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Dating convention for Urkesh/Tell Mozan

Marco De Pietri – January 2024
Giorgio Buccellati – July 2025

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Introduction

A dating convention is used that provides a full date with a set number of codes, in three categories, following each other in a fixed sequence:

  1. season – either one capital letter, with or without hyphen, or two capital letters
  2. month – either one number or one lower case letter
  3. day – two numbers.

The full list follows for each of the three categories.

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1. Season code

Note. The lower case letters (a, b,c, etc.) refer to study seasons.

season
code
calendar
year
season # old
season #
-A 1984 1
-B 1985 2
-C 1986 3
-D 1987 4
-E 1988 5
-F 1989 5a
A 1990 6
B 1991 6a 60
C 1992 7
D 1993 8
E 1994 8a 61
F 1995 8b 62
G 1996 9
H 1997 10
I 1998 11
J 1999 12
K 2000 13
L 2001 14
M 2002 15
N 2003 16
O 2004 17
P 2005 18
Q 2006 19
R 2007 20
S 2008 21
T 2009 22
U 2010 23
V 2011 23a 63
W 2012 23b 64
X 2013 23c 65
Y 2014 23d 66
Z 2015 23e 67
ZA 2016 23f 68
ZB 2017 23g 69
ZB 2018 23h 70
ZB 2019 23i 71
ZE 2020 23j 72
ZF 2021 23k 73
ZG 2022 23l 74
ZH 2023 23m 75
ZI 2024 23n 76
ZJ 2025 23o 77

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2. Month code

code name
1 January
2 February
3 March
4 April
5 May
6 June
7 July
8 August
9 September
x October
y November
z December

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3. Day code

The day code is the same as the day number, but the first nine numbers are preceded by zero, hence day 1 is written as 01.

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Examples

code date
-A601 June 1, 1984
Gx31 October 31, 1996
ZG115 January 15, 2022
ZHz01 December 1, 2024

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Printable version

- <a href="https://urkesh.org/MZ/A/MZ/PDF/seasons_brief_OLD.pdf" target="_blank">seasons'&nbsp;short&nbsp;list&nbsp;(PDF)&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;OLD</a>
- <a href="https://urkesh.org/MZ/A/MZ/PDF/seasons_brief_INTERMEDIATE.pdf" target="_blank">seasons'&nbsp;short&nbsp;list&nbsp;(PDF)&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;INTERMEDIATE</a>
- <a href="https://urkesh.org/MZ/A/MZ/PDF/seasons_brief_LAST.pdf" target="_blank">seasons'&nbsp;short&nbsp;list&nbsp;(PDF)&nbsp;&#8211;&nbsp;LAST</a>

A PDF with the dating system for each season (of excavation or study) can be downloaded at the following link.

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