Chronology of the ancient Near East cuneiform tablets were found at Amarna in Egypt, the city of the pharaoh Akhenaten. They were written mostly in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time. Several named rulers in the region including the kings of Assyria and Babylon. Assuming that the correct kings have been identified, it locks the chronology of the ancient Near East to that of Egypt, at least from the middle of the 2nd millennium. Some data sources are available to us from the classical period: Berossus was a Babylonian astronomer living during the Hellenistic period. He wrote a history of Babylon which has not survived
Chronology of the ancient Near East tablets or inscriptions in question still have value, though one does have to keep the slant in mind. Keeping historical lists of rulers was traditional in the ancient Near East. Covers rulers of Mesopotamia from a time "before the flood" up to the fall of the Isin Dynasty. For many early city-states it is the only source of chronological data. A major problem is that many early rulers are listed with fantastically long reigns. There has been some speculation that this stems from an error transcribing from the base 60 arithmetic of the Sumerians to the decimal-based system of the