Because in time he equal to the interval between two successive culminations of any star. Due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the solar true day, that is, the time interval between two culminations of the Sun, is approximately 4 minutes longer than the sidereal day. This difference changes throughout the year due to the irregularity of the Earth's revolution around the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic, so the true day cannot serve as an accurate unit of time. Instead of them, the average day is usually used, that is, the interval between the climaxes of a fictitious luminary - the “middle sun”, moving evenly along the equator; his place on celestial sphere in famous eras coincides with the location of the true Sun.

For large time intervals, instead of a day, it is more convenient to use other units of time, historically associated with observing the apparent position of the Moon and the Sun among the stars in the celestial sphere. The period of time in which the moon after the expiration full turn around the Earth is against the same stars, is called sidereal(star) month (27 days 7 hours 43 minutes). Depending on the movement of the Earth together with the Moon around the Sun, after the end of the sidereal month, the mutual placement of the three luminaries will change somewhat, so the phase of the moon, visible from the Earth, will be somewhat different, and the interval through which the moon returns to its previous phase, the so-called synodic month, more sidereal (29 days 12 hours 44 minutes).

The time interval through which, due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the luminary returns to the same constellations, to the “same star”, is called the sidereal year. During the day, the brilliance of the sun outshines the stars, and instead of the constellations against which the sun falls, one can compare the constellations opposite to them, culminating at midnight at given time of the year. The seasons are determined by the passage of the Sun through the equinoxes and solstices. Due to precession, the points of intersection of the planes of the equator and the ecliptic (equinoxes), as well as the points of greatest removal of the Sun from the line celestial equator(solstice). Total duration four seasons is called the tropical year and is determined by average speed the movement of the sun in longitude. The tropical year is often defined as the average interval between two successive passages of the Sun through the vernal equinox, which is not true, since the points of the equinoxes and solstices shift relative to each other due to the perturbation of the planets. The tropical year is 20 minutes less than the sidereal year. Value sidereal year does not change, the magnitude of the tropical fluctuates depending on changes in the magnitude of the precession; in our time, the tropical year consists of 365 d 5 h 48 min 46 s in average days and hours, in sidereal day and hours 366 d 5 h 48 m 46 s. During the time of Hipparchus (2nd century BC), the tropical year was 12 seconds longer.

Separate calendar years must contain an integer number of days; meanwhile, the lengths of the year and day are incommensurable. Various systems solar calendars appeared as a result of greater or lesser accuracy of the length of the year in days adopted in the calendar and certain methods of counting the accumulating fractions of the day, that is, the distribution of intercalated days. In turn, the lunar month is incommensurable with the solar year; in known lunisolar calendars existed various tricks equalize the accumulating discrepancy with intercalary months. Later, the month lost its character of the lunar revolution and became a conditional fraction of the solar year. Ancient astronomers, unable to observe the culmination of stars, were content rough reception watching them rise and set. Of particular importance was the so-called heliacal rising of the star. The length of the periods built on heliacal risings requires each time a special calculation depending on the given star (that is, on its place relative to the celestial equator and ecliptic), latitude this place observations on the ground and the magnitude of the precession.

Historical chronology

Calendar

Lunar and solar calendars

First and natural unit The calculation of time for ancient people was a day, divided into day and night. Subsequently, when observing the phases of the moon, they began to distinguish the lunar month, which was counted alternately at 29 and 30 days. Then it was noticed that after about 12 lunar months, natural phenomena are repeated. Thus the year was opened. However, a year of 12 lunar months of 354 days does not correspond to the astronomical (solar) year, and moon calendar out of 12 lunar months it turned out to be mobile (the Arabs still use this type of calendar). In order to correlate it with the astronomical year, as the error accumulated (about once every 3 years), an additional month was inserted (among the Romans, for example, it was called "Mercedony" and was inserted between February 23-24). Of such kind lunisolar calendar used by most ancient peoples; in modern times it is used by Jews (see Jewish calendar).

solar calendar was invented in Egypt (see the ancient Egyptian calendar). It consisted of 12 months of 30 days and 5 additional days. But since true astronomical year exceeds 365 days, the Egyptian calendar also turned out to be inaccurate. Subsequently, the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, based on the calculations of Alexandrian astronomers, tried to introduce leap years; but the reform did not take root. In 26 BC. e. August reformed the Egyptian calendar like the Julian one, establishing leap years and fixing the beginning of the year (1 thot) on August 29, however, the "old style" account was widely practiced in Egypt until the very end of antiquity.

Metonic cycle

Some calendars

Chronography

Years count. Formation of historical chronology

The need for a consistent count of years appeared with the advent of written culture and primarily based on administrative needs. As a rule, the documents were dated by the year of the king's reign; thus, the list of kings with the years of their reign gave a primitive chronological table. Such lists came from Mesopotamia and ancient egypt, but they should be used with caution, since they are often indicated as successive reigns, in reality completely or partially synchronous (for example, in times of unrest), and similar “simplifications” are allowed.

In city-states, years were dated by the names of those elected for the year. officials, which, for example, in Ashur were called "limmu", in Athens - "archons-eponyms", etc. ( "eponymous year"). In Mesopotamia, it was also not uncommon to designate years for important events - so the list of years was something like a short chronicle.

The urgent need for chronological calculations appeared with the emergence of historical science, that is, approximately in the 5th century BC. e. by the most in a simple way dating was mutual relative dating of events: event A occurred X years before event B; event C happened Y years after event B; while the same events are mentioned in different authors. From this, comparing the works of historians, it is relatively easy to calculate the mutual correlation of the events they mention. So, for example, the Greco-Persian wars are the central event of Herodotus' History, affecting more early events- the formation of the Persian kingdom; Thucydides, describing the Peloponnesian War, mentions that between its beginning and the departure of Xerxes from Hellas "approximately 50 years" passed, and briefly speaks of the events of this "fifty years"; Xenophon directly continues Thucydides - that is, only from a comparison of these three authors, one can draw up a detailed chronological order events in about 200 years, from the middle to the middle of the 4th century BC. e.

For events distant in time (such as the Trojan War), on the basis of genealogical tables, an approximate calculation “by generations” was used, taking 3 generations per century. At the same time, attempts were made to compile a system of absolute chronology. The first chronological tables: the priesthoods of the priestesses of Hera in Argos (their author, Hellanicus of Lesbos, apparently was the first to take up chronological issues), lists of Spartan ephors, Athenian eponymous archons; in Herodotus one can find the years of the reign of Persian and other eastern kings. When comparing such lists, it became possible to translate the date from one system to another (for example, to say under which Persian king an event occurred under such and such an archon), as well as to find out the chronological relationship of events with each other (that is, to establish their relative chronology) and with the moment at which the work is written (that is, to find out the absolute chronology). Since there was no single chronological system in Greece, the historian, speaking of some important event, it was desirable to date it according to several systems at once: the year of the reign of the Persian king, the Spartan ephors, the Athenian archon-eponym. For example, here is an excerpt from Thucydides, which contains both relative and absolute dating key moment his "History" - the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC):

For 14 years, a thirty-year peace continued to exist, concluded after the conquest of Euboea. In the fifteenth year, the forty-eighth year of the priesthood of Chrysis in Argos, when Enesius was ephor in Sparta, and Pythodorus had 4 months of archonship in Athens, in the sixteenth month after the battle of Potidea, in early spring, a detachment of armed Thebans (...) at the beginning of the night sleep invaded the Boeotian city of Plataea...

All other dates in the text of the "History" of Thucydides are somehow correlated with the date of the beginning of the war (in the above passage, this can be seen in the example of the date of the end of the first Athenian-Spartan war and the Battle of Potidaea; further dates are indicated: "for such and such a year of the war" ). Of the dating systems used by Thucydides, dating by the Athenian archons existed in historical science for many centuries, and this allowed ancient chronologists to easily correlate Thucydides' data with later chronological scales (according to the Olympiads - through it with Roman chronology according to consuls and "from the foundation Rome "- and already through the last this event is easily translated into modern system chronology, which is a direct continuation of the Roman one). Finally, this date lends itself to astronomical verification, since Thucydides refers the solar eclipse to the summer of the same year, which, according to calculations (for the first time already done by Joseph Scaliger), took place on August 3, 431 BC. e.

At the same time, in the Hellenistic East, official datings of the type familiar to us come into use, counted from one date - the “epoch of the era”. The era served as the coming to power of Seleucus Nicator, the commander of Alexander the Great - 312 BC. e. However, the "era of the Seleucids" until late antiquity remained administrative and was not used by historians. Subsequently, it entered Aramaic, then Arabic historiography (under the incorrect name of the "Alexander era") and was used by Syrian Christians until the 19th century. The Parthian Arsacids, in turn, introduced an era from their own accession (248 BC), which also had circulation in the East.

The Romans, who have long kept their "fasts" - lists of consuls, which also served as a brief official chronicle, easily fit into the Greek chronological system, so, for example, in the work of the Greek author of the Roman era Diodorus Siculus (I century BC) we we meet dating at once: according to the Olympiads, according to the Athenian archons and according to the Roman consuls. A contemporary of Diodorus was the Roman scientist Varro, who, on the basis of consular fasts and the years of the reign of the Roman kings reported by the legend, calculated the date of the founding of Rome (according to Varro - 753 BC) and introduced it as an era in scientific circulation. This era "from the founding of Rome" was not officially used, but in historiography survived until the 19th century (since it was about the events of Roman history).

Of great importance for chronology is the so-called " Royal Canon of Ptolemy" - a list of kings preserved in Theon's commentary on Ptolemy's astronomical work. This is a list of the reigns, with exact astronomical dates, of the kings of Babylon (the Babylonian kings proper, as well as Persian kings and Alexander the Great as Babylonian), the kings of Hellenistic Egypt and the Roman emperors. It was compiled by Alexandrian astronomers for the needs of their own calculations (in fact, for dating astronomical phenomena) according to own records and records of the Babylonian priests and then continued by scribes who entered names into it Byzantine emperors(in some manuscripts it is brought to the fall of Constantinople in 1453). It begins with the accession to the throne of the Babylonian king Nabonassar on February 27, 747 BC. e. (the so-called "era of Nabonassar"), in which systematic astronomical observations began to be conducted for the first time, and is based on the movable Egyptian calendar (without leap years), which was then used by astronomers.

In the late Roman period in astronomical and astrological texts, the era from the beginning of the reign of Emperor Diocletian - 284, is widely used, Easter tables are compiled in it (this era is still preserved by the Coptic-Ethiopian church under the name "era of martyrs").

Interest in questions of chronology reappears in the Renaissance. It is believed that the foundations of modern chronology were laid by Joseph Scaliger (-); he introduced dating according to the Julian period he invented, starting in 4713 BC. e., which made it possible to translate all available dates into one system; he was also the first to begin (more precisely, resumed, because it was used sporadically in antiquity) an astronomical verification of those found in historical sources dates (for example, he was the first to give an astronomical dating of the solar eclipse of 431 BC, mentioned by Thucydides). By cross-checking synchronous information and using astronomical data, Scaliger and the Jesuit scholar Dionysius Petavius ​​(-) calculated the main dates, which in turn made it possible to recalculate according to unified system chronology all dates ancient history. Petavius ​​in 1627 proposed a system of "reverse" counting of dates "before the birth of Christ." This system, which has received universal recognition only to late XVIII century, greatly facilitated the study of chronology.

The controversy caused by the works of Scaliger stimulated the appearance a large number works on astronomical and technical chronology. A generalizing work in this area was in the 18th century the work of the Benedictines d'Antin, Clemence and Duran "The Art of Checking Dates", latest edition which included 44 volumes. By the beginning of the 20th century, scientific chronology had reached its pinnacle. Until now, the work of the German astronomer and chronologist Christian-Ludwig Idler "Handbook of Mathematical and Technical Chronology" has not lost its significance. From modern specialists chronologically, the American scientist is especially famous Russian origin E. Bickerman, author of the work "Chronology ancient world"(London, 1969; Russian translation M., 1975).

Questions of reliability of ancient chronology

The Roman chronology, of which our system of reckoning is a direct continuation, as has been pointed out, is quite reliable. It is characteristic, for example, that the date of Diocletian's coming to power (284) was established by three different scholars using three different ways. Scaliger proceeded from the Coptic-Ethiopian tradition, which equated 1582 to 1299 of the era of Diocletian, which guided the Coptic-Ethiopian tradition, equating 1582 to 1299 of Diocletian [ clarify] Petavius ​​- from the fact that Diocletian, according to the "Easter Chronicle", came to power in the consulate of Karin (second) and Numerian, which, according to consular fasts, corresponds to 284; Idler instead used the "Canon of Ptolemy" and astronomical observation, allowing to derive synchronous dating: 81 years after the reign of Diocletian = 1112 years after the accession of Nabonassar; this equation again leads to 284.

Greek history can be synchronized with the Roman one, since many dates are known in both the Greek and Roman systems of reckoning. Those eastern chronological data are also reliable, in which there is a direct or indirect connection with Roman chronology. Thus, the lists of the Egyptian pharaohs of Manetho include the Persian kings and Ptolemies, the dates of whose reign are precisely known - this allows us to calculate the dates of the reign of previous rulers. Here, however, difficulties arise because of the above-mentioned features of the Eastern royal lists. However, it is believed that until about 800 BC. e. Egyptian kingships are dated exactly [ by whom?], until the 16th century BC. e. (that is, before the beginning of the New Kingdom) - with a tolerance of several decades. But the duration of the transitional period between the Middle and New Kingdoms is not exactly known - as a result, the connection with Roman chronology is lost. Important role in the chronology of the Middle Kingdom plays a letter on papyrus, referring to the end of the XII dynasty; it says that Sirius will rise on the 16th of the 8th lunar month of the 7th year. Obviously, this refers to the year of the reign of Senusret III, but perhaps his son Amenemhat III. In any case, the date of this event is about 1800, and this allows (since the number of years of the reign of the pharaohs of the dynasty is known) to conclude that the XII dynasty ruled from about 2000 to 1800 BC. e. The duration of the First Intermediate Period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms is also unknown, and therefore the chronology ancient kingdom even more intriguing.

The historians of Western Asia have a somewhat firmer support. First of all, the Assyrian list of eponyms (limmu) has been preserved, between 911 and 648 BC. e., which are verified both by the "Canon of Ptolemy" and the solar eclipse. For more early centuries key value has an establishment date for the beginning of the reign of King Hammurabi. It is based on the observation of the heliacal rising (the first sunrise in the morning dawn) of Venus, described in the cuneiform document, which occurred in the 6th year of the reign of Amisaduga, one of last kings dynasty of Hammurabi (then it is known that 1 year of his reign is 146 years away from 1 year of Hammurabi's reign). The heliacal rising conditions described in the document are repeated after several decades, so that as a result several variants of the date of the 1st year of the reign of Hammurabi appeared; based on the totality of historical data, the most plausible of them is the date - 1792 BC. e. To this date, respectively, the dates of previous and subsequent reigns are tied.

China has always had a developed historiographical tradition with its own detailed chronology based on reigns with their slogans, as well as on 60-year cycles (see Chinese calendar); in India, questions of chronology and historiography were treated much more lightly. Therefore, the key date for synchronization ancient history From Europe, India is given a decree carved on stone by King Ashoka (3rd century BC) on an embassy sent by him to Greece for missionary purposes to promote Buddhism; it mentions five Hellenistic rulers (Antigon Gonat and others), whose reign is precisely known.

Some eras

• A group of Byzantine eras that are commonly stated to begin:
  • March 1, 5509 B.C. e. ultramart style)
  • September 1, 5509 B.C. e. - Byzantine era from the "creation of the world" (used in Russia until 1700)
  • March 1, 5508 B.C. e. - Old Russian era from the "creation of the world" ( march style)
  • 5504 BC e. - Bulgarian era from the "creation of the world"
  • March 25, 5493 B.C. e. - Alexandrian era from the "creation of the world" according to Annian

However, it must be kept in mind that " nobody of those who followed the Byzantine era did not consider that 5508 years had passed from the creation of the world to the incarnation. If there was a need to indicate the year of the birth of Christ, they put the 5500th. Paradoxically, 5508 was number, but no date» . Thus, in the chronicles, the date of Christ's birth was taken as the 5500th (only sometimes the 5505th), but due to failures in the chronology of the reign of the Roman emperors, subsequent events were dated in such a way that when recalculating them for modern chronology, the above eras should be used.

• January 1, 4713 B.C. e. - the era of Scaliger, the beginning of the Julian days
• 4004 BC e. - the era from the "creation of the world", according to Bishop Ussher
• October 7, 3761 B.C. e. - Jewish era from the "creation of the world"
• February 18, 3102 B.C. e. - the era of Kaliyuga (according to Indian mythology, this " iron age"will last 432,000 years)
• August 11, 2497 B.C. e. - main (main, 1st) Armenian era
• 2397 BC e. - Chinese cyclical era
• July 1, 776 B.C. e. - era from the first Olympic Games; introduced around 264 BC. e. and was used until 394.
• April 21, 753 B.C. e. - era from the founding of Rome (according to Varro). Applied before late XVII century.
• February 26, 747 B.C. e. - the era of Nabonassar. Used in astronomy until the time of Copernicus.
• March 11, 545 B.C. e. - Buddhist era
• October 1, 312 B.C. e. - Seleucid era
• 248 BC e. - era of Arsacids
• 37 BC e. - Spanish era (used in Spain until the Late Middle Ages).
• September 1, 31 B.C. e. - era "From the Peace of August", or "Era of Actium" - (used in the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire).
• January 1, year 1 - Christian era from the Nativity of Christ, introduced by Dionysius the Small in 525.
• August 29, 284 - the era of Diocletian (for Christians, the "era of martyrs").
• October 27, 551 - Armenian era
• July 16, 622 - Hijri era (Muslim)
• September 22, 1792 - the era of the Republic (French Revolutionary)

Dating methods

Physical

• Potassium-argon method
• Uranium-thorium method

Chemical

• Racemization of amino acids

Geological

archaeological

• Typology (archaeology)
• Cross dating

Biological

Linguistic

see also

Notes

Literature

• Bikerman E. Chronology of the ancient world. Near East and Antiquity / Per. from English. I. M. Steblin-Kamensky. Moscow: Nauka, 1975.
• Ermolaev I.P. Historical chronology. - Kazan: Kazan University Press, 1980.
• Klimishin I. A. Calendar and Chronology. - M.: "Nauka", 1981.
• Kamentseva E. I. Chronology: Proc. allowance for university students. - Ed. 2nd, corrected. and additional - M .: Aspect Press, 2003. - 160 p. - 4000 copies. - ISBN 5-7567-0293-8(reg.) (1st ed. - 1967)
• Seleshnikov S. I. Calendar history and chronology. M., 1970 (with a list of earlier literature).
• Syuzyumov M. Ya. The chronology is universal. - Sverdlovsk, 1971.
• Chronological table. 750-500 AD BC e. (East. Egypt. Greece. Colonies. Architecture and art. Literature) // Cambridge History of the Ancient World. T. III, part 3. M., 2007. S. 563-571. ISBN 978-5-86218-467-9
• Cherepnin L.V. Russian chronology, M., 1944.
• Calendar-chronological culture and problems of its study: to the 870th anniversary of the "Teachings" of Kirik Novgorodets: materials of scientific. conf. Moscow, 11-12 Dec. 2006/ comp. Yu. E. Shustova; editorial board: R. A. Simonov (responsible editor) and others; Ros. state humanitarian. un-t, East.-arch. in-t, Dept. sources and help. ist. disciplines, Inst. History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow. state un-t printing. - M.: RGGU, 2006.
• Dyakonov I. M. How do we know when it was // Science and Life, No. 5, 1986, p. 66-74.

Time
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Units, ranges and periods of time

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Astronomical chronology

The most natural measure of time is the rotation of the Earth around its axis. A full rotation (360°) of the Earth is called sidereal days, since in time it is equal to the interval between two successive climaxes of any star. Due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the solar true day, that is, the time interval between two culminations of the Sun, is approximately 4 minutes longer than the sidereal day. This difference changes throughout the year due to the irregularity of the Earth's revolution around the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic, so the true day cannot serve as an accurate unit of time. Instead of them, average days are usually used, that is, the interval between the climaxes of a fictitious luminary - the “middle sun”, moving evenly along the equator; its place on the celestial sphere in certain epochs coincides with the place of the true Sun.

For large time intervals, instead of a day, it is more convenient to use other units of time, historically associated with observing the apparent position of the Moon and the Sun among the stars in the celestial sphere. The time interval in which the Moon, after a complete revolution around the Earth, falls opposite the same stars is called sidereal(star) month (27 days 7 hours 43 minutes). Depending on the movement of the Earth together with the Moon around the Sun, after the end of the sidereal month, the mutual placement of the three luminaries will change somewhat, so the phase of the Moon, visible from the Earth, will be somewhat different, and the interval through which the Moon returns to its previous phase, the so-called synodic month, more sidereal (29 days 12 hours 44 minutes).

The time interval through which, due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the luminary returns to the same constellations, to the “same star”, is called the sidereal year. During the day, the brightness of the Sun outshines the stars, and instead of the constellations against which the Sun falls, one can compare the constellations opposite to them, culminating at midnight at this time of the year. The seasons are determined by the passage of the Sun through the equinoxes and solstices. As a result of precession, the points of intersection of the planes of the equator and the ecliptic (equinoxes), as well as the points of the greatest distance of the Sun from the line of the celestial equator (solstices), are shifted. The total duration of the four seasons is called a tropical year and is determined through the average speed of the Sun in longitude. A tropical year is often defined as the average interval between two successive passages of the Sun through the vernal equinox, which is not correct as the equinoxes and solstices shift relative to each other due to planetary perturbation. A tropical year is 20 minutes less than a sidereal year. The magnitude of the sidereal year does not change, the magnitude of the tropical year fluctuates depending on changes in the magnitude of the precession; in our time, the tropical year includes 365 days in average days and hours. 5 hours 48 minutes. 46 s, in sidereal days and hours 366 d 5 h 48 m 46 s. During the time of Hipparchus (2nd century BC), the tropical year was 12 seconds longer.

Individual calendar years must necessarily contain an integer number of days; meanwhile, the lengths of the year and day are incommensurable. Various systems of solar calendars appeared as a result of greater or lesser accuracy of the length of the year in days accepted in the calendar and certain methods of counting the accumulating fractions of the day, that is, the distribution of intercalated days. In turn, the lunar month is incommensurable with the solar year; In the well-known lunisolar calendars, there were various methods to equalize the accumulating discrepancy with intercalated months. Later, the month lost its character of the lunar revolution and became a conditional fraction of the solar year. Ancient astronomers, unable to observe the climaxes of the stars, were content with the crude method of observing their rising and setting. Of particular importance was the so-called heliacal rising of the star. The length of the periods built on heliacal risings requires each time a special calculation depending on the given star (that is, on its place relative to the celestial equator and ecliptic), the latitude of the given place of observation on earth and the magnitude of the precession.

Historical chronology

Calendar

Lunar and solar calendars

The first and natural unit of counting time for ancient people was the day, divided into day and night. Subsequently, when observing the phases of the moon, they began to distinguish the lunar month, which was counted alternately at 29 and 30 days. Then it was noticed that after about 12 lunar months, natural phenomena are repeated. Thus the year was opened. However, a year of 12 lunar months of 354 days does not correspond to the astronomical (solar) year, and moon calendar out of 12 lunar months it turned out to be mobile (the Arabs still use this type of calendar). In order to correlate it with the astronomical year, as the error accumulated (about once every 3 years), an additional month was inserted (among the Romans, for example, it was called "Mercedony" and was inserted between February 23-24). Of such kind lunisolar calendar used by most ancient peoples; in modern times it is used by the Jews (see the Hebrew calendar).

solar calendar was invented in Egypt (see ancient Egyptian calendar). It consisted of 12 months of 30 days and 5 additional days. But since the true astronomical year exceeds 365 days, the Egyptian calendar also turned out to be inaccurate. Subsequently, the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, based on the calculations of Alexandrian astronomers, tried to introduce leap years; but the reform did not take root. In 26 BC. e. August reformed the Egyptian calendar according to the type of the Julian calendar, establishing leap years and fixing the beginning of the year (1 thot) on August 29, however, the "old style" account was widely practiced in Egypt until the very end of antiquity.

Metonic cycle

Some calendars

Chronography

Years count. Formation of historical chronology

The need for a consistent count of years appeared with the emergence of written culture and, above all, proceeded from administrative needs. As a rule, the documents were dated by the year of the king's reign; thus, the list of kings with the years of their reign gave a primitive chronological table. Such lists have come down from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, but they should be used with caution, since they are often indicated as successive reigns, in reality, completely or partially synchronous (for example, during times of troubles), and similar “simplifications” are allowed.

In the city-states, the years were dated by the names of the officials elected for the year, who, for example, were called "limmu" in Ashur, "eponymous archons" in Athens, etc. ( "eponymous year"). In Mesopotamia, it was also not uncommon to designate years for important events - so the list of years was something like a short chronicle.

The urgent need for chronological calculations appeared with the emergence of historical science, that is, approximately in the 5th century BC. e. The simplest way of dating was mutual relative dating of events: event A occurred X years before event B; event C happened Y years after event B; while the same events are mentioned by different authors. From this, comparing the works of historians, it is relatively easy to calculate the mutual correlation of the events they mention. So, for example, the Greco-Persian wars are the central event of the "History" by Herodotus, affecting earlier events - the formation of the Persian kingdom; Thucydides, describing the Peloponnesian War, mentions that "about 50 years" passed between its beginning and the departure of Xerxes from Hellas, and briefly speaks about the events of this "fifty years"; Xenophon directly continues Thucydides - that is, only from a comparison of these three authors, it is possible to compile a detailed chronological sequence of events for about 200 years, from the middle to the middle of the 4th century BC. e.

For events distant in time (such as the Trojan War), based on genealogical tables, an approximate calculation “by generations” was used, taking 3 generations per century. At the same time, attempts were made to compile a system of absolute chronology. The first chronological tables were compiled: the priesthoods of the priestesses of Hera in Argos (their author, Hellanic Lesbossky, apparently was the first to take up chronological issues), lists of Spartan ephors, Athenian eponymous archons; in Herodotus one can find the years of the reign of Persian and other eastern kings. When comparing such lists, it became possible to translate the date from one system to another (for example, to say under which Persian king an event occurred under such and such an archon), as well as to find out the chronological relationship of events with each other (that is, to establish their relative chronology) and with the moment at which the work is written (that is, to find out the absolute chronology). Since there was no single chronological system in Greece, the historian, speaking of some important event, it was desirable to date it according to several systems at once: the year of the reign of the Persian king, the Spartan ephors, the Athenian archon-eponym. For example, here is an excerpt from Thucydides, which contains both relative and absolute dating of the key moment of his "History" - the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC):

For 14 years, a thirty-year peace continued to exist, concluded after the conquest of Euboea. In the fifteenth year, the forty-eighth year of the priesthood of Chrysis in Argos, when Enesius was ephor in Sparta, and Pythodorus had 4 months of archonship in Athens, in the sixteenth month after the battle of Potidea, in early spring, a detachment of armed Thebans (...) at the beginning of the night sleep invaded the Boeotian city of Plataea...

All other dates in the text of the "History" of Thucydides are somehow correlated with the date of the beginning of the war (in the above passage, this can be seen in the example of the date of the end of the first Athenian-Spartan war and the Battle of Potidaea; further dates are indicated: "for such and such a year of the war" ). Of the dating systems used by Thucydides, dating by the Athenian archons existed in historical science for many centuries, and this allowed ancient chronologists to easily correlate Thucydides' data with later chronological scales (according to the Olympiads - through it with Roman chronology according to consuls and "from the foundation Rome" - and already through the latter this event is easily translated into the modern system of chronology, which is a direct continuation of the Roman one). Finally, this date lends itself to astronomical verification, since Thucydides refers the solar eclipse to the summer of the same year, which, according to calculations (for the first time already done by Joseph Scaliger), took place on August 3, 431 BC. e.

At the same time, in the Hellenistic East, official datings of the type familiar to us come into use, counted from one date - the “epoch of the era”. The era was the coming to power of Seleucus Nicator, the commander of Alexander the Great - 312 BC. e. However, the “era of the Seleucids” until late antiquity remained administrative and was not used by historians. Subsequently, it entered Aramaic, then Arabic historiography (under the incorrect name of the "Alexander era") and was used by Syrian Christians until the 19th century. The Parthian Arsacids, in turn, introduced an era from their own accession (248 BC), which also had circulation in the East.

The Romans, who have long kept their "fasts" - the lists of consuls, which also served as a brief official chronicle, easily fit into the Greek chronological system, so, for example, in the work of the Greek author of the Roman era Diodorus Siculus (I century BC) we we meet dating at once: according to the Olympiads, according to the Athenian archons and according to the Roman consuls. A contemporary of Diodorus was the Roman scientist Varro, who, on the basis of consular fasts and the years of the reign of the Roman kings reported by the legend, calculated the date of the founding of Rome (according to Varro - 753 BC) and introduced it as an era into scientific circulation. This era "from the founding of Rome" was not officially used, but in historiography survived until the 19th century (since it was about the events of Roman history).

Of great importance for chronology is the so-called " Royal Canon of Ptolemy" - a list of kings preserved in Theon's commentary on Ptolemy's astronomical work. This is a list of the reigns, with exact astronomical dates, of the kings of Babylon (the Babylonian kings proper, as well as the Persian kings and Alexander the Great as Babylonian), the kings of Hellenistic Egypt, and the Roman emperors. It was compiled by Alexandrian astronomers for the needs of their own calculations (in fact, for dating astronomical phenomena) according to their own records and records of the Babylonian priests, and then continued by scribes who entered the names of Byzantine emperors into it (in some manuscripts it was brought to the fall of Constantinople in 1453). It begins with the accession to the throne of the Babylonian king Nabonassar on February 27, 747 BC. e. (the so-called "era of Nabonassar"), in which systematic astronomical observations began to be conducted for the first time, and is based on the movable Egyptian calendar (without leap years), which was then used by astronomers.

In the late Roman period in astronomical and astrological texts, the era from the beginning of the reign of Emperor Diocletian - 284, is widely used, Easter tables are compiled in it (this era is still preserved by the Coptic-Ethiopian church under the name "era of martyrs").

Calculus from the birth of Christ

Greek history can be synchronized with Roman history, since many dates are known in both Greek and Roman calculus. Those eastern chronological data are also reliable, in which there is a direct or indirect connection with Roman chronology. Thus, the lists of the Egyptian pharaohs of Manetho include the Persian kings and Ptolemies, the dates of whose reign are precisely known - this allows us to calculate the dates of the reign of previous rulers. Here, however, difficulties arise because of the above-mentioned features of the Eastern royal lists. Nevertheless, it is believed that until about 800 BC. e. Egyptian kingships are dated exactly [ by whom?] [ ], until the 16th century BC. e. (that is, before the beginning of the New Kingdom) - with a tolerance of several decades. But the duration of the transitional period between the Middle and New Kingdoms is not exactly known - as a result, the connection with Roman chronology is lost. An important role in the chronology of the Middle Kingdom is played by a papyrus letter dating to the end of the XII dynasty; it says that Sirius will rise on the 16th of the 8th lunar month of the 7th year. Obviously, this refers to the year of the reign of Senusret III, but perhaps his son Amenemhat III. In any case, the date of this event is about 1800, and this allows (since the number of years of the reign of the pharaohs of the dynasty is known) to conclude that the XII dynasty ruled from about 2000 to 1800 BC. e. The duration of the First Intermediate Period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms is also unknown, and therefore the chronology of the Old Kingdom is even more conjectural.

The historians of Western Asia have a somewhat firmer support. First of all, the Assyrian list of eponyms (limmu) has been preserved, between 911 and 648 BC. e., which is verified both by the "Canon of Ptolemy" and the solar eclipse indicated in it. For earlier centuries, establishing the date of the beginning of the reign of King Hammurabi is of key importance. It is based on the observation of the heliacal rising (the first sunrise at dawn) of Venus, described in a cuneiform document, which occurred in the 6th year of the reign of Amisaduga, one of the last kings of the Hammurabi dynasty (then it is known that 1 year of his reign is 146 years). The heliacal rising conditions described in the document are repeated after several decades, so that as a result several variants of the date of the 1st year of the reign of Hammurabi appeared; based on the totality of historical data, the most plausible of them is the date - 1792 BC. e. To this date, respectively, the dates of previous and subsequent reigns are tied.

China has always had a developed historiographical tradition with its own detailed chronology based on reigns with their mottos, as well as on 60-year cycles (see Chinese calendar); in India, questions of chronology and historiography were treated much more lightly. Therefore, the key date for synchronizing the ancient history of India with the European one is given by the decree carved on a stone by King Ashoka (3rd century BC) on an embassy sent by him to Greece for the missionary purposes of promoting Buddhism; it mentions five Hellenistic rulers (Antigon Gonat and others), whose reign is precisely known.

Some eras

• A group of Byzantine eras that are commonly stated to begin:

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The meaning of the word chronology

chronology in the crossword dictionary

Economic glossary of terms

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. D.N. Ushakov

chronology

chronology, w. (from the Greek chronos - time and logos - teaching).

List of events in their time sequence. Chronology of Russian history.

time or sequence appearance of something. in time. Chronology of events.

An auxiliary historical discipline that establishes the dates of events, the time of appearance of documents (special).

Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova.

chronology

A branch of historical science that studies the history of summer reckoning.

List of events in their time sequence. H. Russian history.

what. The sequence in which something appears. in time. X. events.

adj. chronological, -th, -th.

New explanatory and derivational dictionary of the Russian language, T. F. Efremova.

Encyclopedic Dictionary, 1998

chronology

CHRONOLOGY (from chrono... and... ology)

sequence of historical events in time.

The science of measuring time. Astronomical chronology studies the patterns of repeating celestial phenomena and sets the exact astronomical time. Historical chronologies- an auxiliary historical discipline that studies the chronology systems and calendars of various peoples and states, helps to establish the dates of historical events and the time of creation of historical sources.

Chronology

Historical chronology- an auxiliary historical discipline that studies the systems of chronology and calendars of different peoples and states and helps to establish the dates of historical events and the time of creation of historical sources.

Examples of the use of the word chronology in the literature.

He made a number of discoveries regarding the composition of Indo-European vocalism, the labial series of back-lingual ones, the weak degree of ablaut, the relationship of longitude and the nature of syllabic intonation, the relative chronology first and second palatalization in Proto-Slavic.

In the Indian tradition, unlike the Western one, as a rule, no specific chronology and strict dates.

Primarily, high technology forgery, starting from the legend of its introduction into public circulation and ending with manufacturing techniques: paper, font, corner stamp, stamp of incoming correspondence, knowledge chronology structural and personnel changes in the institutions of the security department.

New experimental and statistical methods for dating ancient events and applications to the global chronology ancient and middle world.

STATISTICAL MODELS To overcome the difficulty of recreating the correct chronology, it is necessary, in our opinion, to try to look at the subject from a new angle and create some new, independent, not based on subjective assessments event dating method.

The history of the creation of the traditional chronology and proposed new concept ancient and medieval history, created on the basis of the application of new empirical and statistical methods.

Hindu chronology approximate, my erudition even more approximate, Koeppen and Hermann Beck should be trusted no more than the one who dared to take these notes.

Questions chronology and the contextual terminology of the Koran in Soviet Arabic studies were covered primarily by K.

It was wiser only because I had in my hands the explanation of Grandmother Yelovatskaya, who described in detail and competently the whole chronology fights, the address of Rita Tereshkina and solid knowledge that today is the second day of Larionov's detention in prison.

Thus, according to chronology of this chronicle, it contains a gap from 1299 to 1415.

Relying even only on the scientific data of textbooks high school, we rightfully obtain the following chronology the emergence of life species on Earth: Microscopic organisms and algae - the first time and the simplest program.

This is how a suspicious list of Slavic tribes appeared in the annals, allegedly conquered by Oleg, a list with a suspicious chronology.

We repeat once again - Hochart and Ross insisted on the Tacitus theory of forgery only because they believed the Scaligerian chronology.

The sheet tried to connect geological periods Earth, according to modern paleogeography with phases of the last theosophical circle of 4,320,000,000 years or Hindu kalpa chronology.

Johnson called for a radical review of the entire chronology antiquity and the Middle Ages!

Historical (technical) chronology- a special historical discipline that studies the chronology systems and calendars of different peoples and states, and helps to establish the dates of historical events and the time of creation of historical sources.

Astronomical chronology

The most natural measure of time is the rotation of the Earth around its axis. A full rotation (360°) of the Earth is called sidereal days, since in time it is equal to the interval between two successive climaxes of any star. Due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the solar true day, that is, the time interval between the two culminations of the Sun, is approximately 3 minutes 56 seconds longer than the sidereal day. This difference changes throughout the year due to the irregularity of the Earth's revolution around the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic, so the true day cannot serve as an accurate unit of time. Instead of them, the average day is usually used, that is, the interval between the climaxes of a fictitious luminary - the “middle sun”, moving evenly along the ecliptic; its place on the celestial sphere in certain epochs coincides with the place of the true Sun.

For large time intervals, instead of a day, it is more convenient to use other units of time, historically associated with observing the apparent position of the Moon and the Sun among the stars in the celestial sphere. The time interval in which the Moon, after a complete revolution around the Earth, falls opposite the same stars is called sidereal(star) month (27 days 7 hours 43 minutes). Depending on the movement of the Earth together with the Moon around the Sun, after the end of the sidereal month, the mutual placement of the three luminaries will change somewhat, so the phase of the Moon, visible from the Earth, will be somewhat different, and the interval through which the Moon returns to its previous phase, the so-called synodic month, more sidereal (29 days 12 hours 44 minutes).

The time interval through which, due to the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the luminary returns to the same constellations, to the “same star”, is called the sidereal year. During the day, the brightness of the Sun outshines the stars, and instead of the constellations against which the Sun falls, one can compare the constellations opposite to them, culminating at midnight at this time of the year. The seasons are determined by the passage of the Sun through the equinoxes and solstices. As a result of precession, the points of intersection of the planes of the equator and the ecliptic (equinoxes), as well as the points of the greatest distance of the Sun from the line of the celestial equator (solstices), are shifted. The total duration of the four seasons is called a tropical year and is determined through the average speed of the Sun in longitude. A tropical year is often defined as the average interval between two successive passages of the Sun through the vernal equinox, which is not correct as the equinoxes and solstices shift relative to each other due to planetary perturbation. The tropical year is 20 minutes less than the sidereal year. The magnitude of the sidereal year does not change, the magnitude of the tropical year fluctuates depending on changes in the magnitude of the precession; in our time, the tropical year includes 365 days in average days and hours. 5 hours 48 minutes. 46 s, in sidereal days and hours 366 d 5 h 48 m 46 s. During the time of Hipparchus (2nd century BC), the tropical year was 12 seconds shorter.

Individual calendar years must necessarily contain an integer number of days; meanwhile, the lengths of the year and day are incommensurable. Various systems of solar calendars appeared as a result of greater or lesser accuracy of the length of the year in days adopted in the calendar and certain methods of counting the accumulating fractions of the day, that is, the distribution of intercalated days. In turn, the lunar month is incommensurable with the solar year; in the well-known lunisolar calendars, there were various methods to equalize the accumulating discrepancy with intercalated months. Later, the month lost its character of the lunar revolution and became a conditional fraction of the solar year. Ancient astronomers, unable to observe the climaxes of the stars, were content with the crude method of observing their rising and setting. Of particular importance was the so-called heliacal rising of the star. The length of the periods built on heliacal risings requires each time a special calculation depending on the given star (that is, on its place relative to the celestial equator and ecliptic), the latitude of the given place of observation on earth and the magnitude of the precession.

Historical chronology

Calendar

Lunar and solar calendars

The first and natural unit of counting time for ancient people was the day, divided into day and night. Subsequently, when observing the phases of the moon, they began to distinguish the lunar month, which was counted alternately at 29 and 30 days. Then it was noticed that after about 12 lunar months, natural phenomena are repeated. Thus the year was opened. However, a year of 12 lunar months of 354 days does not correspond to the astronomical (solar) year, and moon calendar out of 12 lunar months it turned out to be mobile (the Arabs still use this type of calendar). In order to correlate it with the astronomical year, as the error accumulated (about once every 3 years), an additional month was inserted (among the Romans, for example, it was called "Mercedony" and was inserted between February 23-24). Of such kind lunisolar calendar used by most ancient peoples; in modern times it is used by Jews (see Jewish calendar).

solar calendar was invented in Egypt (see the ancient Egyptian calendar). It consisted of 12 months of 30 days and 5 additional days. But since the true astronomical year exceeds 365 days, the Egyptian calendar also turned out to be inaccurate. Subsequently, the Hellenistic kings of Egypt, based on the calculations of Alexandrian astronomers, tried to introduce leap years; but the reform did not take root. In 26 BC. e. August reformed the Egyptian calendar according to the type of the Julian calendar, establishing leap years and fixing the beginning of the year (1 thot) on August 29, however, the "old style" account was widely practiced in Egypt until the very end of antiquity.

Metonic cycle

In the IV-VI centuries in most Christian countries approved unified Easter tablesmade on the basis of the Julian calendar; thus, Julian calendar spread throughout christianity. In these tables, March 21 was taken as the day of the vernal equinox.

However, as the error accumulated (1 day in 128 years), the discrepancy between the astronomical spring equinox and the calendar became more and more pronounced, and many in Catholic Europe believed that it could no longer be ignored. This was noted by the Castilian king of the XIII century Alfonso X, in next century the Byzantine scholar Nicephorus Gregory even proposed a reform of the calendar. In reality, such a reform was carried out by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, based on the project of the mathematician and physician Aloysius Lily. The papal decree of February 24, 1582 established that October 5, 1582 should be followed by October 15, and in the future only those century years will be considered leap years, the number of hundreds of years of which is divisible by 4 without a remainder (, , 2400), and other century years will be considered simple ( , , , ). The result was the Gregorian calendar, which is astronomically more accurate than the Julian. From European countries catholic switched to new style immediately, Protestant - in the majority in the XVIII century: Northern Germany, Denmark and Norway - since 1700, England - since 1752, Sweden - since 1753; Orthodox countries switched to Gregorian calendar only at the beginning of the 20th century: Bulgaria since 1916, Russia since February 1/14, 1918, Serbia and Romania - since 1919, Greece - since 1924.

Some calendars

Chronography

Years count. Formation of historical chronology

The need for a consistent count of years appeared with the emergence of written culture and, above all, proceeded from administrative needs. As a rule, the documents were dated by the year of the king's reign; thus, the list of kings with the years of their reign gave a primitive chronological table. Such lists have come down from Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt, but they should be used with caution, since they are often indicated as successive reigns, in reality, completely or partially synchronous (for example, during times of troubles), and similar “simplifications” are allowed.

In the city-states, the years were dated by the names of the officials elected for the year, who, for example, were called "limmu" in Ashur, "eponymous archons" in Athens, etc. ( "eponymous year"). In Mesopotamia, it was also not uncommon to designate years for important events - so the list of years was something like a short chronicle.

The urgent need for chronological calculations appeared with the emergence of historical science, that is, approximately in the 5th century BC. e. The simplest way of dating was mutual relative dating of events: event A occurred X years before event B; event C happened Y years after event B; while the same events are mentioned by different authors. From this, comparing the works of historians, it is relatively easy to calculate the mutual correlation of the events they mention. So, for example, the Greco-Persian wars are the central event of the "History" by Herodotus, affecting earlier events - the formation of the Persian kingdom; Thucydides, describing the Peloponnesian War, mentions that between its beginning and the departure of Xerxes from Hellas "approximately 50 years" passed, and briefly speaks of the events of this "fifty years"; Xenophon directly continues Thucydides - that is, only from a comparison of these three authors, one can draw up a detailed chronological sequence of events for about 200 years, from the middle to the middle of the 4th century BC. e.

For events distant in time (such as the Trojan War), based on genealogical tables, an approximate calculation “by generations” was used, taking 3 generations per century. At the same time, attempts were made to compile a system of absolute chronology. The first chronological tables were compiled: the priesthoods of the priestesses of Hera in Argos (their author, Hellanicus of Lesbos, apparently was the first to take up chronological issues), lists of Spartan ephors, Athenian archons-eponyms; in Herodotus one can find the years of the reign of Persian and other eastern kings. When comparing such lists, it became possible to translate the date from one system to another (for example, to say under which Persian king an event occurred under such and such an archon), as well as to find out the chronological relationship of events with each other (that is, to establish their relative chronology) and with the moment at which the work is written (that is, to find out the absolute chronology). Since there was no single chronological system in Greece, the historian, speaking of some important event, it was desirable to date it according to several systems at once: the year of the reign of the Persian king, the Spartan ephors, the Athenian archon-eponym. For example, here is an excerpt from Thucydides, which contains both relative and absolute dating of the key moment of his "History" - the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 BC):

For 14 years, a thirty-year peace continued to exist, concluded after the conquest of Euboea. In the fifteenth year, the forty-eighth year of the priesthood of Chrysis in Argos, when Enesius was ephor in Sparta, and Pythodorus had 4 months of archonship in Athens, in the sixteenth month after the battle of Potidea, in early spring, a detachment of armed Thebans (...) at the beginning of the night sleep invaded the Boeotian city of Plataea...

All other dates in the text of the "History" of Thucydides are somehow correlated with the date of the beginning of the war (in the above passage, this can be seen in the example of the date of the end of the first Athenian-Spartan war and the Battle of Potidaea; further dates are indicated: "for such and such a year of the war" ). Of the dating systems used by Thucydides, dating by the Athenian archons existed in historical science for many centuries, and this allowed ancient chronologists to easily correlate Thucydides' data with later chronological scales (according to the Olympiads - through it with Roman chronology according to consuls and "from the foundation Rome" - and already through the latter this event is easily translated into the modern system of chronology, which is a direct continuation of the Roman one). Finally, this date lends itself to astronomical verification, since Thucydides refers the solar eclipse to the summer of the same year, which, according to calculations (for the first time already done by Joseph Scaliger), took place on August 3, 431 BC. e.

At the same time, in the Hellenistic East, official datings of the type familiar to us come into use, counted from one date - the “epoch of the era”. The era served as the coming to power of Seleucus Nicator, the commander of Alexander the Great - 312 BC. e. However, the “era of the Seleucids” until late antiquity remained administrative and was not used by historians. Subsequently, it entered Aramaic, then Arabic historiography (under the incorrect name of the "Alexander era") and was used by Syrian Christians until the 19th century. The Parthian Arsacids, in turn, introduced an era from their own accession (248 BC), which also had circulation in the East.

The Romans, who have long kept their "fasts" - lists of consuls, which also served as a brief official chronicle, easily fit into the Greek chronological system, so, for example, in the work of the Greek author of the Roman era Diodorus Siculus (I century BC) we we meet dating at once: according to the Olympiads, according to the Athenian archons and according to the Roman consuls. A contemporary of Diodorus was the Roman scientist Varro, who, on the basis of consular fasts and the years of the reign of the Roman kings reported by the legend, calculated the date of the founding of Rome (according to Varro - 753 BC) and introduced it as an era into scientific circulation. This era "from the founding of Rome" was not officially used, but in historiography survived until the 19th century (since it was about the events of Roman history).

Of great importance for chronology is the so-called " Royal Canon of Ptolemy" - a list of kings preserved in Theon's commentary on Ptolemy's astronomical work. This is a list of the reigns, with exact astronomical dates, of the kings of Babylon (the Babylonian kings proper, as well as the Persian kings and Alexander the Great as Babylonian), the kings of Hellenistic Egypt, and the Roman emperors. It was compiled by Alexandrian astronomers for the needs of their own calculations (in fact, for dating astronomical phenomena) according to their own records and records of the Babylonian priests, and then continued by scribes who entered the names of Byzantine emperors into it (in some manuscripts it was brought to the fall of Constantinople in 1453). It begins with the accession to the throne of the Babylonian king Nabonassar on February 27, 747 BC. e. (the so-called "era of Nabonassar"), during which systematic astronomical observations began to be conducted for the first time, and is based on the movable Egyptian calendar (without leap years), which was then used by astronomers.

In the late Roman period in astronomical and astrological texts, the era from the beginning of the reign of Emperor Diocletian - 284, is widely used, Easter tables are compiled in it (this era is still preserved by the Coptic-Ethiopian church under the name "era of martyrs").

Calculus from the birth of Christ

Interest in questions of chronology reappears in the Renaissance. It is believed that the foundations of modern chronology were laid by Joseph Scaliger (-); he introduced dating according to the Julian period he invented, starting in 4713 BC. e., which made it possible to translate all available dates into one system; he was also the first to begin (more precisely, resumed, because it was used sporadically in antiquity) an astronomical verification of the dates found in historical sources (for example, he was the first to give an astronomical dating of the solar eclipse of 431 BC, mentioned by Thucydides). By cross-checking synchronous information and using astronomical data, Scaliger and the Jesuit scientist Dionysius Petavius ​​(-) calculated the main dates, which in turn made it possible to recalculate all the dates of ancient history according to a single chronology system. Petavius ​​in 1627 proposed a system of "reverse" counting of dates "before the birth of Christ." This system, which received universal recognition only towards the end of the 18th century, greatly facilitated the study of chronology.

The controversy caused by the works of Scaliger stimulated the appearance of a large number of works on astronomical and technical chronology. A generalizing work in this area was the work of the Benedictines d'Antin, Clemence and Durand in the 18th century, The Art of Checking Dates, the latest edition of which included 44 volumes. By the beginning of the 20th century, scientific chronology had reached its pinnacle. Until now, the work of the German astronomer and chronologist Christian-Ludwig Idler "Handbook of Mathematical and Technical Chronology" has not lost its significance. Of modern specialists in chronology, the American scientist of Russian origin E. Bickerman, the author of the work "Chronology of the Ancient World" (London, 1969; Russian translation M., 1975), is especially famous.

Questions of reliability of ancient chronology

The Roman chronology, of which our system of reckoning is a direct continuation, as has been pointed out, is quite reliable. It is characteristic, for example, that the date of Diocletian's coming to power (284) was established by three different scholars with the help of three different ways. Scaliger proceeded from the Coptic-Ethiopian tradition, which equated the year 1582 with the year 1299 of the era of Diocletian [ ] . Petavius ​​- from the fact that Diocletian, according to the "Easter Chronicle", came to power in the consulate of Karin (second) and Numerian, which, according to consular fasts, corresponds to 284 [ ] ; Idler instead took advantage of the "Canon of Ptolemy" and astronomical observation, allowing to derive a synchronous dating: 81 years after the reign of Diocletian = 1112 years after the accession of Nabonassar; this equation again leads to 284 [ ] .

Greek history can be synchronized with Roman history, since many dates are known in both Greek and Roman calculus. Those eastern chronological data are also reliable, in which there is a direct or indirect connection with Roman chronology. Thus, the lists of the Egyptian pharaohs of Manetho include the Persian kings and Ptolemies, the dates of whose reign are precisely known - this allows us to calculate the dates of the reign of previous rulers. Here, however, difficulties arise because of the above-mentioned features of the Eastern royal lists. However, it is believed that until about 800 BC. e. Egyptian kingships are dated exactly [ by whom?] [ ], until the 16th century BC. e. (that is, before the beginning of the New Kingdom) - with a tolerance of several decades. But the duration of the transitional period between the Middle and New Kingdoms is not exactly known - as a result, the connection with Roman chronology is lost. An important role in the chronology of the Middle Kingdom is played by writing on the so-called. the Illahun Papyrus, referring to the end of the 12th Dynasty; it says that Sirius will rise on the 16th of the VIII lunar month of the 7th year during the reign of Senusret III. The date of this event is about 1800 BC. e. , and this allows (since the number of years of the reign of the pharaohs of the dynasty is known) to conclude that the XII dynasty ruled from about 2000 to 1800 BC. e. The duration of the First Intermediate Period between the Old and Middle Kingdoms is also unknown, and therefore the chronology of the Old Kingdom is even more uncertain.

The historians of Western Asia have a somewhat firmer support. First of all, the Assyrian list of eponyms (limmu) has been preserved, between 911 and 648 BC. e., which is verified both by the "Canon of Ptolemy" and the solar eclipse indicated in it. For earlier centuries, establishing the date of the beginning of the reign of King Hammurabi is of key importance. It is based on the observation of the heliacal rising (the first sunrise at dawn) of Venus, described in a cuneiform document, which occurred in the 6th year of the reign of Amisaduga, one of the last kings of the Hammurabi dynasty (then it is known that 1 year of his reign is 146 years). The heliacal rising conditions described in the document are repeated after several decades, so that as a result several variants of the date of the 1st year of the reign of Hammurabi appeared; based on the totality of historical data, the most plausible of them is the date - 1792 BC. e. To this date, respectively, the dates of previous and subsequent reigns are tied.

CHRONOLOGY, -i, f.

1. A branch of historical science that studies the history of chronology.

2. List of events in their time sequence. H. Russian history.

3. what. The sequence in which something appears. in time. X. events.

| adj. chronological, th, th.

S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language

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CHRONOLOGY what is this CHRONOLOGY, meaning of the word CHRONOLOGY, synonyms for CHRONOLOGY, origin (etymology) CHRONOLOGY, CHRONOLOGY stress, word forms in other dictionaries

+ CHRONOLOGY- T.F. Efremova New dictionary Russian language. Explanatory- derivational

+ CHRONOLOGY- Modern dictionary ed. "Great Soviet Encyclopedia"

3. The sequence of occurrences of something in time. X. events. Chronological - pertaining to chronology.

+ CHRONOLOGY- Small academic dictionary Russian language

CHRONOLOGY is

chronology

AND, and.

The sequence of historical events in time, as well as the list of dates of these events.

In geography, drawing maps was considered the most necessary and most important for him, and knowledge of chronology in history. Chekhov, teacher of literature.

The sequence of some phenomena, events in time.

The Gorlitsyns now have their own domestic chronology: this was when Lyuba said “mother” for the first time; this is when she got her first tooth. Mamin-Siberian, Love.

But also greater value have fossils to establish geological chronology. Saveliev, Footprints on the stone.

Auxiliary historical science which, based on the study and comparison of written or archaeological sources, establishes exact dates various historical events.

(From Greek χρόνος - time and λόγος - teaching)

+ CHRONOLOGY- Compiled dictionary foreign words Russian language

CHRONOLOGY is

chronology

CHRONOLOGY

(Greek, from chronos - time, and logos - word). 1) the science of counting time, as well as the time of various historical events. 2) placement of events according to their respective years.