Tuppu and the Date of Hammurabi

Abstract

SELDOM can the correct understanding of one single word have had such importance for our knowledge of history as is the case with tuppu, for on it to a large extent depends whether we date Hammurabi 1728-1686, or sixtyfour years earlier. Since Egyptian chronology is fixed by the Sothic data for the Twelfth Dynasty,2 a wrong interpretation of the Babylonian evidence would yield a completely distorted picture for western Asia as a whole. Imagine only the sort of picture of our own times a scholar of the remote future would have whose comparative chronology was out by some sixtyfour years. He might, for instance, have concluded that the Battle of Britain was fought when Russia was ruled by Czar Alexander II.