Eclipse day

I already saw a totality in my lifetime so shall spare the roads my car, this day. Instead I'll clog up the blog: with chronology. Thiele's 1965 limmu-list remains canon for 891-648 BC; Illig, "Scott", and Guyénot notwithstanding. Its last generation may even be reinforced in light of that Miyake event now pinpointed 664/3 BC.

It gets uglier before 891 BC, when Chinese records get difficult (thanks loads, Qin); of course we have nothing from Europe, India, or the Americas here. All we have are Egyptian and Mesopotamian records, suffering a lengthy hiccup before which at least the later Hittites are helping us out.

The Catholic University of Argentina is hosting a Damqatum 18 (2022) paper as would shift the New Kingdom - and the Hittites with them - 243 years to the "future", toward us. It would illuminate the "Dark Age"... at the expense of darkening Anatolia further before the Hittites. We would really be hurting for any reference to Thera, semi-decently located early 1500s BC, as isn't pots.

I don't accept this paper any more than I accepted Illig, whom Miyake debunked; or Guyénot, who's barely on any radar. We own too much Aegean and Anatolian dendro' by now not least, this drought published 2023.

Still. We do need to know where the weaknesses in our sources. That the weaknesses allowed for a 2.43 century fuzzball, as late as 2022, should be... worrying. Also we need all the eclipses; UCA / Damqatum 18 make much of 31 May 957 BC, which should have been total over Thebes, if Egypt recorded any of that.