA PDF on 19 September 2026; running head '6 CHRONICLES OF CHALDAEAN KINGS'. Elsewhere in the same volume Wiseman writes of 'Sin-sar-iskun, the king of Assyria' opposing the Babylonians 'before Nabopolassar's accession'.

Scan provenance. Full scan of the British Museum volume hosted by ETANA (Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives), an academic digital-library consortium. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum, 1956.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-i29

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-wiseman-1956-p6-assyrian-kings

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

RIBo, Babylon 7: The Inscriptions of the Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, “Nabonidus 2001 (the Harran stele of Adad-guppi), column i line 29”

2020 · i 29 · Frauke Weiershaeuser and Jamie Novotny (edition) · Oracc / LMU Munich

“From the twentieth year of Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, (during) which I was born, until the forty-second year of Ashurbanipal, the third year of Aššur-etel-ilāni, his son, the twenty-first year of Nabopolassar, the forty-third year of Nebuchadnezzar (II), the second year of Amēl-Marduk, (and) the fourth year of Neriglissar, after (these) ninety-five years”

Adad-guppi, the mother of King Nabonidus, dates her own long life by naming in order the regnal years it ran between. The count starts in the twentieth year of Ashurbanipal, in which she says she was born, and ends in the fourth year of Neriglissar, and the inscription calls that span ninety-five years: a further twenty-two years of Ashurbanipal, then three, twenty-one, forty-three, two and four. The inscription is a sixth-century BCE document from Harran, written within living memory of the reigns it counts.

Official source Archived or alternative copy

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The Oracc HTML edition was downloaded and read on 19 September 2026; the transliteration and the English translation of column i 29 were read together and the line label “(i 29)” read from the page. Oracc asks that the page be cited as http://oracc.org/ribo/Q005471/. The year-numbers named here are the points the count runs between, not a list of reign lengths: 22 + 3 + 21 + 43 + 2 + 4 = 95.

Scan provenance. Royal Inscriptions of Babylonia online (RIBo), Babylon 7, edited by Frauke Weiershaeuser and Jamie Novotny for the Munich Open-access Cuneiform Corpus Initiative at LMU Munich; CC BY-SA 3.0.

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-ii40, src-chr-e-pd-1942-p9-10-transitions

Notes. The same inscription records that Sin kept her alive 'for 104 good years' from the time of Ashurbanipal 'until the ninth year of Nabonidus'.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-i29

Peer-reviewed / scholarly Verified

Babylonian Chronology, 626 B.C. - A.D. 45 (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 24), “II. Kings' Reigns: Nebuchadnezzar II and Amel-Marduk”

1942 · pp.9-10 · Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein · Oriental Institute, University of Chicago

“Evidence for End of Reign VI/14/43 (Sept. 25, 562), Uruk ... VI/26/43 (Oct. 7, 562), Uruk ... The first tablet dated to Amel-Marduk (see below) comes from Sippar (?) and is dated on the same day as the last tablet of Nebuchadnezzar from Uruk. Accordingly Nebuchadnezzar died during the first days of October, 562.”

The standard reference chronology establishes the length of each Neo-Babylonian reign from dated business and administrative tablets, listing for every king the last tablet of his reign and the first tablet of his successor's. At this junction the two are dated to the same day.

Official source Scan of original

Provenance and verification note

Confidence note. The full PDF was downloaded from the ISAC asset server on 19 September 2026, converted with pdftotext and read. The running head reads '10 BABYLONIAN CHRONOLOGY 626 B.C.--A.D. 45'.

Scan provenance. Free PDF of the volume published by the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures (formerly the Oriental Institute), University of Chicago; CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; DOI https://doi.org/10.83354/68x5-8f30

Corroborated by. src-chr-e-oracc-adadguppi-i29, src-chr-e-w11-1101-footnote-e

Notes. The same pages show Amel-Marduk’s last tablet on 7 August 560 and Neriglissar’s first on 13 August 560, a gap of six days. Page 10 also carries Labashi-Marduk: first dated tablet 22 May 556, last 20 June 556, with the conclusion that he “seems to have been recognized as king only in May and June, 556”. He is the one king the organisation says Ptolemy omitted who falls inside the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, and the standard chronology accounts for him in weeks, not years.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-chr-e-pd-1942-p9-10-transitions

Claim page

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-chronology-ptolemy-omissions-are-pre-dynastic/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.