Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

Egyptian New Chronology

Or Could the Biblical history be True?

Page 2

4) The Sothic Cycle and its use by Egyptologists.

The two dates above (1537, 1872) were derived from documents mentioning the "Going forth of Sopdet" and the date (in the Egyptian calendar) of the said event.  And just what is the said event?  Egyptologists use it to describe what, in astronomy, we call "the heliacal rising of the star Sirius" (Sopdet being the Egyptian name for Sirius, the most brilliant star in the sky).  That's what we see when a star appears on the horizon at the same time as the sun in the morning.  For Sirius, that happens only once per SIDEREAL year (365.2564 mean solar days).  In theory, that event happens on the first day of the Egyptian year (day 1 of the first month of the season of Akhet).  But the Egyptian calendar only observed 365 whole days, so that, after four years, the heliacal rising would not happen on day one, but on day two, and so on...  If the sidereal year was exactly 365.25 (as is often said) the heliacal rising would then happen again on day one a full 1461 years later (365.25 x 4 --where 4 = 1/(365.25-365)--).  Since both documents contain what is thought to be an observed heliacal rising, and therefore day one of the "natural" year, one can easily calculate how many years have passed since the beginning of the 1461-year cycle.  For example, if the sighting occurred 63 days after the beginning of the civil calendar, then we can say that it occurred, at the earliest, 248 years after the beginning of the cycle (252 years at the latest, 62/63 x 4).  Furthermore, such an observation was made on day 1, first month of Akhet, of our year 139 AD (as reported by Censorinus, a Roman author).  Therefore the previous cycles began in 1321 BC, 2782 BC, etc (there being no year 0).  If we know, from general considerations, that our event could not have taken place as early as 2000 BC, than it must have happened between 1073 and 1069 BC.  And this is exactly what was done for the dates of Senusret III and Amenhotep I (with minor refinements).
 
From a physical point of view, two details must be noted, which undermine greatly the validity of the above argument:
  1. An astronomical observation is valid only for the specific locality in which the sighting took place.  From the North of Egypt (the Delta) to its South (Thebes, Aswan...) several days may pass between dates when the same observation can be made.  Since neither historical document states the place of observation, then the uncertainty is a lot greater than 4 years (a degree of uncertainty which must itself be multiplied by 4)  One must also consider that, even if the sky changes from day to day, the difference is not overwhelming...  So a star can be seen rising with the sun for a couple of days, here again multiplying each of these by 4.  Considering all these possibilities we can therefore add an error margin of ±50 years, at the least, on any "Sothic" date.
  2. Over such a long period, the 0.0064 day difference between a sidereal and an ideal year CANNOT be disregarded.  Actually, a real full Sothic cycle would be of (365.2564 x [1/{365.2564 - 365}]) = 1424.557 years (approximately), and the interval between a "one day" shift in the calendar being of (approximately) 3.9 years.  Therefore, the observed heliacal rising of year one, day 1 and the same event of year 5, day one won't be seen from exactly the same place.  Also, a cycle of 1424.something years is not very likely to have synchronized more than once with the Egyptian calendar (even assuming all observations made from the same place).  So, for our previous example, hypothesizing that the observation was made at the same place as Censorinus' and that both saw the same pattern in the sky, the event would be between 1043 and 1038 ([139 - 1424.6 + 1] + [62/63 * 3.9]) (plus one to account for the non-existing year 0).
 
So long for physics...  The above arguments do not prevent us from using the Sothic Cycle, they must however show how imprecise it really is when one wants exact and absolute dates.  As for the two documents used for Senusret III and Amenhotep I, they must be looked at more attentively (these arguments are derived from David Rohl's "A Test of time", about which more later).
  1. Ebers Calendar, year nine of Amenhotep I: On this document, one reads "month 3 of Shemu, day 9" followed by "Going forth of Sopdet".  Then, on the following line, the same date, only a month later (of the same year) followed by what appears to be a "ditto mark" (exactly like those found on many Egyptian documents), and so on for the 12 months of the year!!!  If the "Going forth of Sopdet" really is the heliacal rising of Sirius, than we have here a physical impossibility: Sirius can't rise with the sun 12 times a year!  So we have a choice: either the document really mentions a heliacal rising (a physical impossibility), or the phrase "going forth of Sopdet" refers to something else (more likely).  In both cases, the document is completely worthless in a purely chronological scope.
  2. Papyrus Berlin 10012, year 7 of Senusret III: This document reads "You should know that the going forth of Sopdet will happen on 4th month of Peret, day 16".  Wow!!  Whatever the meaning of the phrase, this records a PREDICTION, not an actual sighting!!!   We are not told if it was fulfilled or not, it is therefore not of much use.
 
There still remain two (that I am aware of) other documents which, although much less precise in nature, are unambiguous.  One is from a stela of Sobekhotep 'VIII' (a king of the Second Intermediate Period (or SIP) whose exact place in the line of known kings is still open to debate (and therefore here also not of much use). The inscription relates a late inundation (i. e. which occurred some time after day 1 of the first month of Akhet).  The other one (West Theban graffito #862) is from the time of a well-known king, Merenptah of the 19th dynasty (New Kingdom).  It reads: "Year 1, 3rd month of Akhet, day 3, (on) this day of the descent made by the water of the great inundation - [under Merenptah]" In other words, in the first year of Merenptah, the inundation began 62 days after the new year.  Now, nature being what it is, the inundation can begin over a 3 month period (1 & 1/2 month either side of the theoretical date), which imposes an error margin of [45 days x 3,9 years] 176 years, to which we must add our previous minimal margin of 50 years.  So, as computed above, the first year of Merenptah fell in  (1041 ± 228) BC, in other words, ANY TIME between 1269 and 813 BC.  Not of much use, indeed, but exact!
 
It now remains to mention two factors often "forgotten" by Egyptologists:
  1. For the whole construction to work properly, the Egyptian calendar must NEVER have been reformed...  This means that even when the inundation occurred in the 6th month of the year, they kept it that way.  This is quite hard to believe!!  And we also know that at times, the calendar was of 360 days...  It must not be forgotten that ANY reform in the calendar means "holes" of unknown length in the theoretical movement of the calendar (and therefore an unknown length of time between two sightings).
  2. How credible is Censorinus, anyway?  Has anyone run a star location software package (like those used in planetariums) to display the Egyptian sky on the morning of the day he says the heliacal rising took place???  If he is wrong, than so are all the Sothic dates... (special thanks to Don Mills for mentioning this possibility)
 
So, if the 3 pillars of Egyptian history are so shaky, can the Biblical Chronology help us to build a better chronology for Egypt?
 
previous page |  next page
 home page
 send me an e-mail!