Talk:Old Babylonian Empire/Archive 1

Archive 1

[Untitled]

Marked for cleanup. Reasons:

• Dates for Hammurabi's reign inconsistent with all three ranges given in Chronology of the Ancient Near East
• Paragraph starting "The Venus tablets of Ammisaduq" should be a separate section (on chronological problems)
• "It seems to me a misinterpretation" ... not NPOV
• No citations or references (apart from one embedded in text)
• Spelling mistakes
• Many other lesser textual problems

I tried to improve it but ground to a halt when I encountered the Hammurabi date inconsistency mentioned above. If this article isn't cleaned up within two months of now i.e. by 10 August 2006, can I suggest that it be simply reduced to a list of names of rulers, with no dates and no discussion of alternative chronologies? AWhiteC 16:02, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, the dates given are inconsistent with either of the three accepted chronologies, and even contradicts the text itself where Hammurabi is said to have captured Mari in 1760, yet ruled 1857-1814. It looks like the dates were made to fit with the alleged life of Abraham. Anyhow, it seems to me the contents of this article are already well covered in the Wikipedia articles Babylonia, Chronology of the Ancient Near East and List of kings of Babylon. --JFK 15:08, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

heads up

The former Template:Shortchronology is now moved to /Shortchronology so that material can be merged into this article (the history has to live somewhere if any of this material is used, and can't be in template space) --Random832 18:31, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Population?

I think it would be of interest is we could have some information about the approximate population of this and other ancient kingdoms. Thank you. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 00:27, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Abraham's chronology

Article says, "Abraham lived from 1871 to 1784, according to modern interpretations of the Old Testament's figures that have been sometimes reckoned in modern half years before the Exodus, from equinox to equinox.[citation needed]" -- I changed "usually" to "sometimes." This is the first time I have come across a half year theory. No ancient history teacher I studied under said to me any such thing nor Bible professor (including Tom Jones U of Minn & FF Bruce U of Manchester)= & Gleason Archer of Trinity International University). It sound like a crack pot theory to me. I think the whole sentence should be deleted if for no other reason than it lacks reliable sources. How anyone could know the exact year of Abraham's birth and death on our calendar eludes me. "According to modern interpretations" LOL. Modern interpretations of the Bible are all over the map. (PeacePeace (talk) 03:23, 23 May 2017 (UTC))

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Requested move 26 January 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 21:14, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

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First Babylonian Empire → Old Babylonian Empire – The title is not a big issue since the alternative is also correct but per WP:COMMONNAME and WP:CONSISTENT: "Old Babylonian Empire" corresponds much better with the later Neo-Babylonian Empire (which is the reason this one is called "Old" or "First" in the first place). Google Ngrams demonstrates that "Old Babylonian Empire" has been much more common than "First Babylonian Empire" since 1966 (link 1). I get 327 hits for "Old Babylonian Empire" on Google Scholar (link 2) and only 153 hits for "First Babylonian Empire" (link 3).

As a sidenote this article was previously titled "First Babylonian dynasty". IMO an article with that title or similar should be about the actual dynasty of rulers (like Achaemenid Empire and Achaemenid dynasty) but in any case to strengthen "Old" vs. "First": "Old Babylonian dynasty" is also more common than "First Babylonian dynasty" (link 4) (the most common name for the ruling family itself is Amorite dynasty, though this does not hold for the empire). Ichthyovenator (talk) 21:03, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nom. Zoeperkoe (talk) 08:33, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support Comment Sounds like a nice tweak, but one issue: there are 9 Babylonian dynasties before the "Neo-Babylonian" one, numbered from 1 to 9 (see Template:Rulers of the Ancient Near East). Giving up the number for this one leads to the question "which Old Babylonian dynasty are we talking about?", and seems to break the (rather necessary and helpful) numbering sequence. पाटलिपुत्र Pat (talk) 09:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@पाटलिपुत्र: I think WP:COMMONNAME trumps the possibility for confusion but this is a valid concern. I don't think any of the other dynasties are usually lumped in with Hammurabi's one as "Old Babylonian" (the periodization seems to differ a bit from source to source but they seem to be classified into Kassite, Post-Kassite and Middle Babylonian periods, which may or may not overlap - this is an area that still needs work here on WP) and the first dynasty was also the only one prior to the Neo-Babylonians whose state seems to generally be regarded as amounting to an "empire" - thus "Old Babylonian Empire" should IMO be sufficiently unambiguous. My idea is that this article (on the state) should be Old Babylonian Empire and a future article on the ruling family itself should be Amorite dynasty or First dynasty of Babylon. Ichthyovenator (talk) 10:00, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Here are some notes in regard to periodization - it is very variable but "Old Babylonian" seems to always just be the first dynasty. Ichthyovenator (talk) 11:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm OK with "Old Babylonian Empire", as long as the opening sentence is something like "The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, ...", in order to maintain the equivalence between the two namings... I also agree that other dynasties do not have the same claim to being called "Empires", apart from the Neo-Babylonian one. Thanks for the interesting discussion. पाटलिपुत्र Pat (talk) 12:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I agree that "First Babylonian Empire" should still prominently be mentioned in the first sentence. Ichthyovenator (talk) 12:50, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Support. And since it was brought up, its pretty clear that all this 9 Babylonian dynasties thing is just an artifact. When the early archaeologists started working all the Babylonian and Assyrian stuff was on top so they and historians assumed everything else found in the area was part of those empires going back. The Kassites were no more a Babylonian Dyansty than the man in the moon, had their own capital, two counting Dur-Kuriglazu. Ditto for most of the other supposed BDs. So I wouldn't worry about that. Ploversegg (talk) 14:20, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support. Srnec (talk) 17:39, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.