  For many decades scholars converse how to correctly include the Old
Babylonian Empire into the absolute timeline of history. A cuneiform text from
the series Enuma Anu Enlil (EAE #20) reports on the destruction of Babylon
after a lunar and solar eclipse. Eclipses provide a great tool for examining
historic events, and this account will be our basis for the investigation of
eclipse pairs to be fitted into the various chronologies proposed. We consider
three interpretations of that text: literal understanding, the inverted
sequence of the two eclipse types, and a relocation of the setting to Akkad.
All variants show imperfections. The least complications emerge when the
account draws upon the third option, i.e. if it is allotted to 2161 BCE, as the
year would mark the end of the Gutian rule in Akkad. But in any case the
account seems to support rather the Long Chronology than any other. When
dealing with eclipses such far back in time, we also allow for the shift of the
visibility zone in regard to the irregular deceleration of Earth's rotation.
