For the 1st millennium "The Great Eclipse of Bur Sagale" is alleged to provide such a dating basis. So we will now turn our attention to this very important basis of astronomical dating. This reference is found in the Assyrian eponym list. This is a list of the officials after whom the Assyrian years are named. They are listed consecutively so if we can date one year, we should be able to date them all if the list is complete. In this case Bur Sagale is the official who gave his name to one of the years of the reign of the Assyrian king Assur Dan. The citation in question simply says, "Bur-Sagale of Guzana, revolt in the city of Assur. In the month Simanu an eclipse of the sun took place." This eponym list overlaps the Canon of Ptolemy by about 100 years. Ptolemy's canon or king list begins with Nabonassar, a king of Babylon, whose reign began about 747 B.C. according to Ptolemy. Since we can identify some of the Assyrian kings in the last part of the eponym list as contemporaries of some of the Babylonian kings in the earliest part of Ptolemey's Canon, we have an approximate starting point for the Assyrian eponym list which leads us to look for the year of Bur—Sagale somewhere in the 8th century B.C. The eclipse of Bur—Sagale has been commonly identified with an eclipse which occurred on June 15, 763 B.C. If this is correct, we can accurately date the kings of Assyria who are named in this portion of the king list to the period from 891 to 648 B.C.
Zonsverduistering: Amos 8:9