23rd century BC

Millennium:	3rd millennium BC
Centuries:	24th century BC 23rd century BC 22nd century BC
Decades:	2290s BC 2280s BC 2270s BC 2260s BC 2250s BC 2240s BC 2230s BC 2220s BC 2210s BC 2200s BC
Categories:	Births – Deaths Establishments – Disestablishments

The 23rd century BC is a century which lasted from the year 2300 BC to 2201 BC.

Events

Ruins of the pyramid complex of Pepi II, the longest reigning monarch in recorded history

• 2334 BC – 2279 BC: (short chronology) Sargon of Akkad's conquest of Mesopotamia.
• c. 2300 BC – 2184 BC: Disk of Enheduanna, from Ur, (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq) is made. It is now in University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
• c. 2300 BC – 2200 BC: Head of a man from Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik, Iraq) is made. It is now in Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
• c. 2300 BC: Canal Bahr Yusuf (current name) is created when the waterway from the Nile to the natural lake (now Lake Moeris) is widened and deepened to create a canal.
• c. 2288 BC – 2224/2194 BC: Pepy II and his mother, Queen Merye-ankhnes, Sixth dynasty of Egypt, is made. It is now at The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York.
• c. 2285 BC: Enheduanna, high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur, was born.
• c. 2278 BC: Pharaoh Pepi II starts to rule (other date is 2383 BC).
• c. 2254 BC – 2218 BC: Stela of Naram-Sin, probably from Sippar, discovered in Susa (modern Shush, Iran), is made. It is now in Musée du Louvre, Paris.
• c. 2250 BC Earliest evidence of maize cultivation in Central America.
• c. 2240 BC: Akkad, capital of the Akkadian Empire, becomes the largest city in the world, surpassing Memphis, capital of Egypt.
• c. 2220 BC Scord of Brouster farmstead established in Shetland, Scotland
• c. 2220 BC Mount Edgecumbe (Alaska) volcano erupts near present-day Sitka, Alaska.
• c. 2215 BC: A Guti army swept down from the Zagros Mountains and defeated the demoralized Akkadian army. They took Agade, the capital of Akkad, and destroyed it thoroughly.
• c July 2215 BC: Comet Hale-Bopp visits the inner solar system and this was the last time the comet visited the inner solar system until the year 1997.
• c. 2300 BC: Metals started to be used in Northern Europe.

Significant persons

• 

  Sargon of Akkad

• Sargon of Akkad, founder of the Akkadian Empire and the earliest empire builder in recorded history
• 2279 BC—Death of Sargon I