Revising The Egyptian Chronology

[JohnStevenson]

what do you all think?

I think that those who want to rewrite the traditional dates usually focus their attention upon those elements that support their views and tend to ignore the fact that more than just the Egyptians used astronomical observations that can be checked out.

That is not to say there is not a certain amount of leeway in such things as what is commonly referred to as the high and low chronology of Egypt (a difference of around 26 years depending on whether astronomical observations were made in Memphis or Thebes).

[Elijah]

what do you all think?

I think that those who want to rewrite the traditional dates usually focus their attention upon those elements that support their views and tend to ignore the fact that more than just the Egyptians used astronomical observations that can be checked out.

That is not to say there is not a certain amount of leeway in such things as what is commonly referred to as the high and low chronology of Egypt (a difference of around 26 years depending on whether astronomical observations were made in Memphis or Thebes).

I agree observation points matter, But one example is where the 12th dynasty used both places traditional Memphis and 12th dynasty Fort Quban at 23 degrees. I beleive the record of Sethosis in the 120th year was definately at Fort Quban. The traditional spot was 30 degrees, but evidence indicates that THE SUMMER SOLSTICE was recognized as the rise of Sothis during the 12th dynasty and that would be July 10 at Fort Quban rather than those who try to push the 1st dynasty to a Julian July 19 in 4241 BC as a Gregorian June solstice. The rise of Sothis at Memphis being 7 days later on July 17.

[notalent]

I recently read a very good book by John Ashton and David Down called, 'Unwraping the Pharoahs' and their well put together argument for revising the traditional chron.

I have read little of david rohl's work but know he is a big revisionist and that there are others who are beginning to see the validityof this act.  i tend to side with the revisionists because their points make sense and they seem to be able to fit the evidence into the proper place in history.

what are some of the credible or legitimate problems with this endeavor?  I see a win win for the Bible and a lose lose for those who are fighting this new trend.

what do you all think?

Here is the latest from David Rohl at the New Chronology Newsgroup on Yahoo.  This is a very active group with many scholarly contributors. 

Please note his reference to Bernard Newgrosh's new book Chronology at the Crossroads.

Dear Cami and NC list-members,

It seems like an eternity since I last posted a message here on the
New Chronology discussion site and no doubt it is! Since the
publication of A Test of Time (aka Pharaohs and Kings), I have found
myself with very little time to return to NC research – beyond that
needed to prepare the subsequent books in the New Chronology series.
There just never appears to be sufficient hours in the day, days in
week or months in the year to do all the things that drop into my
'Things-to-Do' tray these days. But I do take every opportunity to
read the messages here on the NC list whenever I can. And I have to
say that all the knowledge and scholarship displayed by the
contributors here is very impressive to say the least.

With such exceptional talents on call within the group, assembled over
the last decade, I am convinced that there is a real possibility for
us to successfully tackle (given that split-infinitives are now
permitted) the outstanding issues which remain to be solved in the
detailed structure of the NC - if we can focus down onto the key
areas.

Over the last few years, Peter van der Veen and I have had numerous
long discussions by phone to try and clarify where the problems for
the NC are, and we have pinned it all down to seven principal issues:

(1) The fine details of Third-Intermediate-Period Chronology
(obviously!). Several of you are already hard at work on this.

(2) A chronological model for the 20th Dynasty in which several
Ramesside kings rule at the same time (particularly during the reign
of Ramesses III and the era of the Repeating of Births towards the end
of the dynasty). John Wall has, of course, been working on just such
a 20th Dynasty chronology with some success.

(3) The Late Bronze Age to Iron Age transition, in the way that it
relates to Egyptian history (19th & 20th Dynasties), biblical history
(Solomon and the early rulers of the Divided Monarchy) and the
pottery sequences (overlaps between the fine wares of LB IIB and low-
grade domestic wares of Early Iron Age I). Here the issue is when, in
his long reign, did Ramesses II plunder the palace and temple of
Jerusalem - in the mid-part of his reign or right at the end?

(4) The implications of (3) for the late 18th Dynasty, in the way that
it affects NC synchronisms between the Amarna Period and the Early
Israelite Monarchy (Saul, David and the Philistine Revolt). The
contentious issues here are how to interpret the Mes Inscription and
what importance should be placed on the Murshili Tawanana eclipse.

(5) The remarkable and courageous work of Bernard Newgrosh in trying
to provide NC solutions to Mesopotamian and Anatolian chronology and
the resultant revised history that he has proposed. This has already
instigated considerable correspondence within NC circles and has
become a new and impressive facet to our combined research. I am
delighted that Bernard's work is now in print (magnificently so) and
look forward to the debate which Chronology at the Crossroads must
surely provoke in years to come.

(6) The Thera dating question in relation to Egyptian history. In
other words, did Thera erupt in the reign of Thutmose III - as Bietak
now argues, - or earlier in the time of Ahmose, or both? And can any
of the acid peaks in the ice cores be scientifically linked to the
eruption (without recourse to potentially bogus C-14 dating methods)?

(7) The archaeological date of the Conquest. This involves complex
arguments in respect of pottery developments and destruction horizons
in the late Middle Bronze Age. Were the widespread city destructions
in the Holy Land during MB IIB/C all at the very end of the MB, or
earlier - with MB continuing long into the Egyptian New Kingdom? As
you probably know, John Bimson favours the end of MB (or thereabouts)
whilst I prefer a date fairly early in MB IIB/C.

So there you have it. Do you think we can focus on these topics to see
if we might come to some useful conclusions? Perhaps some of you will
initiate research programmes to resolve specific aspects of these big
issues (or have already done so)?

To facilitate such research (and perhaps also purely for interest
sake), I have asked Cami and Richard to post up my NC Master Time
Chart so that you can see where we - or, perhaps more accurately, I -
currently stand. I am afraid that I haven't worked on the chart since
2005, so it is, no doubt, out of date and should definitely be viewed
only as unfinished 'work in progress'. But please feel free to load
this Excel file into your Microsoft Office programme and work on it
as you see fit (adding more info, changing parts according to your
own research, and discussing elements on this NC list).

One final point. I have seen a number of questions from newcomers to
the list, asking whether there has been any movement towards, or
acknowledgement of, the New Chronology within academia. Well, last
month Anthony van der Elst, the former Chairman of ISIS (The
Institute for the Study of Interdisciplinary Sciences), came to Spain
for a visit and to chat about the future of the NC. One of the things
we did was to review the video tapes of the Exodus Conference held at
Reading University in September 2004. During the round-table
discussion, in the last hour of the meeting (and in front of three
hundred delegates), Professor Kenneth Kitchen - whom you will know as
the most vociferous of the NC critics - made the following statement.
Make of it what you will but, for the record, we now have a clear and
unambiguous concession which should not be underestimated in its
significance.

Kenneth Kitchen: "... there are two options [for the Exodus]: you've
got the David Rohl version - the early date - and you've got the Late
Bronze Age option (which is not just me). There are [therefore] two
powerful sets of options which do not give credence to the mythology
people [i.e. the biblical minimalists and all those archaeologists
who (quite correctly) find no evidence for an Exodus or Conquest at
the end of the Late Bronze Age]". [The words in square brackets are
my added clarifications. I have not changed or removed anything from
the direct quote.]

Now I know this is not very articulate, but what Kitchen was
basically admitting is that the Middle Bronze Age Exodus date
proposed by the New Chronology (and originally pioneered by both
Immanuel Velikovsky and John Bimson) is, in his view, as powerful or
convincing as the Late Bronze Age Exodus date he has been advocating
for all of his academic career. So don't let anyone tell you that the
NC has been dismissed or proven to be wrong by the academics -
because, after a decade of academic scrutiny, previously intransigent
positions are beginning to shift. To quote the minstrel Dylan - 'the
times they are a-changing'!

With my very best wishes to you all, and keep up the good work!

David.

[Elijah]

I know of only one traditional chornology and that would be 1290 BC to 1650 AD when the Catholic Church owned the Ramses Papyrus because the Septuagint Genesis was aligned to it starting as 3090 BC.
For the past 200 years there has no longer been any traditional, butu rather its been all over with wo ever thinks they have solved the puzzles. For this reason i do not think some brave new chornology has come about to break anything traditional. The whole study for the past 100 years has been all over the board. Perhaps the 60s was stabalized by Richard Parker of Chicago. But that was a phase and now all the flies are out about the Egyptian corpse again, each with their new brainy resolve to it all.
The Bible isnt the only book or writing that people become know-it-alls with. So much for tradition then. Like i have been saying, I have found the correlations where short Genesis uses the same spans and units and years as long Genesis for Egypt. They both have a migration 768 years after the epoch. They use pre 12th dynasty years in the 900s where the short version begins year 600 with the Flood instead of stretching it 600 years, and yet the fixed year still remains 940 and 950 and 955 etc.

[notalent]

I know of only one traditional chornology and that would be 1290 BC to 1650 AD when the Catholic CHruch owned the Ranses Papyrus because the Septuagint Genesis was aligned to it starting as 3090 BC.
For the past 200 years there has no longer been any traditional, butu rather its been all over with wo ever thinks they have solved the puzzles. For this reason i do not think some brave new chornology has come about to break anything traditional. The whole study for the past 100 years has been all over the board. Perhaps the 60s was stabalized by Richard Parker of Chicago. But that was a phase and now all the flies are out about the Egyptian corpse again, each with their new brainy resolve to it all.
The Bible isnt the only book or writing that people become know-it-alls with. So much for tradition then. Like i have been saying, I have found the correlations where short Genesis uses the same spans and units and years as long Genesis for Egypt. They both have a migration 768 years after the epoch. They use pre 12th dynasty years in the 900s where the short version begins year 600 with the Flood instead of stretching it 600 years, and yet the fixed year still remains 940 and 950 and 955 etc.

So how do you solve the Djedptahefankh burial evidence from the royal cache?

Also, how have you resolved the impossible construction sequence of the tombs of Osorkon II (22nd dynasty) and Psusennes I (21st dynasty) at Tanis? 

That's just some of the physical evidence upon which new chronological proposals are being made.  They aren't arbitrary notions.  A defense of the status quo must at least attempt to address these points.

[Elijah]

I personally dwell on 1st to 19th dynasty Egypt to cover the Flood 2370 BC to the Exodus 1513 BC and prove its not Ramses of 1290 BC.
As for correlations between Egypt and Assyria I find the eclipses of Assyria to be 54 years earlier prior to shalmaneser and 21 years earlier after him, (varying to 19 years earlier when accounting lunar dates). The past century of scholars have scrunched and scrunched until i am not surprised if the next guy comes up with the division in 600 BC and a group of kings ruling Jerusalem 14 years until 586 BC. Way too many chronologies all hold to 997 BC, including Eusebius and Josephus. And there are astral locks for it. Anyways, when comparing Egypt to Assyria, problems are created by that false Assyria.... which then injures Egypts chronology which instead of being false and refined into truth, becomes further chopped up by the assyrian correlation. I will say this to all scholars, dont use Egypt or Assyria for a backbone to lay bible flesh on to build your body of chronology. Use the bible as that backbone and build Egypt and Assyria onto it and your body will fall into places as if its gravitating to build a chronology on its own, I have done it, but i do not boast because i know with this method there are those who could CLEAN HOUSE better than i do. I lack effort. I am lazy via depression, and my work is accomplished thru obsession, a constant talking to myself in my head on everything because of being alone. So when i see others of other fields in the world accomplish so much so quick, i know others could apply the truth of this method i've declared to you and find and uncover everything real. I truly feel that when the dead come to life, they will prove THAT truth to us in ways we will see that we always had enough evidence to know all these things, and we chose not to look, and not to see, to our own detriment, destruction, calamities.
Forget about finding how the 50 year desolation is 70 years .... that answer will probably come when the end is here. Instead use a 2030 BC death for Peleg Mesanipada, a 1513 BC exodus, a 997 BC division, and 607 BC destruction of Jerusalem, and 80% of it all falls into place. With what you have in your hands (that i do not have), accept this as a backbone, and you will push the WatchTower's 50% up to my 80 %, and surpass what i have up to a 99.9% accuracy, and that extra 19.9 % is the difference between me having a complete whole dead corpse with no skin to your making it alive with skin and breathing. But i keep hearing Jesus say this---- YOU PEOPLE DID NOT WANT IT.

[Elijah]

That is not to say there is not a certain amount of leeway in such things as what is commonly referred to as the high and low chronology of Egypt (a difference of around 26 years depending on whether astronomical observations were made in Memphis or Thebes).

I disagree. To confine Egypt to a mere 26 years base don what?
Sirius rose
every year on July 10 the summer solstice in 12th dynasty Fort Quban
every year on July 12 in Thebes
every year on July 17 in Memphis
every year on July 18 in Alexandria.
A date in Fort Quban could be found stored in Memphis
and those 7 days would make a 28 year difference as
Memphis 28 years before Fort Quban.
But Sothis is not the only astronomy. This is proven by
Babylon miscalulating lunar dates of Venus as 275 years
earlier as 1901 BC instead of 1626 BC. How is Egypt different
that we can feel Sothis is the only trustworthy star.
In astronomy let three observations confirm every year.
There is also then language in all records interpreted as anyone chooses,
such as where the word for new year (opener) can mean three things,
calendar year first day, or rise of the star sothis,
or the winter solstice. I would like to point out
that the famous 8th month date Parmuti 16
presumed as July 17 Sothis in the 120th year of 12th dynasty
as 1872 BC could be the month Paopi 16 on Jan 6 in 1824 BC.
And its label as Flood may not be the Nile, but the 40 days of
Noah passing thru the winter sun. THOTH was January in
12th dynasty Egypt until Paopi leaped back to Jan 6.

[notalent]

I personally dwell on 1st to 19th dynasty Egypt to cover the Flood 2370 BC to the Exodus 1513 BC and prove its not Ramses of 1290 BC.

But if you remove 140 years from the trunk of the tree (dynasty 21, 22), the branches (dynasty 19, 18, etc.) are then lowered by the same amount.

[Elijah]

and just who is removing 140 years, which years, etc.
There isnt sufficent substance to what you said. Its like saying if the trip is 20 light-years shorter then the spaceship cant make it to Mars.

[notalent]

and just who is removing 140 years, which years, etc.
There isnt sufficent substance to what you said. Its like saying if the trip is 20 light-years shorter then the spaceship cant make it to Mars.

You seemed disdainful of Rohl's proposals for a revision of Egyptian chronology, and unaware of the physical evidence just cited that forms some of the foundation for the reassessment.  Something has got to give somewhere, and wherever that is, it's going to drag all Egyptian chronology forward in time with it.  There's simply no getting around that.  So the examples cited by themselves suggest something on the order of 140 year adjustment.  But those aren't the only adjustments being proposed.  They're just two examples.

[Elijah]

You seemed disdainful of Rohl's proposals for a revision of Egyptian chronology, and unaware of the physical evidence just cited that forms some of the foundation for the reassessment.  Something has got to give somewhere, and wherever that is, it's going to drag all Egyptian chronology forward in time with it.  There's simply no getting around that.  So the examples cited by themselves suggest something on the order of 140 year adjustment.  But those aren't the only adjustments being proposed.  They're just two examples.

Well i have looked all over this post and i see nothing youve cited.
No years, no kings, no dynasties other than the number 19 , 20, which means nothing in itself with no names nor years. So cut me out of this thread since you can post a third time and still state nothing. I didnt demand for source nor for links, just aksed for statement beyond just saying 140 years and not saying which 140 years. Any 6th grade teacher would fail such an empty remark without stating in your paper just what your remark is. Ciao. I wont pull teeth or kiss butt to get answers that i've already asked for twice. To say state the theory means state the theory, not play games.

[notalent]

You seemed disdainful of Rohl's proposals for a revision of Egyptian chronology, and unaware of the physical evidence just cited that forms some of the foundation for the reassessment.  Something has got to give somewhere, and wherever that is, it's going to drag all Egyptian chronology forward in time with it.  There's simply no getting around that.  So the examples cited by themselves suggest something on the order of 140 year adjustment.  But those aren't the only adjustments being proposed.  They're just two examples.

Well i have looked all over this post and i see nothing youve cited.
No years, no kings, no dynasties other than the number 19 , 20, which means nothing in itself with no names nor years. So cut me out of this thread since you can post a third time and still state nothing. I didnt demand for source nor for links, just aksed for statement beyond just saying 140 years and not saying which 140 years. Any 6th grade teacher would fail such an empty remark without stating in your paper just what your remark is. Ciao. I wont pull teeth or kiss butt to get answers that i've already asked for twice. To say state the theory means state the theory, not play games.

I must be allowed to say (and without rancor, mind you), "Mission accomplished", for now you know how the rest of us feel when reading some of your posts.  I have just given you a taste of your own mode of discourse.  And now I hope that your having walked a mile in our shoes in this exchange will impart some insight to you that would have otherwise been difficult to get across.

Ragards,

[Buck2419AD]

I have read "Pharoahs and Kings" by David Rohl. I am convinced that he is right. What caused me to believe he was right was his use of astronomical retrocalulation in dating the Ugarit Eclipse. With only one candidate for dating the eclipse approx 1012 B.C. in May at sunset if memory serves,taking into account we know who was talking to who. It should be easy to prove or disprove his theory since only straight forward number crunching is required. I never thought Astrophysics could be used in this manner until I read his book.

[eliyahu hanavi]

I have read "Pharoahs and Kings" by David Rohl. I am convinced that he is right. What caused me to believe he was right was his use of astronomical retrocalulation in dating the Ugarit Eclipse. With only one candidate for dating the eclipse approx 1012 B.C. in May at sunset if memory serves,taking into account we know who was talking to who. It should be easy to prove or disprove his theory since only straight forward number crunching is required. I never thought Astrophysics could be used in this manner until I read his book.

Well, it might depend on the edition date of that book. Last year, Rohl and his camp decided not to use that so-called pivotal date in future editions as due to mistranslation, the eclipse is more adequately dated to 1375 B.C.E. and thus only some 22-25 years from the traditional reign of Akhenaten. Some astronomical dates for eclipses can be found here...

NASA - olar Eclipses of History

Now, if it turns out that it is not a total eclipse, then Rohl might be able to salvage that. However, it was not the original stance and much of his chronology depended upon it. It is truly a horrendous blow to his chronology and not one easily overcome. Cheers!

[Buck2419AD]

I have read "Pharoahs and Kings" by David Rohl. I am convinced that he is right. What caused me to believe he was right was his use of astronomical retrocalulation in dating the Ugarit Eclipse. With only one candidate for dating the eclipse approx 1012 B.C. in May at sunset if memory serves,taking into account we know who was talking to who. It should be easy to prove or disprove his theory since only straight forward number crunching is required. I never thought Astrophysics could be used in this manner until I read his book.

Well, it might depend on the edition date of that book. Last year, Rohl and his camp decided not to use that so-called pivotal date in future editions as due to mistranslation, the eclipse is more adequately dated to 1375 B.C.E. and thus only some 22-25 years from the traditional reign of Akhenaten. Some astronomical dates for eclipses can be found here...

NASA - olar Eclipses of History

Now, if it turns out that it is not a total eclipse, then Rohl might be able to salvage that. However, it was not the original stance and much of his chronology depended upon it. It is truly a horrendous blow to his chronology and not one easily overcome. Cheers!

A quick check of my copy shows it is a 1995 edition. Do you have a link where I might read about Rohl's correction? This is the first that I have heard of it. The crucial thing is that it occured near sunset. I wondered at the time if they had taken into account partial and annular eclipses