1178 BC, April 16—A solar eclipse occurs. This may have marked the return of Odysseus, legendary King of Ithaca, to his kingdom after the Trojan War. He discovers a number of suitors competing to marry his wife Penelope, whom they believe to be a widow, in order to succeed him on the throne. He organizes their slaying and re-establishes himself on the throne. The date is surmised from a passage in Homer's Odyssey, which reads, "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world." This happens in the context of a new moon, a necessary precondition for a full solar eclipse, and at noon, the computed time of the solar eclipse of April 16, 1178 BC.[1][2] In 2008, to investigate, Dr Marcelo O. Magnasco, an astronomer at Rockefeller University, and Constantino Baikouzis, of the Observatorio Astrónomico de La Plata in Argentina, looked for more clues. Within the text, they interpreted three definitive astronomical events: there was a new moon on the day of the slaughter (as required for a solar eclipse); Venus was visible and high in the sky six days before; and the constellations Pleiades and Boötes were both visible at sunset 29 days before. Since these events recur at different intervals, this particular sequence only occurs once in 2000 years. The researchers found only one occurrence of this sequence between 1250 and 1115 BC, the 135-year spread around the putative date for the fall of Troy. It happened to coincide with the eclipse of April 16, 1178 BC.[3]
1180–1178 BC—Collapse of the Hittite Empire. Their capital, Hattusa, falls around or slightly after 1180 BC.
