by
Damien
F. Mackey
Introduction
Whenever a revisionist comes to light with yet
another of those hopeful biblico-historical models then I invariably find this exclamation
from the Book of Jeremiah springing to mind (11:13):
“For according to the number of
your cities so are your gods, O Judah!”
It seems that everyone wants to be a Time
Lord.
Over the past 30-35 years I have read dozens or more
such hopeful revisions, each one proposing a different model.
This has led me eventually to write articles such
as, “Distancing oneself from Velikovsky” (https://www.academia.edu/35666659/Distancing_oneself_from_Velikovsky), which article includes this critical observation:
“However, the so-called “New
Chronology” of [David] Rohl - somewhat similar to [Peter] James’s efforts at
reconstruction - situated halfway between convention and Velikovsky, fails at
virtually every point despite the optimistic advertisements. It is far inferior
to the respective revisions of Courville and Martin Sieff – the latter tending
to persevere with the most promising aspects of Courville and “[the] Glasgow
[School”, but with excellent modifications and contributions of his own. Sieff,
in fact, adopted the perfect approach to Velikovsky, by building upon his solid
foundations, but also modifying him where there were problems, and rejecting
outright Velikovsky’s glaring mistakes. He even wrote by far the best account
of the psychology of Velikovsky (who was a psychiatrist), the fascinating “Velikovsky
and His Heroes” (SIS Review, vol. v, no. 4, 1980/81, pp.
112-120)”.
A trap
for young players
One must be very careful about the ramifications,
further down the line, of any particular biblico-historical identification. In a
new case, it is the suggestion that the biblical “Shishak” who despoiled the
Temple of Yahweh, in the 5th year of king Rehoboam, was pharaoh
Amenhotep II.
David Rohl, for example, was taken to task by Dale
Murphie for not anticipating the biblical ramifications of Rohl’s
identification of Shishak with Ramses II ‘the Great’. Thus Murphie wrote (“Critique of David Rohl’s A Test of Time”, C and C Review, 1997:1,
p. 31):
“In Rohl’s historical scheme, this is a paramount
issue. He gives three full chapters (4-6), plus his Preface as reinforcement,
to the proposition that Ramesses II is Shishak. If he is mistaken here, the New
Chronology comes under considerable threat. It is worth examining the general
milieu into which Rohl thrusts Ramesses II, to see how snugly he fits. There
seem to be a number of problems, stemming from biblical evidence that the
regional power of Egypt became diminished and the Judaean state re-established
full independence in this very period.
Firstly, given Ramesses’ 67 year reign, he would
only have reached Year 22 when Asa of Judah, grandson of Rehoboam, ascended his
throne. The significance of this date is that only one year previously Ramesses
concluded his famous treaty with the Hittite King, Hattusilis. At this stage,
with Egypt and the Hatti entering a long period of unprecedented harmony,
consider the remarkably provocative actions of miniscule Judah. This tiny
nation, under her new king, flouted the Egyptian/Hatti pact (which provided for
mutual aid in just such an event), by starting the greatest fortress building
phase of its entire history and developing a standing army of 540,000 men [II
Chronicles 14:6-8] – and where did this military build up take place? Not in
some distant corner of Egyptian/Hatti territory, away from prying eyes, but
right in the demilitarised zone between the two powers, where all might see and
not be under the slightest doubt that Judah meant business”.
Ouch.
Similarly, if Amenhotep II is to be Shishak, then
the early to middle part of King Solomon’s reign of peace and prosperity is now
set to coincide, most awkwardly, with decades of his supposed father-in-law
Thutmose III’s rumbling through Syro-Palestine in campaign after successful
campaign – this mighty pharaoh’s years 22-50 approximately.
Thutmose III, ‘the Napoleon of Egypt’ as he has
been called.
Not much evidence in the Bible for such violent military
incursions into Syro-Palestine during the high point of King Solomon’s reign.
Now, in Velikovsky’s scheme (also Courville’s and Sieff’s), no such problem
occurs, with the rampant phase of Thutmose III belonging a few years after the death of Solomon.
Moreover, Velikovsky’s identification of Solomon’s
pharaonic father-in-law with Thutmose I is more biologically likely (in
relation to his Thutmose III as Shishak), since the reign of the father-in-law
would not have so significantly overlapped the reign of the son-in-law as is
the case with the article under review.
That there may be reason to query whether, as
according to a common view, Thutmose III actually destroyed the city of Gezer
becomes apparent from a footnote [29] to John Bimson’s important article, “Can
There be a Revised Chronology Without a Revised Stratigraphy?” (SIS: Proceedings, Glasgow
Conference, April, 1978), according to which: “The oft-repeated statement by Dever that Thutmose
III claims to have destroyed Gezer (e.g. BA 34, 1971, p. 127; IEJ 22,
1972, p. 159; EAE II, p. 438) is untrue”. Here follows Bimson’s full footnote
[29]:
“… J. D. Seger, IEJ 23 (1973), p. 250 W. G.
Dever at first suggested a date as late as the reign of Thutmose IV: IEJ
20 (1970), p. 226 and Gezer I (1970), p. 55. However, he subsequently
retracted this date, believing it to be too late (cf. IEJ 23, 1973, p.
26, n. 6), and suggested linking the destruction “provisionally” with the first
campaign of Thutmose III (EAE II, p. 438). But Seger prefers a date
earlier still (op. cit.) as also does Kempinski, IEJ 22 (1972),
p. 185. The oft-repeated statement by Dever that Thutmose III claims to have
destroyed Gezer (e.g. BA 34, 1971, p. 127; IEJ 22, 1972, p. 159; EAE
II, p. 438) is untrue. Reliefs in the Temple of Amon at Kamak, illustrating
this pharaoh’s campaigns, depict rows of Asiatic prisoners identified by the
names of their towns of origin, one of which is Gezer. There is no reason to
assume that this indicates the destruction of the town. For references to
Asiatic campaign(s) by Thutmose I, see Breasted: Ancient Records of Egypt
II (1906), pp. 28-31, 33-35; cf. Velikovsky, A in C, iii: “Two
Suzerains”.”
Let us return again to Dale Murphie, who now touches
on the inadequacies of Rohl’s chronology in relation to the biblical Queen of
Sheba. According to Murphie:
“At the beginning of this time frame Shishak is
tied chronologically to another celebrity who, like Zerah, simply cannot be
ignored. On p. 178 Rohl mentions the Egyptian princess, bride of Solomon, but
pays little attention to the contemporary visit of the Queen of Sheba, to whom
he assigns 2 lines on p. 32 and a patronising comment about Velikovsky on p.
402. By aligning Dynasty XIX with the middle to near end of the United Monarchy
of Israel, the New Chronology lacks a suitable candidate for Solomon’s
celebrated visitor. It is not good enough to stay with the received opinion
that she was a denizen of the south-west regions of Arabia Felix, when Josephus
[Antiquities of the Jews, VIII, vi, 5] informed us that she was the
Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia …. Further, the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast
(The Book of the Glory of the Kings), discussing their Queen’s visit to
Solomon, delivers her name as Makeda, almost identical to the royal
name of Dynasty XVIII Queen Hatshepsut Makera, used repeatedly in the
Dier [sic] el-Bahri mortuary complex inscriptions of her trading mission to
Punt, placing the events in Dynasty XVIII”.
Note well: “… the New Chronology lacks a suitable
candidate for Solomon’s celebrated visitor. It is not good enough to stay with
the received opinion that she was a denizen of the south-west regions of Arabia
Felix, when Josephus [Antiquities of the Jews, VIII, vi, 5] informed
us that she was the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia …”.
Where the revisions of Velikovsky, Courville and Sieff have a magnificent
historical queen who fully accords with the ancient testimony of Josephus, and
whose throne name, Makera (Maat-ka-re), is extremely close to the Ethiopian
name for her of Makeda, these
fancy pants new chronologies end up with absolutely no flesh-and-blood
historical candidate whatsoever for the biblical queen. Be it Dr. John Bimson,
Patrick J. Clarke, or any others, there is just no viable candidate to be found
by them.
My comment on this in the case of Bimson, in
“Solomon and Sheba”, is relevant here, too (https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba):
“Bimson suggested that the biblical
queen was from Yemen in Arabia, but van Beek … has described the geographical
isolation of Yemen and the hazards of a journey from there to Palestine and
none of the numerous inscriptions from this southern part of Arabia refers to
the famous queen. Civilisation in southern Arabia may not really have begun to
flourish until some two to three centuries after Solomon’s era, as Bimson
himself has noted … and no 10th century BC Arabian queen has ever been named or
proposed as the Queen of Sheba.
If she hailed from Yemen, who was
she?”
“Sheba” has brought many unstuck. Again, in my
article, “The Queen of Beer(sheba)” (https://www.academia.edu/26354213/The_Queen_of_Beer_sheba_), I have demonstrated that Jesus Christ himself actually gave the perfect
geographical co-ordinates for the kingdom of “Sheba” that would easily have
been grasped by his Israelite (Jewish) audience, but that would be completely
lost on modern western-minded, non-Semitically attuned, readers.
How the queen progressed from her brief period as
ruler of Beersheba, to queen, then Pharaoh, of Egypt and Ethiopia (as according
to ancient testimony), as the wondrous Hatshepsut, I have outlined in my recent
article: “The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's
pulchritudinous wife” (https://www.academia.edu/34418620/The_vicissitudinous_life_of_Solomons_pulchritudinous_wife). And what enormously supports my thesis
(built upon the efforts of Velikovsky, Courville and Sieff), is the evidence as
given in my “Solomon and Sheba” for the in-pouring of Israelite wisdom into
Egypt at the time of Hatshepsut, images from Genesis, from Proverbs, and, most
notably - from a chronological point of view - from David’s Psalms and Solomon’s
love poetry.
The new proposal follows a conga-line of
revisionists who have tried to find an Egyptian explanation for the biblical
name, “Shishak”, in this case taking the Egyptian nebty name of pharaoh Amenhotep II, weser fau, sekha em waset, whilst admitting that: “At first glance, this name might
not look like “Shishak”.”
And with very good reason, I say. It looks nothing like it!
I found perhaps more plausible K. Birch’s suggestion (“Shishak Mystery?”, C and C
Workshop, SIS, No. 2, 1987, p. 35) that “Shishak” may derive from pharaoh Thutmose III’s Golden
Horus name, Djeser-khau [“chase a cow”] (dsr h‘w): “… the (Golden)
Horus names of Thutmose III comprise variations on: Tcheser-khau, Djeser-khau …”.
However, it may be a complete waste of time
seeking after an Egyptian meaning for this biblical name. “Shishak” was how he
was known to the Jews (and he was probably very well known to them due to the pervasive
influence of his ‘stepmother’, Hatshepsut.
See “The vicissitudinous life”).
According to I Kings 4:3, there were high-ranking
officials, sons of a “Shisha”, in the court of King Solomon. And there was also
a biblical “Shashak” (I Chronicles 8:14).
Finally, to say something much in favour of any revisionist article that would locate the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs Hatshepsut and Thutmose III to the approximate time of kings David and Solomon, it will always be some half a millennium closer to chronological reality than is the Sothic-based textbook chronology.
