Editing Dating creation (section)

== Sumerian and Babylonian ==
One of the [[First Babylonian Empire|Old Babylonian]] versions of the ancient [[Sumerian King List]] ([[Weld-Blundell Prism|WB]] 444) lists various mythical [[antediluvian]] kings and gives them reigns of several tens of thousands of years. The first Sumerian king [[Alulim]], at [[Eridu]], is described as reigning for 28,800 years, followed by several later kings of similar periods. In total these antediluvian kings ruled for 241,200 years from the time when "the kingship was lowered from heaven" to the time when "the flood" swept over the land.<ref>''The Sumerian King List'', Thorkild Jacobsen, 1939, pp. 71, 77).</ref> However, most modern scholars do not believe the ancient Sumerians or Babylonians believed in a chronology of their own this old. Instead they believed that these figures were either fabrications, or were based on not literal solar years (365.2425 days) but instead [[lunar month]]s (29.53059 days).<ref>"Science Deified & Science Defied: The Historical Significance of Science in Western Culture, Part 1640", p. 45, by Richard Olson, publisher = University of California Press</ref>

[[Cicero]], reacting to the chronologies of such authors as [[Berossos]] (who composed a Greek-language history of Babylonia, known as the ''Babyloniaca'', during the 3rd century BC), strongly criticised the claim that the Babylonians had kings going back hundreds of thousands of years:

{{quote|...Let us scorn the Babylonians...the men whose records, as they themselves assert, cover a period of four hundred and seventy thousand years.<ref>''On Divination'', i. 19.</ref>}}

[[Diodorus Siculus]] also wrote something similar about how he believed the Babylonians fabricated their chronology:

{{quote|...A man can scarcely believe them (Babylonians) for they reckon that, down to Alexander's crossing over into Asia, it has been four hundred and seventy-three thousand years, since they began in early times to make their observations of the stars.<ref>Bibliotheca Historica, ii. 31. 9</ref>}}

Despite these criticisms, some ancient Greeks, including most notably [[Alexander Polyhistor]] and [[Proclus]], believed the Babylonian kings were hundreds of thousands of years old, and that the Babylonians dated their creation 400,000–200,000 years before their own time.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.masseiana.org/cory_fragments.htm#43 |title=Cory'S Ancient Fragments |publisher=Masseiana.org |access-date=2012-11-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110119021606/http://www.masseiana.org/cory_fragments.htm#43 |archive-date=2011-01-19 |url-status=usurped }}</ref><ref>Proclus,''In Timaeum'', i.</ref>