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Thursday, January 10, 2019

Revolutionising Egypt’s 19th Dynasty


Image result for egypt 19th dynasty


by

Damien F. Mackey



“Traces of a connection between the rulers at the end of the 18th Dynasty and Horemheb have not been found and ... Velikovsky gives Horemheb a different place in history”.

Henk Spaan 



Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had, partly based on an inscription pairing Tirhakah together with Horemheb, shifted the enigmatic Horemheb downwards from his conventional c. 1300 BC location to the C8th-C7th’s BC era of Tirkahah and the neo-Assyrian potentate, Sennacherib. We know from the Scriptures that at least Tirkahah and Sennacherib were contemporaries. E.g. Isaiah 37:9: “Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Ethiopia [Cush], was marching out to fight against him”.

I had briefly touched upon this historical re-location of Horemheb in my university thesis:


A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah

and its Background




at that stage conceding that “these two kings were far closer in time … than the “more than six centuries” gap separating them in the conventional history”.

My view at that stage was that the separation between the earlier Horemheb, and Tirhakah, was “approximately a century”.

This is what I then wrote (Volume One, pp. 252-253):


Ethiopians


The appearance of Horemheb in an inscription with Tirhakah ruler of Ethiopia, a contemporary of king Hezekiah and Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:9), led Velikovsky to conclude that Horemheb had belonged to an era much later than the late C14th BC accredited to him by the conventional chronology, and that he was in actual fact a contemporary of this Tirhakah of the 25th (Ethiopian) [dynasty] in the C7th BC. Thus he wrote in an unpublished work:


… In this reconstruction Haremhab and Tirhaka, the Ethiopian, are contemporaries; in the conventional version of history they are separated by more than six centuries, Haremhab being dated to the late fourteenth and Tirhaka to the early seventh. A certain scene, carved on one of the walls of a small Ethiopian temple at Karnak, shows them together. The scene proves not only the contemporaneity of Haremhab and Tirhaka, but also permits to establish a short period in their relations from which it dates. ….


Given, though, that Egyptian monuments sometimes represented two pharaohs of completely different eras, together, e.g. “… Egyptian artwork shows [the 12th dynasty’s]

Sesostris I seated side by side with [the 18th dynasty’s] Amenhotep I …” [a ref. to C. McDowell, ‘The Egyptian Prince Moses’, p. 5, fig. 1.] … I cannot agree with Velikovsky that the particular carving to which he referred necessarily “proves the contemporaneity of Haremhab and Tirhaka”.

Though I do believe that these two kings were far closer in time (approximately a century

apart) than the “more than six centuries” gap separating them in the conventional history,

and that there was some sort of relationship between them. ....

[End of quotes]


Henk Spaan also has something to say on the subject in “Velikovsky and ancient history”, at:



….

Part 4. The Assyrian conquest



In Ages in Chaos Velikovsky shifted the end of the 18th Dynasty from about 1300 to 850 BC. Akhnaton was a contemporary of King Jehoshaphat of Jerusalem and of Ahab of Samaria. After the end of the reign of Akhnaton the 18th Dynasty fairly soon came to an end. Egypt was weakened for some time.

According to the prevailing view of history, it was Horemheb who succeeded Ay at the end of the 18th Dynasty. Traces of a connection between the rulers at the end of the 18th Dynasty and Horemheb have not been found and we will see that Velikovsky gives Horemheb a different place in history. The section on the Assyrian conquest was not published, but can be found in the Internet archive of Velikovsky's work.

....


Assyria conquers Egypt


The power of Assyria was growing and the Assyrian annals report the payment of a tribute by the king of Egypt. Some time later they reported that power in Egypt had been seized by the king of Ethiopia who lived far away. It is the beginning of the Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt which ruled for fifty years and which, as we shall see, was several times interrupted by Assyrian campaigns.
The successor of Sargon was Sennacherib ...


Mackey’s comment” According to my revision, Sargon was Sennacherib.


... who continued the conquests of his predecessor. He captured the coastal areas of Palestine and fought a battle with an Egyptian / Ethiopian army at Eltekeh. He also besieged Jerusalem, but was finally satisfied with payment of a huge penalty. At this point the question arises whether Sennacherib conquered Egypt too. Jewish historians report a conquest of Egypt and Herodotus mentions that Sennacherib invaded Egypt with a large army during the reign of Sethos. Modern historians say that Herodotus must be mistaken because Sethos (Seti) was one of the most important kings of the 19th dynasty, who lived around 1280 BC.

....

There is an Egyptian king who is not easy to place in history. It is not clear who his parents were and how he became king. His name was Horemheb and he is usually placed in the transition period between the 18th and 19th Dynasties. On his tomb he bears all the signs that normally only the kings of Egypt bore and he is named something like the head of state and commander of the army, but at the same time we read that he was chosen by the king and a delegate of the king. He is also depicted in a reverential attitude toward a greater King, whose image was removed in a later period. Who was the person who appointed Horemheb as king or head of state? It seems that this greater king is not Egyptian (there is an interpreter represented at the meeting), and the text states that he was the boss of Syria and that his conquests were accompanied by putting complete towns to fire and displacing entire populations from one place to another. These are characteristics of Assyrian domination and it seems that the Assyrian king Sennacherib appointed Horemheb as commander in chief. Horemheb was later crowned king on the day he married Mutnodjme, someone who, according to the text on a statue, had royal status herself. ....





The intriguing Nahr al-Kalb inscription depicts Esarhaddon together with Ramses II.

If this inscription is meant to indicate contemporaneity between Esarhaddon and Ramses II, then I would have to reconsider Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s extraordinary view that

pharaoh Ramses II was a contemporary of (my Esarhaddon =) Nebuchednezzar II.




We read about the Phoenician located inscription at, for instance:


 

Esarhaddon's Nahr al-Kalb Inscription



Esarhaddon's Nahr al-Kalb Inscription: inscription, just north of Beirut in modern Lebanon, documenting the Assyrian conquest of Egypt in 671 BCE.

….

In the first quarter of the seventh century BCE, king Esarhaddon (r.680-669) tightened the Assyrian grip on the cities of Phoenicia. In the winter of 677/676, he was able to subdue the powerful coastal city of Sidon and in the next year, he started to demand tribute from the other Phoenician cities.

Having in this way secured his rear, and no doubt with the support of a Phoenician fleet, the Assyrian king decided to attack Egypt (674/673).

After a first setback, he was more successful in 671 and forced the Egyptian king Taharqo to abandon Egypt and retreat to his homeland, Nubia. However, Esarhaddon was forced to suppress insurrections in the north. Among the rebels were Ashkelon and Tyre, which Esarhaddon forced into submission. After Essarhaddon's death in 669, his successor Aššurbanipal would in 667/666 gain full control of Egypt, even sacking Thebes.


http://www.livius.org/site/assets/files/6660/nahr_al-kalb_16-17_1.189x0-is-pid39374.jpgEsarhaddon (R) facing Ramesses (L)


To make sure that the Phoenician cities better understood that Esarhaddon was and would always be victorious, the king left an inscription at the mouth of the Nahr al-Kalb, opposite one of the reliefs that the Egyptian king Ramesses II had once made to commemorate his Syrian campaigns. Everyone traveling along the coast from Byblos to Beirut would see Esarhaddon's relief and understand that Esarhaddon was a greater conqueror than the heroes of the past.


The inscription


Exposed to the elements, Esarhaddon's relief is now badly damaged, but the general meaning of the text is sufficiently clear, and we're certain that the text ended with a reference to the insurrection of Askhelon and Tyre. 


The text, known as ANET 289, was translated by Daniel David Luckenbill.


[End of quote]



The dates for Esarhaddon given above, conventional dates, I would be inclined to reject based upon my view, now, that Esarhaddon was Nebuchednezzar II: See e.g. my articles:


Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar




and





Earlier, we found that an Egyptian pharaoh (Horemheb), supposedly belonging to the C14th BC, had been depicted with an Ethiopian pharaoh (Tirhakah) belonging approximately half a millennium later.

Now we find that an Egyptian pharaoh who is thought to have arrived on the scene somewhat less than a century after Horemheb, the long-reigning Ramses II ‘the Great’, is depicted in an inscription (though very much the worse for wear, or mutilation) alongside Esarhaddon, who is my Nebuchednezzar II.

If this inscription is meant to indicate contemporaneity between Esarhaddon and Ramses II, then I would have to reconsider Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s extraordinary view that pharaoh Ramses II was a contemporary of (my Esarhaddon =) Nebuchednezzar II.


Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky appears to me to have been a scholar of immense intuition.

He managed to arrive at some extraordinary conclusions that absolutely revolutionise the study of ancient history, though his methodology could sometimes be questionable.

Revisionists have rightly dismissed his separation of the 19th Egyptian dynasty from the 18th, based on the archaeological and genealogical data. Velikovsky thought that his new approach had enabled for him to identify Ramses II’s Hittite ally, Hattusilis, with Nebuchednezzar II. But this was a wrong archaeology, a wrong geography and a wrong ethnicity.

The secret may be, instead, to collapse the late neo-Assyrian period into the early neo-Babylonan period, thereby making Esarhaddon (as I have) Nebuchednezzar II. Then, by this means, and not by wreaking havoc with established Egyptian archaeology, to make Ramses II and Nebuchednezzar II (= Esarhaddon) contemporaries based upon, e.g., the Nahr al-Kalb inscription.


Velikovsky had interpreted the Nahr al-Kalb (or Dog River) inscription most unconventionally, with his Ramses II coming after Esarhaddon. Emmet Sweeney writes of it in his book, EMPIRE OF THEBES (or Ages In Chaos Revisited, p. 20): “In Ramses II and his Time, Velikovsky mentions the Dog River inscriptions but, contrary to accepted ideas, makes Ramses II’s carving come after that of Esarhaddon. This is because he accepted the traditional date of Esarhaddon (early 7th century) whilst placing Ramses II in the early 6th century”.


Now, Esarhaddon was (like his father, Sennacherib) a known contemporary of pharoah Tirhakah, whom Velikovsky had accepted as being a contemporary of Horemheb.


Tirhakah                                                        Ramses II


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