General Chronologico-Historical Problems and Proposed Solutions

…. As already said, my justification for pursuing new synchronisms is based upon recommendations by the examiners of my MA thesis that the conventional views may no longer be sustainable and that ‘a more acceptable alternative’ ought therefore to be sought. This means that (whilst this thesis is primarily about Hezekiah’s Judah) the very pillars of conventional Egyptian history, that affect the computation of the histories of various kingdoms, such as Hezekiah’s, need no longer to be regarded as fixed, but that it may now be necessary to seek after an ‘alternative’ set of pillars upon which to erect ‘a more acceptable’ historical edifice. And the same will apply to Mesopotamian history insofar as this affects the Era of Hezekiah [EOH] and its background. In my MA thesis I had identified the following “three basic ‘pillars’” of standard Egyptian chronology; all closely interconnected:[1]

1. Manetho’s Dynasties;
2. The Sothic Calendar Theory;
3. The Era of Menophres (c. 1320 BC).

To these three I would now definitely add a fourth: namely, Shoshenq I as the biblical ‘King Shishak of Egypt’ (1 Kings 14:25). I did in fact make the latter ‘pillar’ a prominent part of a Sothic article that I wrote for the Answers in Genesis TJ.[2]

Rohl has identified what he calls “four great pillars to the chronological edifice of Egypt”, which set does not, however, include my number 3. above:[3]

The Four Great Pillars

1. The sacking of Thebes by Ashurbanipal (664 BC).
2. Identifying Pharaoh Shoshenq I of the so-called 22^nd dynasty with the Biblical Shishak of 1 Kings 14:25-26 (925 BC). This sets the beginning of the 22nd dynasty to 945 BC.
3. Using the Sothic dating system and the Ebers papyrus to date the accession of Ahmose to 1550 BC.
4. The accession of Ramesses II in 1279 BC based on a lunar date.

It is from such sure signposts as these, as it is thought, that the Egyptologists are able to set securely in place their chronology of ancient Egypt.

According to the revisionists, however, the largely Sothic-based ‘pillars’ of conventional Egyptian chronology are not to be relied upon. This is because the very Sothic scheme itself is deemed to be an artificial construct. Courville, for instance, had argued in 1971, in the course of two chapters, the limitations of dating methods (e.g. Carbon-14 and Astronomical methods); his discussion including a solid critique of Sothic dating.[4] And Velikovsky, at about the same time, wrote an article on the very foundations of Egyptian chronology, in which he also discussed the Sothic problem in considerable depth.[5] Long too, a conventional scholar, wrote a critical analysis of Egypt’s Sothic Chronology, and his lengthy article was later reprinted in the revisionist journal, Kronos.[6]

The contributions to the study of Sothic theory by these three scholars I have already thoroughly discussed and referenced in my MA thesis.

Unknown to me though at the time, but well worthy of noting now, was the fact that there had also been published, in Kronos, a special supplement on Sothic dating, in which no less than nine authors had discussed the weaknesses of Sothic dating and its limitations.[7]

Let us now recapitulate on some of the most important of those Sothically-based chronological anchors – a brief summary of my MA thesis.

Anchors Away

The ‘heliacal rising’ of the Dog Star, Sirius (basically, its first visible rising shortly before sunrise), mentioned in various Egyptian documents (as peret Sopdet), would recur on the Egyptian New Year’s Day, at the same observational site, every 1460 years (365 x 4). This 1460-year span was known later in the Classical era as the ‘Great Year’. But Meyer’s belief that the ancient Egyptians had actually used this Sothic period of 1460 years as a kind of long-range calendar is pure supposition, with no evidence in support of it. In fact Meyer had to go to Classical texts to get some of his key information, to Theon, an Alexandrian astronomer of the late C4th AD, and to the C3rd AD Roman author, Censorinus.

According to Meyer’s interpretation of the Sothic data as provided by Censorinus, there had occurred a coincidence between the heliacal rising of Sirius and New Year’s Day in the 100^th year before Censorinus wrote his book, De Die Natali Liber: thus in c.140 AD.[8] Meyer was therefore able to determine from there, using multiples of 1460, his Sothic series of c.140 AD; 1320 BC; 2780 BC & 4240 BC. Upon this chronological bed he eventually spread out the entire dynastic history of Egypt.

Never mind that Censorinus had not actually connected the 1460-year period with Sirius,[9] or that his evidence appeared patently to contradict that of Theon, according to whom the conclusion of a 1460-year period had occurred in the 5th year of the emperor Augustus, or 26 BC, as opposed to Censorinus’ testimony that a Great Year had commenced in c.140 AD.[10]

Most crucial to this theory was the year 1320 BC, a meeting point, supposedly, between one of Meyer’s key heliacal risings of Sothis and a presumed historical era. For Theon left a much-discussed statement that:[11] “Since Menophres and till the end of the era of Augustus, or the beginning of the era of Diocletian, there were 1605 years”. Long has done the maths for this, in a conventional context:[12]

From [Theon’s] quotation we gather that the era of Menophres (apo Menophreos) lasted from circa 1321-1316 BC to AD 285 or the duration of 1,605 years, i.e. from Emperor Diocletian back to someone or something designated “Menophreõs”.

The trouble is that Theon did not elaborate upon whether Menophres was a ‘someone’ or a ‘something’, e.g. a pharaoh or a city (as some[13] have argued), hence his depriving historians of the chance to arrive at an unequivocal identification. ‘Menophres’ though is generally presumed to have been a pharaoh; one especially of the early 19^th dynasty. Most identify him with Ramses I, whose throne name was Menpehtire (hence Menophres, as it is suggested); though Menpehtire is by no means a perfect linguistic equivalent of Menophres. Ramses I’s (approximately) one-year reign is traditionally believed to have occurred during c.1321/20 BC. And most conveniently, since that pharaoh is generally considered to have been the first ruler of the 19^th dynasty, this date is also thought to have marked the inauguration of a new era.

From a combination of this key date of 1320 BC and another Sothic date to be found in the medical papyrus, Ebers - a presumed heliacal rising dated to the reign of the 18^th dynasty’s pharaoh Amenhotep I - the beginning of Egypt’s New Kingdom could be mathematically ascertained, retro-calculating back using estimates of reign lengths in the dynastic lists. Here is part of what I wrote on the Ebers Papyrus in my MA thesis:[14]

After Illahûn [see below], according to Hayes …, the “next astronomically determinable ‘anchor point’ in Egyptian history is the ninth year of the reign of King Amenophis [Amenhotep] I, the second ruler of the Eighteenth Dynasty”. The ‘anchor point’ in question is the Sothic date provided by the Ebers Papyrus, which Meyer accepted as belonging to the era 1550/49-1547/46 BC …. The rough parameters allowed by the two supposedly fixed Sothic points of Illahûn and Ebers have been refined by dates drawn from comparing modern retrocalculations of past lunar cycles with Egyptian records of the moon’s phases known from the reigns of some pharaohs.

The importance of the Ebers document is that it – dating as it is generally thought close to the rise of the New Kingdom era and the corresponding beginning of the Late Bronze Age – has enabled the Sothic theorists to fix with precision an important new phase in history. Meyer, working from the fixed date he had settled upon from the Ebers Papyrus, and taking Manetho’s reasonable figure of 25-26 years for the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose (Amenhotep I’s predecessor), had no trouble thereafter calculating the beginning of the New Kingdom and the simultaneous era for the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmose: viz at c. 1580 BC.

…. Thus Long was not exaggerating when he stated that the “New Kingdom and Late Bronze chronology are largely dependent on the Ebers Sothic date for the ninth year of Amenhotep I” ….

I went on to note, with reference to Brugsch[15] and Long[16], that:[17]

The Ebers Papyrus has … turned out to be intrinsically unreadable. Because of its illegibility, Brugsch described the document as: “Dieser Text, in hoechst fluechtigen hieratischen [i.e. ‘This text, in highly cursory hieratic’] …”. The fairly significant amount of “divisive comments and interpretations” [ref. to Long] … to which the Ebers Papyrus has given rise, seems due largely to the problematic reading of the document. Three main areas of difficulty in this regard may be isolated: viz the identification of the ruler; the regnal year; and the purport of the text.

The Shoshenq/‘Shishak’ Synchronism

Another key chronological ‘pillar’, or anchor, for Egypt’s New Kingdom - not Sothically-based, but a ‘sighter’ for the Sothic dates, as I called it in my article for the Answers in Genesis TJ[18] - is Champollion’s identification of Shoshenq (Shoshenk) I with ‘Shishak’: the pharaoh who invaded Jerusalem and pillaged the Temple of Yahweh there in the 5^th year of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:25-26 & 2 Chronicles 12:2-9).

This fateful identification, according to which Shoshenq I’s incursion into Palestine in approximately his twentieth year – as recorded on his triumph scene on the Bubasite Portal at Karnak – was the very campaign that the Bible attributes to ‘Shishak’, I described in my article for TJ as being “an unshakeable pillar of Egyptian chronology, seemingly tied to the Bible”.[19] How it has enabled conventional scholars to fix the reign of Shoshenq I in the C10th BC is well explained by Rohl:[20]

The books of Kings and Chronicles detail chronological links between the reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah during the Divided Monarchy period and these (in combination with Assyrian annals mentioning Hebrew rulers) have enabled scholars to determine, with a fair degree of accuracy, the post-Solomonic biblical chronology.

Again, as a direct result of some penetrating research undertaken by American biblical chronologist Edwin Thiele …. modern scholarship has reduced the Old Testament dates by fifty years, fixing Year 5 of Rehoboam at 925 BC. Shoshenq I’s twentieth year was thus attached to the same anchor date and his first regnal year (the founding of the 22^nd Dynasty) set at 945 BC. ….

Egypt’s TIP and the early Divided Monarchy of Israel can now be firmly tied together, it is thought, by the convergence of pharaoh Shoshenq I’s Year 20 and Rehoboam’s Year 5. I intend to examine this presumed Egypto-biblical synchronism in more critical detail in Chapter 8. Here though I should like to continue on somewhat further with Rohl’s comments, especially his claim that the methodology in question is rather dubious:[21]

There is a fundamental methodological problem here. Scholars are underpinning Egyptian chronology with a biblical synchronism. They readily accept the name-equation Shoshenk = Shishak and proclaim a correspondence between the Year 20 campaign of Shoshenk I and the Shishak assault upon Jerusalem. In doing so they dismiss the obvious discrepancies of fact between the two sources. If you are going to use biblical data to establish both the chronology of Egypt and the stratigraphical framework of Levantine archaeology, you cannot then go on to arbitrarily disregard selected sections of the historical material contained in the biblical source simply because they do not fit your theory. Surely, if this were any sort of reliable historical synchronism, the facts from both sources, supposedly recording a single historical event, would agree in a substantial way. As it stands they do not agree at all. Confidence in this key synchronism and resulting chronological anchor point is misguided and dangerous.

Rohl next proceeds to show how a combination of this presumed synchronism and the well established date, as he thinks, for the sack of Thebes in 664 BC,[22] has enabled for historians to determine the length of time from the 22^nd dynasty to the end of the TIP:

To demonstrate how reliant we are upon this synchronism to determine the chronological length of the Third Intermediate Period in Egypt we need only refer to a statement by one of the leading authorities on Egyptian chronology – Professor Kenneth Kitchen himself. First he establishes a date for the beginning of the 25^th Dynasty working back from our safe fixed point of 664 BC (death of Taharka) using the highest regnal dates for the Kushite pharaohs. He thus arrives at a date between 716 and 712 BC for the year 1 of Shabaka, founder of the dynasty …. Kitchen then reveals the conventional chronology’s crucial reliance on the Bible to establish the TIP chronology:

Over two centuries earlier, the 21-year reign of the founder of the 22^nd Dynasty, Shoshenk I can be set at ca. 945-924 B.C., thanks (i) to his synchronisms with the detailed chronology of Judah and Israel, itself linked closely to a firm Assyrian chronology …, and (ii) to the series of known regnal years of his successors, which fill up the interval 924-716/712 B.C. almost completely … [Rohl’s emphasis].

Rohl concludes:

Note that the regnal years of Shoshenk I’s successors are made to ‘fill up’ a period of time which has been entirely established in its length by the biblical synchronism between Shoshenk I (= Shishak) and Rehoboam – which in turn is dated by the biblical chronology of Edwin Thiele. No wonder Kitchen regards the link between Shoshenk and Rehoboam as ‘the essential synchronism’! …

The Illahûn Papyrus

Leaving the later Egyptian history just for the moment, let me conclude this section with mention of the key conventional Sothic anchor for the Middle Kingdom; albeit briefly, though, as a study of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom era is well beyond the scope of this thesis. The chronology of the Middle Kingdom has also been erected around a Sothic date, the Illahûn papyrus. Thus Professor Lynn E. Rose:[23] “Our only known “Sothic date” from the Middle Kingdom occurs on an El-Lahun [Illahûn] papyrus that is customarily dated to the nineteenth century B.C.E. – and usually to the reign of Sesostris III of the Twelfth Dynasty”.

In my MA thesis I dedicated chapter 5 to a discussion of the Illahûn document and the problems associated with it. Here is part of what I then wrote[24], with reference to Edgerton[25] and to Long:[26]

The earliest Sothic-dated source used by Meyer and his colleagues for establishing their mathematically precise scheme of chronology were the two papyrii fragments discovered by Ludwig Borchardt in 1899, in a precinct of the Illahûn Temple at Fayyûm. This document does not give the beginning of a Sothic cycle, but instead a calendar date, year 7 of an un-named pharaoh, for the rising of Sirius; which - when retrocalculated [with the assistance of the dynastic lists] …. - yielded the approximate figures of 1876-1872 …. This date quickly became the accepted one [as] attested by Edgerton ….

From 1899 until 1937, inclusive, all publications on the chronology of the Twelfth Dynasty seem to have accepted the view that a certain fragment of the el-Lahun [ie Illahûn] temple register foretold a heliacal rising of Sothis on the sixteenth day of the eighth month in the seventh year of Sesostris III. No king is named in the fragment.

… Long, from a chronological point of view, attributed to Borchardt’s decision concerning the Illahûn fragment … [a] … far-reaching significance. On what he called “this supposition” of Borchardt, rested – he said …: “… the chronology of the Middle Kingdom, the likewise dependent absolute dating of the Old Kingdom, and the First Intermediate”. And, regarding the dependence of the historians of the non-Egyptian nations on Borchardt’s estimate … Long further claimed that: “… the dating of the Early and the Middle Bronze Ages in Palestine, Greece and Mesopotamia are to a great degree founded on faith in the veracity and accuracy of the document …”.

From this Illahûn date, combined with estimates of reign lengths in the dynastic lists, it could be determined that the Middle Kingdom’s 12^th dynasty had come to its end in c. 1786 BC. This has become a real anchor date for early Egyptian history and all that depends upon it. “Feelings that border on panic seize scholars who trust the Sothic theory when doubt is cast upon it” wrote Down, adding that:[27]

[Professor] Lynn Rose quotes Sir Alan Gardiner as saying, ‘To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn XII ended would be to cast adrift from our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious consequences for the history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle East (JNES 94-4-237)’.

Egypt as the Measuring Rod

Dr. Simms’ view that the chronology of antiquity “has often been used in a circular manner ... to uphold questionable traditional interpretations of the past ...”,[28] is perfectly true I think in regard to Meyer’s Sothic theory. Unfortunately the circular merry-go-round does not stop with Egypt, because as Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie had correctly noted back in 1901:[29] “Egypt is the sounding line for the un-measured abyss of European history”. In other words, the artefacts of ancient Greece, Italy, France, etc., are traditionally dated according to the Sothic rule. But in order to make the shorter chronology of, say, Greece, fit the Procrustean bed of an over-extended Egyptian chronology, it has been necessary to stretch the former with the insertion of ‘Dark Ages’ of about half a millennium’s duration (c.1200-700 BC). The same is done for other nations (e.g. the Ethiopians, the Anatolians) whose archaeology is tied to that of Egypt.

Petrie had found that in Greece the Mycenaean Age pottery was always stratified together with artefacts from Egypt’s 18th-20th dynasties (Sothically dated to c.1600-1100 BC). In his view there was no alternative to following the Egyptian dates and placing Mycenaean civilization squarely in the 2nd millennium. In 1890 Petrie confidently asserted that:[30] “... the main light on the chronology of the civilizations of the Aegean comes from Egypt; and it is Egyptian sources that must be thanked by classical scholars for revealing the real standing of the antiquities of Greece”.

But many of the classicists were not ready thus to give thanks to Petrie, whose Egyptian-derived dates had, for them, produced a huge hiatus between the Mycenaean world and that of the C8th Greek city-states. Commenting on this awkward situation, Professor Greenberg has written most reasonably:[31]

Unfortunately, the Egyptian chronology is nowhere near as solid as the architectural wonders which are its hallmark. As a matter of fact, our knowledge of Egyptian events is extensively based upon the disjointed reports of Classical authors, damaged and incomplete written records, and chance records of astronomical phenomena …. Even the latter factor has been questioned ….

The above statements are not meant to be disparaging, for no one can deny the admirable work of the Egyptologists over the past century. But, a more realistic and objective view of the current historical and art historical situation must be taken. Thus Demargne’s … statement that the Mycenaean chronological problem “was solved in an article by Flinders Petrie … in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1890), which established an absolute chronology of the Greek civilization on an Egyptian basis” is a somewhat bare one. Besides, even Petrie’s work has been superseded in the realm of Egyptian chronology ….

Previously it had been the standard practice to date the end of the Mycenaean civilization as late as 800, allowing continuity - even an overlap - with the succeeding Geometric period. The gap in time in so many nations and fields (literature, art, architecture, etc.) has completely baffled scholars. I could provide many examples of anomalies caused by this approximately 500-year hiatus as pointed out by revisionists. Here are just a few historical puzzles to which they refer, some of which I intend to tackle in the course of this thesis:

• How is it that the Lion Gate at Mycenae, sculpturally an C8th BC monument, is dated by the bulk of the scholarly world to the C14th-C13th BC?
• How could the vaulted tombs of Ugarit serve as models for Cypriots, Israelites, Urartians, Anatolian peoples, and Phoenician colonists, if contemporaneity is denied, and they went out of use and were thus forgotten 500-600 years earlier?
• How could the Babylonians, the Cypriots, have left virtually no evidence of writing for about 500 years, after which they continued to use basically the same scripts?
• How to explain the 200 plus year gap during the early TIP, with no Apis bulls apparently buried in Egypt.
• Why do the inscriptional writings of pharaoh Hatshepsut of Egypt’s 18^th dynasty (Sothically dated to the C15th) bear such a remarkable similarity to the writings attributed to David & Solomon (traditionally dated to the C10th)?
• How to explain why the Iron Age levels of Palestine produced nothing reflecting the ‘Golden Age’ of King Solomon?
• Why have so many perceived that the Sun Hymn written in the reign of pharaoh Akhnaton (Sothically dated to the C14th) bears such a likeness to Psalm 104 of the Hebrew Psalter, ascribed to king David?
• How to explain the fact that the material and technological culture of the C9th BC Assyrian kings, beginning with Ashurnasirpal II, closely matches that of the 18^th and 19^th dynasties in Egypt? (The same goes for the C8th BC culture of the 25^thEthiopian dynasty).
• • Why do bronzes made in Cyprus during the C12th BC frequently occur elsewhere in C9th or later deposits?
  • How is it that the objects of Egyptian pharaohs from the 10th-9th centuries are always found abroad in contexts hundreds of years later?
  • How to explain the complete disappearance of Nubian culture for 300 years from the Late Kingdom of Egypt to the rise of the 25th dynasty?

Throughout this thesis we shall encounter further such anomalies as well.

For the past several decades, revisionists have striven to amend the time warp, to bridge the ‘Dark Ages’ gap. Courville, for instance, had proposed this general solution to the problem by way of summary of his own revision:[32]

In the preceding chapters we have shown how numerous archaeological difficulties and historical anomalies disappear with the simple and single alteration in the dating of the end of the Early Bronze [Age]. … When the necessity of this single alteration of dates in antiquity is recognized, there begins to emerge the general outlines of a revised chronology of Egypt and of all other nations of antiquity whose chronology is tied to that of Egypt.

And Professor Greenberg has written, on the basis of his detailed art-historical study of the Lion Gate at Mycenae:[33]

If the basic premise of this paper, namely that the Lion Gate at Mycenae is sculpturally an eighth century B.C. monument, should prove to be correct and other Mycenaean problems are resolved as a result of an alteration of chronology in favor of a later dating, then the “Dark Ages” of Greece … would be instantly swept away. This would not be the first time a “Dark Age” has vanished in the light of new discoveries and willing critical reevaluation ….

More recently, James and his colleagues, “with a background of research in many different but related fields”, pooled their resources and began an in-depth investigation into the:[34]

... dilemma into which so many archaeologists have been forced, dating and re-dating artefacts backwards and forwards across the span of the Dark Age, in attempting to fit their evidence into a framework defined by Egyptian chronology. Stretching the sides of the time puzzle by raising the dates further would only make the problems more acute. The only remedy ... would seem to be to shorten the sides and compress the overall scheme.

But not only has Meyer’s ‘erste sichere Datum’ [‘first sure date’] of 4240 BC long since been abandoned in favour of the current c. 3100 BC, even his second Sothic date of 2780 is looking somewhat insecure. As O’Mara has correctly stated, this figure of 2780 has been re-worked frequently because of what he calls “numerous technical complexities, with varying results ranging from 2781 BC to 2772 BC”.[35]

Even the third famous ‘Sothic’ date, c. 1320, based on Theon,[36] is by no means rock solid, at least according to Rowton, given that as early as 1928, as he wrote:[37] “... it was obvious that Meyer had by then completely discarded the Menophres theory”, by moving the 19th dynasty forward somewhat from his original date.

It actually seems, anyway, that the Sothic dating sequence overall might need to undergo a significant overhaul, given a new scholarly view about heliacal rising observation. Rohl tells of this, with reference to Hornung[38], in Rohl’s own discussion of the Ebers Calendar, that we saw he had nominated as being one of the four key ‘pillars’ of the conventional chronology:

Now if a contemporary Egyptian text could be found with a calendar date for the heliacal rising of Sothis dated to a specific year in a pharaoh’s reign, it would be a simple matter to place that year in absolute time by a straightforward calculation using the Sothic-dating framework. That is precisely what happened in the 1870s when just such a calendar (acquired by Georg Ebers) was found at Thebes. This ‘Ebers Calendar’ was datable to the ninth year of Amenhotep I and it recorded the heliacal rising of Sothis on the ninth day of the third month of Shemu. The Sothic calculation made by the great calendrical scholar Richard Parker in 1950 established the absolute date at 1542 BC (assuming an observation point at Memphis) which gave a date of 1575 BC for the start of the New Kingdom.

The date of the heliacal rising observation has more recently been adjusted downwards by twenty-five years as a result of a scholarly consensus that the observation probably took place at Thebes (where the papyrus was found) rather than Memphis … [Rohl’s ref. to Hornung]. The difference in latitude between the two cities would require a lowering of the date because the heliacal rising of Sothis would have been one day earlier at the more southerly latitude on account of the earth’s curvature. Thus the currently accepted date for Year 9 of Amenhotep I is 1517 BC and the beginning of the 18^th Dynasty set at 1550 BC with the accession of Ahmose I, Amenhotep’s father.

[End of quote]

After Meyer’s original enunciation of the Sothic theory, its chief promoter appears to have been the influential Professor Henry Breasted of the University of Chicago. The latter took the theoretically possible dates within the Sothic scheme and set them down as astronomically certain. Breasted’s A History of Egypt, which incorporated Meyer’s figure of 4240 BC for Egypt’s presumed unification under Menes, “still forms the basis for most modern historical syntheses”, according to Grimal.[39] Breasted used asterisks in his chronological table to denote those dates that he considered to be astronomically fixed. He even specified the precise day each of two events that occurred during pharaoh Thutmose III’s (18^th dynasty) first Asiatic campaign: namely, his crossing of the Egyptian frontier “about the 19th of April, 1479 BC”, and his going “into camp on the plain of Megiddo on the 14th of May” of that same year.[40]

And it should be noted that things chronological have not changed much to this day, for Grimal gives that very same year of 1479 as the first year of Thutmose III’s reign. Grimal’s date, too, of 1785 BC for the close of Egypt’s 12th dynasty is completely Sothic.[41]

Revisionist scholars today seem to be returning to the views of some of the earlier Egyptologists (like Maspero, von Bissing and Jéquier) who regarded Meyer’s Sothic scheme with suspicion, if not contempt. The complex elabo-structure yields so many inaccuracies and anomalies that I felt it appropriate to summarise my MA thesis discussion on the Sothic theory with this quote from Jéquier:[42]

Perhaps we may collectively sum up the views of these non-Sothically inclined Egyptologists by quoting from the following pages of Jéquier’s ‘Histoire de la Civilization Égyptienne’ …. “The Sothic periods, far from simplifying the chronological calculations for us, have no other effect than to introduce a new element of uncertainty and perhaps a new opportunity for error”.

In a new view of things, though based on the early assessment of Jéquier and his colleagues that Meyer’s Sothic theory is unreliable, it becomes necessary to abandon those key Sothic-based dates of c. 1786 (end of 12th dynasty); c. 1580 (inauguration of the New Kingdom); c. 1542 or 1517 (Year 9 of Amenhotep I); c. 1320 (for Ramses I); and, a fortiori, 1279 BC for the accession of Ramesses II, based on a lunar date - despite Gardiner’s apprehensions about letting slip the “firm anchor”.

Revisionists, regardless of their differing views on how to achieve a new reconstruction of Egyptian history, or the degree of abridgement required, are in agreement at least that the Sothic scheme is invalid and that those seemingly artificially contrived ‘Dark Ages’ must be largely eradicated.[43] They tend to agree, too, that Egypt’s TIP (c. 1100-664 BC, conventional dates) needs to be significantly shortened - which abridgement will in turn compensate to some extent for the dramatic lowering of the New Kingdom (18^th dynasty) dates, as first proposed by Velikovsky. According to James, for instance, “many [TIP] kings allowed generous reigns [by convention] are actually mere ciphers”.[44]

….

---

[1] The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian calendar, p. viii.

[2] ‘Fall of the Sothic Theory’, pp. 71-72.

[3] A Test of Time, ch. five: “The Four Great Pillars”, pp. 119-135.

[4] The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, vol. 2, ch’s 3-4, with pp. 52-82 on Sothic dating.

[5] ‘Astronomy and Chronology’, Penseé, IV, pp. 38-49. This article, updated and slightly revised, later appeared in Velikovsky’s Peoples of the Sea, pp. 205-244.

[6] ‘A Re-examination of the Sothic Chronology of Egypt’, pp. 261-274; reprinted in Kronos II:4, pp. 89-101.

[7] ‘Special Supplement on Sothic Dating’, Kronos VI:1, pp. 51-85.

[8] Ägyptische Chronologie, p. 28.

[9] This point I discussed in my thesis, op. cit, pt. 3b, ch. 10, p. 184.

[10] Ibid, pp. 176-192.

[11] Theon of Alexandria, as cited in Velikovsky’s Peoples of the Sea, p. 229.

[12] Op. cit, p. 269.

[13] E.g. M. Rowton, ‘Mesopotamian chronology and the ‘Era of Menophres’,’ p. 109.

[14] Op. cit, ch. 6, p. 94.

[15] ‘Ein neues Sothis-Datum’, p. 108.

[16] Op. cit, p. 264.

[17] Op. cit, pp. 97-98.

[18] ‘Fall of the Sothic Theory’, p. 71.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Op cit, p. 122.

[21] Ibid, p. 127.

[22] But see my Excursus on Isaiah at the end of this thesis re this supposedly mid-C7th BC era.

[23] ‘The Astronomical Evidence for Dating the End of the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt to the Early Second Millennium’, p. 237. Rose tells of a newly recognized Sothic date in his ‘The Sothic Date from the Ptolemaic Temple of Isis at Aswan’.

[24] Op. cit, pp. 78-80.

[25] ‘Chronology of the Twelfth Dynasty’, p. 307.

[26] Op. cit, p. 263.

[27] ‘University Scholar Attacks the Sothic Cycle’, p. 24.

[28] ‘Editorial’, p. 1.

[29] W. Petrie, as cited by P. James in Centuries of Darkness, p. 20.

[30] Ibid., p. 16.

[31] ‘The Lion Gate at Mycenae’ (1973), p. 27, with references to C. Aldred, The Egyptians, pp. 62-64; I. Velikovsky, Ages in Chaos I, p. 76; P. Demargne, The Birth of Greek Art, p. 8; W. Petrie, ‘Notes on the antiquities of Mykenae’, pp. 199-205.

[32] Op. cit, vol. 1, p. 100.

[33] Op. cit, p. 30.

[34] Centuries of Darkness, Preface, p. xxi.

[35] The Chronology of the Palermo and Turin Canons, p. 37.

[36] E.g. R. Lepsius, Königsbuch der Alten Ägypten, p. 123.

[37] Op. cit, p. 110, n. 1.

[38] Op. cit, pp. 130-131, with reference to E. Hornung, 1964, pp. 20-21 (relevant bibliographical details are not given however in Rohl’s Bibliography).

[39] A History of Ancient Egypt, p. 1.

[40] A History of Egypt, pp. 285, 287.

[41] Op. cit, Appendix, p. 392. D. Brewer, as late as 2005, gives Sothic-based dates for Egypt’s dynasties, e.g. 1782 for the end of the 12^th dynasty. Ancient Egypt: Foundations of a Civilization, Table 1.1, pp. 9-11.

[42] Histoire de la Civilisation Égyptienne, my translation, pp. 26, 27.

[43] But revisionists disagree as to the degree of lowering required: some following Velikovsky and Courville in favouring the 500 year downward shift; others, like James and Rohl, now preferring to go about halfway between the early revision and the conventional scheme.

[44] Op. cit, p. 272.

Yuya a Syrian

Johnny Zwick, President of the California Institute for Ancient Studies, wrote:

I have been working some more on the EA [El-Amarna] period, in particular the Ben Hadad/Ashurnasirpal connection and that of Yuya, Thuya and Tiye, etc. I have been identifying the hieroglyphics on the blue-rimmed ware found probably by Edward Ayrton in KV 46 and published in PSBA in 1913, where we have "written" documentation that Yuya was a Prince of Zahi. I identified the hieroglyphics which make up the word for `Tjaheh', `Zahi' and in the days of Ramses III and in the Papyrus Harris that word appears in connection with Syrian affairs. So, it seems to me rather conclusive that Yuya was a Syrian prince. Now, that Yuya was buried in KV 46, after Tiye had his body transferred to Egypt, mummified and interred, must mean that his wife Thuya accompanied him, and when she died she was buried in the same tomb with him.

Looking at the time line, I shortened the reign of Amenhotep II, moved Amenhotep III up to start his reign by 892 BC till 861, then Akhnaton 861-844, etc. That way Tiye, if she was born by 908 BC, she was ca. 16 when Amenhotep III married her. Then Nefertiti, if she was born ca. 890 BC, married Ahab by 874/74 and next Akhnaton by 861, then she was at that time 29 yrs of age. Since she had children, it helps to have her as young as feaseable.

That little platter described in 1913 is truly a great help. We may regard it as found and described in an age where today's prejudices were not yet as they are now. I think it ranks with the Canopus Decree, Necharomes, Jerusalem in the EA letters and such "written" evidences. It does a wonderful job to align Tiye, Amenhotep III, Thuya and Yuya, Nefertiti, Ahab and Akhnaton.

It is of some importance that the age of the women are properly aligned to have them married at a child bearing age.

I published the reports of Edward Ayrton that he wrote around 1905. He mentions a glazed item. The platter is glazed and might have gotten out of the tomb in someone's possession, or else photographed or drawn from where it found its way to someone in the US to write up that brief report in 1913, so we can have it today.

No one regarded as of any importance, but if Yuya was of Syria, that is important for us.

Best regards

Johnny

Veronica Kristine Olaussen on the Problems of the Conventional Chronology

Taken from: JOURNAL OF CREATION 23(1) 2009

[Comment: The AMAIC does not consider that David Rohl, whose chronology Veronica Olaussen says below "may not be completely correct", has by any means discovered the correct model for a revised history, though he has made some very significant contributions in this regard].

Viewpoint

How convincing are the arguments for a
new Egyptian chronology?

Veronica Kristine Olaussen

The Conventional Chronology (CC) links up with the Bible in the person of Pharaoh Shoshenk I, who is identified with the biblical Shishak. But David Rohl holds that the CC does not fit with other parts of the Bible. If the CC is followed, there is a huge gap, a ‘dark age’, where there should be evidence for Hebrew history. On the other hand, Egyptology professor Kenneth Kitchen, who is a firm supporter of the CC, accepts no clash. He states that ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’.1
The CC is based on the king list as compiled by the Egyptian priest Manetho, and additionally what Rohl identifies as ‘four pillars’. Rohl claims that there are compelling anomalies in the CC, as well as serious weaknesses in at least three of the CC’s four pillars. However, according to Chris Bennett, these anomalies alone are no basis for a completely new chronology; to be certain about the distant past is difficult. Some of what is presented on popular television as ‘undisputed fact’ appear after all to be based on questionable assumptions. Rohl’s New Chronology may not be completely correct, but the weaknesses he documents in the CC show that the
conventional wisdom regarding the ancient Egyptian timeline merits re-examination.

....

JOURNAL OF CREATION 23(1) 2009
61

PDF Version of King Hezekiah Thesis Now Accessible On-line

Sydney University Thesis:

"A Revised History of the
Era of King Hezekiah
of Judah and its Background",

by Damien F. Mackey,

now accessible at:

http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973

Conventional Sothic Interpretation an Obstacle to Chronology

Taken from:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v17/i3/sothic_theory.asp



...


Current chronology

It should be noted that things chronological have not changed much to this day, for N. Grimal gives that very same year of 1479 as the first year of Thutmose III’s reign.²⁴ Grimal’s date too, of 1785 BC for the close of Egypt’s 12^th dynasty, is completely Sothic. ‘Feelings that border on panic seize scholars who trust the Sothic theory when doubt is cast upon it’ wrote David Down, adding that:

‘[Professor] Lynn Rose quotes Sir Alan Gardiner as saying, “To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn XII ended would be to cast adrift from our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious consequences for the history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle East (JNES 94-4-237)”.’²⁵

But not only has Meyer’s ‘erste sichere Datum’ (first sure date) of 4240 BC long since been abandoned—with c. 3100 BC now favoured as the beginning date for Egyptian dynastic history—even his second Sothic date of 2780 is looking shaky. As P. O’Mara has correctly stated, this figure of 2780 has been re-worked frequently because of what he calls ‘numerous technical complexities, with varying results ranging from 2781 BC to 2772 BC’.²⁶

What is quite firmly held to this day by historians is the third ‘Sothic’ date, c. 1320, for the ‘Era of Menophres’. Grimal’s recent figure of 1295–1294 BC, for instance, is not so very far removed from 1320.²⁶ And this, despite the fact that as early as 1928 ‘ … it was obvious that Meyer had by then completely discarded the Menophres theory’,²⁷ by moving the 19^th dynasty forward somewhat from his original date. That many Egyptologists have continued to be far from comfortable with this received chronological structure is apparent from the testimony of the renowned Sir Alan Gardiner:

‘What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters.’²⁸

Nevertheless, it was also Gardiner who—as we saw above—had warned of the consequences of abandoning the Sothic anchor dates.

Conclusion

The Sothic theory has absolutely bedevilled efforts to establish proper synchronisms throughout antiquity, especially when it is considered that the chronology of the other nations is usually assessed with reference to Egypt. In reference to my thesis on the Sothic cycles (Ref. 5), Dr Grognard remarked: ‘It is important to show the weaknesses or errors in our understanding of a theory in order to leave our minds free to think of a more acceptable alternative’ [emphasis added]. This should be taken as an encouragement for the reconstruction of Egyptian chronology.

....

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background / by Damien F. Mackey

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

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A revised history of the era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its background / by Damien F. Mackey.
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Title
A revised history of the era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its background /​ by Damien F. Mackey.
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393, 106, xxxiii leaves : ill.
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Hezekiah King of Judah.
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Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Research) to the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies in the Faculty of Arts.
Degree awarded 2009; thesis submitted 2007.
Thesis (M. A.)--University of Sydney, 2009.
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Arabs in Jerusalem in Era of King Jehoram of Judah

Highlighting the Background to the History of the Time of Jehoram, King of Jerusalem (853-841 BC). by Damien Mackey The Amazing Story of Arabs in Jerusalem

Old Arabic Phrases of the Islamic Period The Story of Job The Story of the Death of Holofernes"

"Moreover the Lord stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the Philistines and the Arabians, that were near the Ethiopians; and they came up into Judah, and brake into it, and carried away all the substance that was found in the king's house, and his sons also, and his wives; so that there was never a son left to him save Jehoahaz, the youngest of his sons." 2.Chronicles 21:16-17

There is no question that we find Judah here in a dangerous state. As Peter James wrote, that the situation for Judah was so dangerous and on the verge of collapse is

"amply reflected in the desperate letters of Abdi-Hiba, full of pleas to his Egyptian overlord [Akhnaton] for the troops needed to defend his fiefdom" `Let the king ... my lord, send troops of archers, for the king has no hands left.' El Amarna Letter #286

EA 288 is most useful for the geographical information it supplies. James wrote:

"Abdi-Hiba defines the extent of the revolts against his authority: `Let my king take thought for his land ... is lost; in its entirety it is taken from me; there is war against me, as far as the lands of Seir and as far as Gath-Carmel (Gath-Carmel and Seir Edom are almost certainly Gath, one of the 5 old Philistine capitals, and possibly the same as Libnah)' ... From EA letter 289 we learn that Gath-Carmel was now in the hands of Tagu, an ally of Milkuli of Gezer: "Behold the land of the town of Gath-Carmel, it belongs to Tagu ..."

James regarded this letter 289 as a complaint of Jehoram to the pharaoh that all his subject territories from Edom to Philistia had revolted against him. Two questions come to mind:

1. 2.

Did the Arabians attack together with the Philistines? or was one group responsible for the sacking of Jehoram's palace, and the other for invading Judah? Who were these Arabians that were near the Ethiopians [Cushites]? 2.Chronicles 22:1 is concerned with the succession after Jehoram and suggests that it was the Arabs, rather than the Philistines, who were responsible for the looting of Jehoram's palace and the murder of his sons.

"Then the inhabitants of Jerusalem made Ahaziah his youngest son king in his stead: for the band of men that came with the Arabians to the camp had slain all the eldest..."

It could be that the clipped account here has run together the actions of the Philistines, in invading Judah, and the Arabs, in sacking Jehoram's palace, its brevity obscuring the distinction between the two. We know from literary and archaeological records that there were Arabian colonies in Ethiopia. What better description could the chronicler have used then to write `the Arabians that were near the Cushites (Ethiopians).' In conventional history, Egypt was a separate state from Ethiopia during the time of Jehoram, and was ruled by the Libyan pharaoh Takeloth II, who conducted no military campaigns into Palestine. Is it credible that a band of Arab raiders, coming from Cush, worked their way through his Libyan kingdom and into the heart of Judah? Or that a band from south-eastern Arabia were so far from their homeland and somehow in a position to plunder the king's palace? The synchronized chronology solves this problem entirely, and makes good sense out of the biblical narrative. Amenhotep III was the ruler of Ethiopia as well as Palestine. .. After the suppression of a revolt in his 5th year, the south of Egypt was at peace, and Amenhotep was able to construct two massive temples near the 3rd Nile cataract. Troops were conscripted by him in Ethiopia and these were used in Palestine, as we know from the letters of Rib-Addi of Gubla:

"If the heart of the king, my lord, is in favour of Gubla, then let my lord send 400 soldiers and 100 people of the Kasi lands that they may protect Gubla, the city of my lord."

The term `Kasi' is acknowledged to mean `Cush' or `Ethiopians'. These Arabians than were conscripts of the Egyptian army stationed in Palestine. It now remains to examine the EA letters of Abdi-Hiba for an account of a Philistine invasion, coupled with a sack of his palace by rioting troops from the `lands of Kasi', in order to leave no doubt that Jehoram of Judah was Abdi-Hiba of the EA letters. EA 287 describes the Philistine invasion in which Milkilu of Gezer and Tagu of Gath-Carmel, supported by the people from the lands of Ashkelon and Lachish, invaded Abdi-Hiba's kingdom and `caused their troops to enter the town of Rubutu'. EA 290 describes a later stage of their advance, when they were joined by the rebel Shuwardata of Keilah. - - The account of Jehoram of Judah in the Bible is found in 2.Kings 1:17; 8:16-20; 2.Chronicles 21: 1-20. The account of Jehoram, son of Ahab of Samaria, is found in 2.Kings 1:17; 3:1ff; 9:24; 2.Chr. 22:5-7.

"They rushed troops of Gezer, troops of Gath and troops of Keilah: They took the land of Rubutu; the land of the king went over to the `Apiru people.'"

According to the letter even Jerusalem itself came under grave threat. The Moabites did not reach Jerusalem. But the royal palace was looted during Jehoram's reign, EA 287:

"With reference to the Nubians [Kasi], let my king ask the commissioners whether my house is not very strong! Yet they attempted a very great crime; they took their implements and breached ... of the roof. If they send into the land of Jerusalem troops, let them come up with an Egyptian officer for regular service. Let my king take heed for them - for all the lands are impoverished by them - and let my king requisition for them much grain, much oil and much clothing ... the men of the land of Nubia have committed an evil deed against me; I was almost killed by the men of the land of Nubia in my own house. Let the king call them to account. Seven times and seven times let the king, my lord, avenge me."

View of Gath many years ago

The impact this striking biblical incident had upon conventionally bound scholars can be seen from this reference by James: A commentator on 2.Chronicles 21:17 could hardly believe the Biblical claim that the Arabs `that were near the Cushites' had actually sacked Jehoram's palace:

" `This curious verse can hardly signify that the Arabians took and plundered Jerusalem' ..

But the letters of Abdi-Hiba confirm that this was actually done by the `men from the land of Kasi'. Evidently they had been stationed in Jerusalem as a garrison, but their Egyptian master had neglected to supply them with provisions, and they took to plundering... `for all the lands are impoverished by them.' Their looting of Abdi-Hiba's palace was evidently part of a concerted plan of the Philistines, timed to coincide with their own invasion of Judah.'" Interestingly enough a south Arabian name monograph was found on at least three locally (Jerusalem) made pottery sherds in which on one of the sherds the letter `lamed' was combined twice with the letter `khet' to create the monograph shown. Thus the name can be read as `khll'. [BAR, Mar/Apr 1988, p. 22] If these sherds are sufficient evidence to place at some, so far unknown period of time, ancient Arabian people into Jersualem the reader can decide. But our story shows they could have been there in the middle of the 9th century BC. The same distinctive circumstances could not have befallen two different kings of Jerusalem, separated in time one from the other by some 500 years, one described in the EA letters and the other in the scriptures. Bibliography 1. See Peter James article, `The Dating of the El Amarna Letters,' SIS Review (Society for Interdisciplinary Studies), Vol. II, No. 3, (London, 1977/78), pp. 80-85. 2. Horst Klengel (Berlin), `Das Land Kush in den Keilschrifttexten von Amarna', p. 227-212.

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