Old Assyrian Empire which included the power to detain people and confiscate property. At the beginning of the reign of an Assyrian king, the limmu, an appointed royal official, would preside over the New Year festival at the capital city. The eponym dating system was a calendar system for Assyria, for a period of over one thousand years. Every year was associated with the name, an eponym, of the limmu, the individual holding office. The dating system is thought to have originated in the ancient city of Assur, and remained the official dating system in Assyria until the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The empire on which the sun never sets as "Christopher North" in "Blackwood's Magazine" in 1829, is sometimes credited as originating the usage. However, George Macartney wrote in 1773, in the wake of the territorial expansion that followed Britain's victory in the Seven Years' War, of "this vast empire on which the sun never sets, and whose bounds nature has not yet ascertained." In a speech on 31 July 1827, Rev. R. P. Buddicom said, "It had been said that the sun never set on the British flag; it was certainly an old saying, about the time of Richard the Second, and was not so applicable then as