1855 20160701171654.0 ASTROimport-12 Grevesse, N. 1999 The solar abundance of iron and the photospheric model Numerous papers on the solar photospheric abundance of iron have recently been published leading to a longstanding debate concerning rather different results obtained from the analyses of Fe i lines and, to a lesser extent, of Fe ii lines. Based on a set of 65 solar Fe i lines, with accurate transition probabilities as well as new accurate damping constants, we construct a new empirical photospheric model. We succeed to reconcile abundance results obtained from low and high excitation Fe i lines as well as from Fe ii lines and derive a solar photospheric abundance of iron, A_Fe = 7.50 +/- 0.05, which perfectly agrees with the meteoritic value. A detailed version of Table~2 is available in electronic form at the CDS via anonymous ftp to cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (130.79.128.5) or at the ORB via anonymous ftp to ftpserver.oma.be/pub/astro/jacques. Sauval, A. J. Astronomy and Astrophysics 347 1999 348-354 http://esoads.eso.org/abs/1999A%26A...347..348G published in REFERD