Judaism
Dating Ancient Near Eastern History III.1
Abstract
If an excavator believes from the scriptures that an ancient mound must contain buildings from Solomon’s reign, it is almost certain that sooner or later he will find structures that fit the bill. The spurious air of biblical authority given to such a discovery can then make the identification stick, despite any evidence to the contrary. In the meantime a small tourist industry may even have grown up around this “confirmation” of the Bible.Peter James
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, August 28, 2001
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Puzzles of Egyptian Chronology
A twenty second dynasty mummy found intruding into a cache of mummies sealed in the twenty first dynasty suggests an overlap of dynasties. The tombs of twenty first dynasty Psusennes II and twenty second dynasty Osorkon II are built next to each other and so close that a wall of the tomb of Osorkon had to be chiselled away to make room for the tomb of Psusennes. Yet Psusennes was supposed to have lived 100 years before! The excuse is that Osorkon used an empty tomb built before Psusennes built his, but Psusennes could have used the empty tomb if it already stood in the way of the tomb that he eventually built. Further investigation shows intimate family links between the two lists supporting the idea that they ruled in parallel.
The strongest evidence, ignored by those desperate to hang on to conventional chronology, is provided by the absence of burials of the Apis Bull in the twenty first and twenty second dynasties. The average age of the bulls was 18 years and there should therefore have been about 12 in the two dynasties. None, or possibly only one, are known. If no bulls were buried but worship of the Apis Bull continued, as it must have, then these two dynasties must have overlapped with another.
Two objects clearly of the reign of Soshenq I, founder of the twenty second dynasty, have been found in Palestine. As objects difficult for biblicists always are, they were unstratified. One of these had been inscribed by a Phoenician king for whom it was evidently a gift from the king of Egypt. It seems to have been a custom because another gift, a bust of Soshenq’s son, Osorkon I, was also found inscribed by another Phoenician king. These two important finds not only link two Egyptian kings with two contemporary Phoenician kings, but allow the Canaanite script to be compared with scripts elsewhere like that on the stele of Mesha of Moab.
Moreover, the Phoenican kings can be identified as part of a series ending in a king dateable from Assyrian tribute tablets as 740 BC. The two previous kings were the ones contemporaneous with Soshenq I and Osorkon I. These two kings can therefore be firmly dated at about 800 BC not 150 years earlier. The proto-Canaanite script is also dated to the same time not the eleventh century as the biblicists want. It therefore matches the Greek alphabet of the eighth century.
A jar found in Assur belonging to the wife of Sennacherib (701-681 BC) is of a similar style to a bowl found in a tomb in Tanis and attributed to Psusennes, 300 years before. The Saite Oracle Papyrus, dated to 651 BC in the reign of Psamtik is remarkably similar to the Rameside style of 400 years before. Instances of supposed eleventh or tenth century objects turning up with eighth century ones are not rare, but they are usually judged in favour of the high date to leave space for the Israelites. It is time they were properly dated to the eighth century and the Egyptian chronology corrected to match. Then the early “history” of the Israelites can be seen as myths.
Peter James has the twentieth dynasty starting in 950 BC not 1185 BC and ending about the time of Soshenq I in 810 BC instead of 1070 BC. The twenty first dynasty was part of the twenty second and operated in parallel. The effect is that at least 260 spurious years (1070 to 810 BC) can be taken out of the Egyptian chronology, and this brings into alignment many confusing datings in various parts of the Near East, and even further afield. Through misdating, some kings have appeared twice, like Osorkon IV, who is really Osorkon III, and further adjustments on these lines could bring down the dates even more.
In the century of the twenty first dynasty, P John Crowe explains:
- the country was divided
- no king was sole ruler of Egypt
- temple priests acted as local governors, ruled their local areas and maintained the temples
- an anonymous “Great King of the North” is mentioned on monuments
- a mysterious “renaissance era” of double dating starts to appear
- no national armies, foreign campaigns or attempts at reunification are mentioned.
The obvious interpretation is that Egypt was a vassal of the Great King of the north.
Did Rameses III rule during the Persian period? Immanuel Velikovsky thought Rameses III, who was never in the twentieth dynasty of Manetho, was the pseudonym of the fourth century pharaoh, Nectanebo, a full 800 year adjustment. Velikovsky is derided as a crank but derision does not answer questions. Consider his arguments.
F L Griffiths and E Naville, both reputable archaeologists, excavating in the 1880s at Tell-el-Yahudiyeh, near Cairo, found faience tiles from the palace of Rameses III some of which seemed to have Greek letters on the back of them, taken to be potters’ marks. Conventionally Rameses died in about 1150 BC, 400 years before Homer. In the necropolis they found tombs, some undisturbed, with painted coffins and rough hieroglyphs typical of the Greek and Roman times. In the intact graves of two children they found scarabs of Rameses III and his father Setnakht. Griffiths said the scarabs were twelfth century, while Naville said the tombs had to be fourth century and the scarabs were heirlooms. Neither thought it possible that the mysterious Rameses was himself fourth century.
The pylon of Rameses III at Medinet Habu—a pristine temple for its putative age—is in a remarkably similar style to Ptolemaic pylons at Edfu and Kom Ombo, 800 years later—but looks newer! Egyptologists tell us that the Nectanebos, who fought off Persians, first without, then later with Greek support, described by Diodorus of Sicily, the Greek historian, was Nekhthorheb, but this king’s monuments make no such claims. He was an unusually modest Pharaoh, unless the reliefs of Rameses III at Medinet Habu which show battle scenes of Egyptians and “Prst” defeating Libyans, and of Egyptians and apparently Greek allies fighting off the “Prst.” Finally the Egyptians defeat both Greeks and Persians in alliance.
Persians are “Prstt” in the trilingual Ptolemaic Canopus decree. Other Egyptian texts identify Persia as “Prs”. Persian soldiers with headgear like “Prst” at Medinet Habu appear on the monuments at Persepolis. The Persians also uniquely provided for camp followers and wagons of women and children are shown on the battle murals. Conventionally these are the families of the migrant “Sea Peoples.” later the Philistines. The improbability of wagon loads of women, children, grannies and family belongings being carried a thousand miles round the coast from Ionia over mountains in Souther Turkey and through the countries of hostile people while the chaps sail their ships offshore is never observed upon.
Breasted tells us that Rameses III said of his enemy, “the Pereset are hung up… in their towns.…” What can this damaged inscription mean? The Persians used to hang people—it was crucifixion. If however the expression just means trapped or delayed in their towns, then what were “their towns?” These are supposed to have been unsettled people, but they had evidently settled somewhere north of Egypt already. Egyptologists say the “Prst” were not Persians but Philistines, and they are convinced of this from… the bible! Yet the bible mentions none of this.
In 1979, at Tell el Daba in the Eastern Delta, M Bitak reported Rameses III remains immediately below the Ptolemaic strata, and in 1980, the linen wrapping of a mummy firmly dated to the reign of Setnakht, the Pharaoh who preceded Rameses III was C-14 dated to 345 BC +/- 75 years, according to a Canadian journal. E A Wallis Budge says Nekhtaneb was a Horus name of Rameses III. The plausible explanation is that Nebo was a Babylonian God acceptable to the Persians and his name was given to Nectanebos (Nebo Conquers) as their puppet, but he gained military prowess with Persian help fighting off Libyans then turned on the Persians themselves first with the mercenary Greeks as allies then fighting both Greeks and Persians. Rameses had become a title of honour just as Caesar and Ptolemy did. Nectanebo apparently took the title for himself to describe his military successes.
It is not for us to uphold Velikovsky, far fetched as he seems, against the scholarship of the Egyptologists, but they show no inclination to be bothered about all these puzzles, unlikely coincidences and anachronisms. They ought to be. These questions should be properly addressed and not ignored. Discussion.
A Chronological Revolution?
Chris Bennett, in a staunch defence of conventional TIP chronology complains of the “swingeing rhetorical attacks on the hidebound Egyptological establishment who are held to be incapable of seeing the obvious wisdom of the new theories because of their purblind and musty academic vision.” The British Museum, confirming this false mockery, banned a revisionist book from the BM Bookstore. Yet, though Bennett’s review of Egyptian evidence favours conventional chronology, he admits:
It is possible that the standard chronology is wrong, even though no fatal logical contradictions have as yet been found… Synchronisms on which the current chronology rests are few in number and are not without difficulties of interpretation. The dated Sothic sighting which was once held to fix New Kingdom chronology is now widely discounted as not being a Sothic sighting at all. The lunar observations which date the reigns of Ramses II and Thutmosis III admit multiple solutions, repeated in a 25-year cycle. Assur-uballit of Assyria does have a different father in the Amarna letters (Assur-nadin-ahhe II) from that given to Assur-uballit I in the kinglists (Eriba-Adad I). The Palestinian campaign of Shoshenq I does not match well with the Judean campaign of Shishak described in the Book of Kings.Chris Bennett PhD, FAS, FSO
And these concessions are supported by further admissions that around half a century has recently been trimmed from older chronologies. This though is “fine tuning!”.
Revision of Egyptian chronology puts under particular attack Kenneth Kitchen’s The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, “which is widely regarded as one of the major intellectual achievements of modern Egyptology”. The new chronology of the Third Intermediate Period raised problems of identification. Kitchen in his genealogies assigned some important royal figures, like Shoshenk I in the Neseramun genealogy, Osorkon, and High Priests of Amun, entirely on the conventional chronology. Such assignments have to be re-thought to see whether they can fit the new paradigm.
Doubtless Kitchen has devoted a great deal of sweat to his endeavour, but, to judge by his intemperate language, his motivation has been to defend the conventional chronology and not to examine the evidence with any sort of critical eye or even objectivity. Kitchen’s irate response to the proposals for revision and his foolish attempts at irony in attacking his detracters make him sound like a religious nut-case who thinks he is defending God, not Egyptian dates. Kitchen, in the Times Literary Supplement, condemned the authors of Centuries of Darkness as “sons of Velikovsky”, intended as a shocking insult to any scientist, and wished them to “the same oblivion”. Who can believe such a man, despite his scholarship, if that is what it is? Graeme Barker of Leicester University, more honestly says:
Most regional specialists acknowledge that their local chronology is pretty shaky but assume that Egyptian chronology must be cast in stone, and it is salutary to find that things are not quite what they seem there either.
G W van Oosterhout in Bibliotheca Orientalis also admits “everyone with some knowledge of chronology knows that there are difficulties, but the accumulation of problems is truly disquieting… Evidently something is wrong with Egyptian chronology.” Even James Mellaart, who has been critical, is happy to admit that attention must be paid to the deficiencies of dating, and better dating methods found. Lord Colin Renfrew also is willing to recognize the “shaky nature” of our present dating, and thinks a chronological revolution could be coming—one is inclined to think, not while so many religious bigots are in powerful places, though even some of them are ready to accept that the accepted chronology is shaky.
James K Hoffmeier, Professor of Archaeology and Old Testament at Wheaton College, Illinois, writes in BAR that the authors (of Centuries of Darkness) “have drawn attention to serious problems that cannot be ignored… The issues underscored should prompt the reassessment of all areas of Near Eastern chronology.” W H C Frend, Emeritus Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Glasgow University, says in the Church Times, “much may be said for bringing the end of the Mycenaean and Hittite eras some two centuries later than the traditional dating of 1150 BC.” Hyam Maccoby, Lecturer in Jewish History, Leo Baeck College, recognizes the problem of the chronological thumb suckers when he writes in Midstream that “it is inevitable that this book will arouse strong opposition from those wedded to the conventional chronology.” and he sounds approving when he adds that there is “an excellent case for scrapping the old chronology and substituting a new one”.
Aidan Dodson, himself an Egyptologist, writing in Palestine Exploration Quarterly speaks most sensibly when he says that scholars must “reconsider their chronologies from first principles, since it is only from this basis that any sound chronology can ever be maintained”.
