Abstract
The chronologies of Mesopotamia and Egypt are often cited as a basis for substantiating a long history and prehistory for the development of civilization in the Near East. This article provides a state-of-the-art appraisal of ancient Near Eastern chronologies in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It focuses on recent developments in both fields by assessing the current astronomical and historical bases for these chronologies and addressing the relative nature of chronology before the second millennium B.C. It documents the trend over the past sixty years to shorten the historical chronology of the Near East. This causes a widening gap between historical dates and the most recent data from ¹⁴C samples. This data has major implications for lengthening certain historical and prehistoric periods. The impasse between the historical methods of dating and ¹⁴C dating will then be evaluated.