27. Astronomy shards

The abundance of astronomical information on the tablets should have made the dating of Ammizaduga straightforward and thus provide a key chronological marker - a rock-solid early absolute date.

Nevertheless, the Venus astronomy proved thorny. Historians have labored over the data for more than a century without arriving at a definitive date. The observations do not seem to make sense; they do not at all correspond to the current orbit of Venus. Consequently, contemporary analysis proceeds on the basis that the record is corrupted.