The Story of EclipsesChambers, George F. (George Frederick)
History
The Story of Eclipses
Chambers, George F. (George Frederick)
Eclipses
Dr. Pusey’s _Commentary_ from which the above quotation is made[25]
bears the date 1873, but he appears not to have been acquainted with the
important discovery announced no less than six years previously by the
distinguished Oriental scholar, Sir H. C. Rawlinson. The discovery to
which I allude is a contemporary record on an Assyrian tablet of a solar
eclipse which was seen at Nineveh about 24 years after the reputed date
of Amos’s prophecy. This tablet had been described by Dr. Hinckes in the
British Museum _Report_ for 1854 but its chronological importance had
not then been realised. Sir H. Rawlinson[26] speaks of the tablet as a
record of or register of the annual archons at Nineveh. He says:—“In the
eighteenth year before the accession of Tiglath-Pileser there is a
notice to the following effect—‘In the month Sivan an eclipse of the Sun
took place’ and to mark the great importance of the event a line is
drawn across the tablet although no interruption takes place in the
official order of the Eponymes. Here then we have notice of a solar
eclipse which was visible at Nineveh which occurred within 90 days of
the (vernal) equinox (taking that as the normal commencement of the
year) and which we may presume to have been total from the prominence
given to the record, and these are conditions which during a century
before and after the era of Nabonassar are alone fulfilled by the
eclipse which took place on June 15, 763.”
This record was submitted to Sir G. B. Airy and Mr. J. R. Hind, and the
circumstances of the eclipse were computed by the latter, by the aid of
Hansen’s Lunar Tables and Le Verrier’s Solar Tables. The result, when
plotted on a map, showed that the shadow line just missed the site of
Nineveh, but that a very slight and unimportant deviation from the
result of the Tables would bring the shadow over the city of Nineveh
where the eclipse was observed, and over Samaria where it was predicted.
The identification of this eclipse, both as regards its time and place,
has also proved a matter of importance in the revision of Scripture
chronology, by lowering, to the extent of 25 years, the reigns of the
kings of the Jewish monarchy. The need for this revision is further
confirmed, if we assume that the celebrated incident in the life of King
Hezekiah, described as the retrogradation of the Sun’s shadow on the
dial of Ahaz, is to be interpreted as connected with a partial eclipse
of the Sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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