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Egyptian New Chronology

Or Could the Biblical history be True?

by Jean-Frédéric

DISCLAIMER:

CONTENTS:

 
 1) Introduction  2) Bible vs Egyptian Chronology
 3) The Pillars of Egyptian Chronology  4) The Sothic Cycle and its use by Egyptologists.
 5) New Chronologies  6) Manetho's Aegyptiaca (First Book)
 6) second page  6) third page
 7) The Date of Joseph's Famine  8) A New Chronology for the 12th Dynasty of Egypt 
 9) Bridging the FIP gap 10) The kings who knew not Joseph NEW!!!
11) Mike Sanders's chronology // date of the Exodus NEW!!! 12) The hyksos High kings / Second Intermediate Period  Comming soon

1) Introduction

    In the last decades, many attempts were made to adjust the Ancient Egyptian chronology so that it fits better with the Jewish history, as known from the Bible (and, for that matter, with many other near-eastern ancient civilizations).  Indeed, the archeological history of almost every ancient civilization of the Near East is completely dependent on the dates developed by Egyptologists,  even if the "locals" also have a very well documented chronology of their own (like the Hebrew Bible).  Practically, this means that when an Egyptian object (say one of the time of Tuthmosis III) is found in a given stratum of a Palestinian archeological site, the whole stratum will be attributed to the time of Tuthmosis III (in this example), which is logical.  The next step, logically, is to date the site ...  The problem, however, is that is often done blindly.  Let me explain.  According to the accepted Egyptian chronology, there were no Hebrews in Palestine in the time of Tuthmosis III...  So people simply don't look at the data for the same site provided by Hebraic history, even if, prior to the discovery of this object, the very same stratum was ascribed to a Biblical event!  The new object simply (and uncritically) discards the old interpretations, since the new find simply proves that it happened BEFORE the Hebrews ever got there (according to their own history texts).  Similar discoveries "showed" the world that the Walls of Jericho had fallen long before Joshua came by, that Jerusalem's "Millo" had been built long before the time of Solomon, and the list goes on.


2) Bible vs Egyptian Chronology

    The Bible provides us with a complete chronology for Hebraic history...  Like any document, it is not error-proof (at least in its actual form).  Yet, one must never forget its sacred nature.  Because of its religious content, many simply discard the historical value of the document...  On the other hand, precisely because of this sacred nature, the text was always recopied with matchless care, thus reducing greatly the number of actual transmission errors...  So, historically speaking, the Biblical chronology can be considered trustworthy (as long as it can be backed up by archeology, of course).

    Do we have a similar document for Egyptian history?  The answer is no.  We do possess some very helpful king lists, providing us with a very helpful "skeleton", but nothing comparable to the Bible.  The most complete lists we have are 1) the Turin Papyrus and 2) the various epitomes of Manetho's History of Egypt (now lost).  All these lists give us names of kings and their reign lengths.  But they also divide these kings into groups (like Manetho's 30 dynasties).  While archeology did confirm most of the data contained within those lists, it also showed that many of the groups were in fact contemporaries (i.e. more than one ruler at the same time).  And the lists do not give us many hints on exactly how each group was related to the others. So, the actual chronology of Egypt was developed by using mostly archeological material, which is a good thing for "artifact rich" periods, but proves very cumbersome for more obscure eras.  So, in order to establish an absolute date for an event well documented, but happening before or between obscure eras, Egyptologists had to use methods independent of the king-lists.

3) The Pillars of Egyptian Chronology, and how they collapse

    Going back in time from now, the first really obscure period of Egyptian history is that conveniently called the "Third Intermediate Period" (or TIP).  After this period (i.e., from 664 BC to the present day) all events in Egypt can be absolutely dated very accurately thanks to many documents both from Egypt itself and from neighboring countries (including the Bible).  Before that, Egyptologists developed 3 major pillars, "fixed points" from which all their dates are ultimately derived.
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1) 945 BC = year 20 of  Shoshenq I (TIP)
This one is based on the identification of king Shoshenq, the most powerful king of the 22nd dynasty, as the Biblical "Shishak King of Egypt" mentioned in the first book of Kings and the second book of Chronicles.  But the identification is not as secure as Kenneth A. Kitchen, the leading expert on the TIP chronology believes...  A quick glance at the "JEROBOAM - Prince of Egypt" lecture from  Mike Sanders' Bible Mysteries Pages should convince you of how unstable that crucial link is.  To cut a long story short, the Egyptian Shoshenq campaigned throughout Palestine, destroying mostly cities of the northern kingdom of Israel (and very little of Judah) while the Biblical Shisak captured all Judaean fortresses (and received heavy tribute from Jerusalem) but did not attack Israel (his ally).

2) 1537 BC = year 9 of Amenhotep I (New Kingdom)
3) 1872 BC = year 7 of Senousert III (Middle Kingdom)
These two are the "Heart and Soul" of the chronology of their respective era (New and Middle Kingdoms).  Indeed, while the internal chronology of each is relatively well known, the intermediate periods forbid any "easy" absolute dating, as said above.  Now, Egyptologists thought these two dates were solid, being based on sound astronomical data...  Now being myself a physics (and astronomy) student, I can assure you that this isn't the case at all.  Let's see why.
 

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