525 BCE Catalog Entries

The source for the 525 BCE entry that appears in several later earthquake catalogs is probably Sieberg (1932b), who described earthquake damage in Sidon, a tsunami, and shaking felt in the Cyclades and Euboea. Although Sieberg did not cite his sources, the description closely matches the account preserved by Strabo quoting Posidonius, possibly supplemented by Seneca the Younger or another classical author. Later catalogers, including Ben-Menahem (1979), Ben-Menahem (1991), Antonopoulos (1979), Plassard and Kojoj (1981), and Sbeinati et al. (2005), largely repeat Sieberg’s description for an event dated to 525 BCE. Sbeinati et al. (2005) even list the same earthquake twice, once at 199 BCE and again at 525 BCE, which appears to be an error. How Sieberg derived the 525 BCE date remains unclear. Meanwhile, Migowski et al. (2004) assigned a seismite at En Gedi to the 525 BCE date, and Kagan et al. (2011) attributed seismites at En Feshka to both 199 BCE and 525 BCE events. Although the age ranges they obtained may be approximately correct for the deposits themselves, the large distance between Sidon and the Dead Sea paleoseismic sites makes these historical earthquake correlations unlikely. Notably, neither Ambraseys (2009) nor Guidoboni et al. (1994) include an entry for an earthquake dated to 525 BCE.