A Storm in Egypt during the Reign of Ahmose [The Tempest Stele]

Thera Foundation ^ | September 1989 (last modified March 26, 2006) | E.N. Davis

[SunkenCiv]

An inscribed stele erected at Thebes by Ahmose, the first Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, documents a destructive storm accompanied by flooding during his reign.

Fragments of the stele were found in the 3rd Pylon of the temple of Karnak at Thebes between 1947 and 1951 by the French Mission. A restoration of the stele and translation of the text was published by Claude Vandersleyen (1967). In the following year (1968), Vandersleyen added two more fragments, one from the top of the inscription and a small piece from line 10 of the restored text, which had been recovered by Egyptian archaeologists in the final cleaning of the foundations.

Each of the two sides of the stele bore the same inscription, allowing Vandersleyen to produce a restored text by collating them. The upper portion, after giving the King's titles and a recitation of religious ceremonies, describes the storm. It is unfortunately the most damaged part of the stele, with the result that there are many lacunae in the meteorological description. The description of the storm is followed by a virtually complete text that specifies the measures taken by the King to relieve the distress of the people and to repair the damages at Thebes.

An English version of Vandersleyen's translation, beginning with the description of the storm, is offered here for the convenient [sic] of Aegean specialists.

[SunkenCiv]

the tempest stele

Google

[SunkenCiv]

I was preparing an entirely different topic posting; during a drive search for the files (from August) I felt I needed something else I knew I had, but ran across something else (on radiocarbon dating problems on Thera), and loaded the index page. This was another paper linked there. Read with caution however -- everything on the page relates to the controversy of Thera dating, and not in what I'd call a good way. :')

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Plenty more where this came from. :') Improbability of a Theran Collapse During the New Kingdom, 1503 - 1447 B.C. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[SunkenCiv]

index page, alpha sort:

• Another Suite of Confusing Radiocarbon Dates for the Destruction of Akrotiri -- An extensive series of radiocarbon dates obtained on seeds from the West House in Akrotiri has not provided a definitive age for the last occupation of this site. Seventy separate AMS determinations on forty seeds show the same wide scatter as did the original measurements, and various interpretations are possible.
• The Application of Tree-Ring and Ice-Core Studies to the Dating of the Minoan Eruption -- Over the past decade a number of authors have suggested that prehistoric climatic disturbances, inferred from frost damage in trees and acidity peaks in Greenland ice cores, relate to the Bronze Age Minoan eruption of Santorini.
• Archaeological Observations at Akrotiri Relating to the Volcanic Destruction -- It is clear from the papers of several collegues that Akrotiri had been in existence for many centuries before its destruction and burial beneath the tick mantle of volcanic ash.
• Archaeomagnetic Results from Late Minoan Destruction Levels on Crete and the 'Minoan' Tephra on Thera -- Minoan palaces, town houses and villas were strongly heated during fire destructions on Crete, generally attributed to LM I times and often to the end of LM IB.
• The Chronology of the Last Phases of Occupation at Akrotiri in the Light of the Evidence from the West House Pottery Groups -- The pottery of the Volcanic Destruction Level at Akrotiri falls into an identical pattern of wares within each building. The pattern is shown most clearly in the West House pottery, as the building has been completely excavated and the study of the material is well advanced.
• The Chronology of the LM I Destruction Horizons in Thera and Crete -- Recent attempts to separate the Thera eruption from the LM IB destructions in Crete by as much as 50 years encounter two major difficulties: (1) Pottery and frescoes from Akrotiri show some LM IB features; (2) The presence of Theran tephra in buildings in Crete indicates a causal connection with the eruption.
• Destruction and Construction in the Palace at Knossos: LM IA - B -- Evans discovered a substantial amount of evidence from within the Palace at Knossos for a destruction towards the end of Late Minoan IA which he ascribed to an earthquake.
• The Earliest History of Akrotiri: The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Phases -- After recent thorough investigation of the copious amounts of pottery sherds from the Akrotiri excavation, the indications of human activity at the site since at least the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, or even the very beginning of the Early Cycladic II period, occasionally mentioned by the excavators Marinatos and Doumas and by other scholars, have turned out to be a considerable and indisputable body of evidence proving the continuous occupation of the site not only throughout the Early Bronze Age of the Cyclades but even earlier, from the Aegean Late Neolithic period, that is around the middle of the 5th millennium BC, and thus extending the life of Akrotiri more than a millennium backwards.
• The Eruption of Thera: Date and Implications -- A number of recent archaeological and scientific papers have proposed a 'high', 17th century BC date for the eruption of Thera, and hence for the beginning of the Aegean Late Bronze Age.
• Theoretical Radiocarbon Discrepancies -- An attempt will be made to reconcile the calibrated radiocarbon dates from Akrotiri with the traditional archaeological chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age, supporting the archaeological date of c. 1550-1500 BC for the LM IA period.
• Excavations at Pseira: The Evidence for The Theran Eruption -- Pseira, on the north-east coast of Crete, has recently yielded new evidence for the correlation between the eruption of Thera and the LM IB destructions on Crete.
• High Chronology or Low Chronology: The Archaeological Evidence -- Three independent methodologies - radiocarbon, an analysis of frost - damaged tree rings, and a determination of acidity layers in polar ice - have argued with varying degrees of conviction for a Theran eruption in the second half of the 17th century BC.
• Improbability of a Theran Collapse During the New Kingdom, 1503 - 1447 B.C. -- Two generally accepted collateral hypotheses are keys to the chronology of when the island of Thera collapsed into a caldera: 1. That the tsunamis(seismic sea waves) generated struck most of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral and the islands; 2. The area wide destruction wrought was of such a magnitudethat the catastrophe resulted in wide devastation both seismic and water borne.
• Irish Tree Rings and an Event in 1628 BC -- In prehistoric times, oaks growing on the surface of Irish raised bogs were recording rare extreme events.
• Minoan Tephra in Lake Sediments in Western Turkey: Dating the Eruption and Assessing the Atmospheric Dispersal of the Ash -- Radiocarbon dating of the Minoan eruption has been complicated by potential contamination of organic material and selection of inappropriate material for radiocarbon age determination.
• New Archaeological Evidence for a 17th Century Date of the 'Minoan Eruption' from Israel (Tel Kabri, Western Galilee) -- Connections between Thera and the Canaanite culture of Syro-Palestine are well established (Buchholz 1980). As I have argued elsewhere (Niemeier 1986), these connections are to be understood within the Minoan trade network.
• On the Late Helladic I of Akrotiri, Thera -- This paper is a brief comment on the imported LH I style pottery that has come to light at the Late Cycladic I settlement of Akrotiri on Thera.
• Overview and Assessment of the Evidence for the Date of the Eruption of Thera -- What I propose to do is to survey some of the heterogeneous evidence for the dating of the eruption of Thera and, where possible, give my subjective assessment of the validity of each bit of evidence, both individually and collectively.
• Pottery Styles and Chronology -- I wonder whether I can make some contribution to the question of the proposed high date for the explosion of Thera on a quite unscientific level - in fact a very subjective approach. It consists in judging, from many years of studying Late Minoan pottery, how many generations of potters might be responsible for the vases in each stylistic phase.
• The Precision of Ice-Core Dating -- A strong volcanic acid signal was found in the ice-core annual layer 1645 BC in the South Greenland deep ice core at Dye 3. The volcanic marking of the ice has been ascribed to the eruption of Thera (Hammer et al. 1987).
• Problems of Interpretation of the Akrotiri Radiocarbon Dates -- The recent publication of a new series of radiocarbon dates from the LM IA destruction of Akrotiri, Thera, has focused attention on this time period because of the early nature of the series.
• Radiocarbon Dated Plant Remains from the Akrotiri Excavation on Santorini, Greece -- A palaeoethnobotanical description of plant remains from some storage vessels from the Akrotiri excavation on Thera and an anatomical description of Tamarix wood is given.
• Radiocarbon Dates from the Akrotiri Excavations -- During the last Santorini Congress 'Thera and the Aegean World' in 1978, geologists and archaeologists disagreed with respect to the date of the catastrophic eruption of the volcano of Thera which destroyed the Minoan village of Akrotiri.
• Radiocarbon Dates from the Site of Akrotiri, Thera, 1967-1977 -- Discrepancies in the radiocarbon dates from Akrotiri are partly due to the small size of many of the samples, but also perhaps to the effects of gaseous emanations from the volcano. Careful study is needed to resolve the questions.
• Radiocarbon Dating by AMS of the Destruction of Akrotiri -- Recently there has been much discussion and argument over the absolute dating of the Aegean Late Bronze Age. The controversy centres round whether the 'traditional' time range (c. 1600-1500 BC) for LM IA should be accepted, or whether the period should be assigned to an earlier age range (c. 1700-1610BC).
• Radio-Isotope Analyses of Aegean Tephras: Contribution to the Dating of Santorini Volcano -- Beta and Gamma spectroscopy measurements are presented for the first time on volcanic tephras from Santorini and Yali as well as from Minoan settlements in Rhodes and Kos.
• Santorini Tephra from Rhodes and Kos: Some Chronological Remarks Based on the Stratigraphy -- The present paper deals with some problems of the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age Aegean chronology. and is an attempt at a closer dating for the tephra fall, based on the following evidence...
• Sea-Borne Pumice Deposits of Archaeological Interest on Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean Beaches -- Various pumice deposits found on Aegean and eastern Mediterranean beaches are of considerable archaeological interest, because they can be dated to the period of the famous Bronze Age (LM IA) eruption of Thera (Santorini).
• A Storm in Egypt during the Reign of Ahmose -- In view of the current controversies that surround the question of the absolute date of the Santorinieruption, Aegean specialists may wish to consider some evidence from Egypt that could bear on thequestion.
• Stratified Pumice from Bronze Age Knossos -- Archaeological situation: Whatever the size or impact of the 'Minoan' eruption of Thera, the object of historical enquiry must be to relate this event as closely as possible in time to the course of the Minoan civilization centred on Crete.
• The Stratigraphy of Akrotiri -- The stratigraphic evidence shows that Akrotiri was inhabited without a break from the middle of the Early Bronze until its end. In the Late Bronze Age the city was destroyed, probably by earthquakes, and afterwards extensively rebuilt.
• Summary of Evidence for the Absolute Chronology of the Early Part of the Aegean Late Bronze Age Derived from Historical Egyptian Sources -- Before the evidence of datable cross-links is summarized a possible methodological objection tothe use of such links as direct evidence for dating (a procedure common to archaeology world-wide)must be considered.
• Theran Ash in Minoan Crete: New Excavations on Mochlos -- During the summer of 1989 excavations were resumed on the island of Mochlos in eastern Crete under the direction of Costis Davaras of the Archaeological Institute of Crete and Jeffrey S. Soles of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
• Time for Vulcanologists, Time for Archaeologists -- I am not quite sure it is very convenient to print and circulate the paper I had prepared for the Thera congress, as now it will take a long time before meeting our Colleagues and discussing the points with them. So I feel it is more appropriate just to list the main questions I intended to put forward, and to let these interrogations find their way into the opinion of scientists.

[D Rider]

An interesting overview is the movie The Exodus Decoded.

[JoeProBono]

[SunkenCiv]

“This isn’t a shower...” — Bill Cosby

[wildbill]

First thing that occurred to me was Thera and the possibility of a storm and sunami hitting the Egyptian coast.

Don’t have time to read all the back and forth now.

[SunkenCiv]

No chance of that. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

:')

[D Rider]

I think Rohl Had Dudimose set as the Pharaoh of the Exodus which is 2 Pharaohs before Ahmoses.

In any event, the classical chronological construction continues to have severe problems.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks. Rohl’s work came out of the (failed) Glasgow Chronology, which also spawned the “Centuries of Darkness” book from Peter James et al. Back in early 2000, some comments I made on another forum:

[snip] David Rohl, part of the Glasgow School (which formed as a result of a convention about Velikovsky about 20 years ago) has two books out, and a third is coming soon. His Pharaohs and Kings also places the Exodus in the 13th Dynasty, and in fact even picks the same pharaoh as Dr V did (back in 1952!). Peter James et al, author of Centuries of Darkness, is also from the Glasgow School.

...Briefly, since Rohl comes to the same conclusion for the Exodus as Dr V, he has to reduce the length of the Hyksos period along the lines of the conventional view, but also has to squash dynasties subsequent to the 19th in order to make his system work. The era of the 18th and 19th dynasties (the real glory years of Egypt in a certain sense) have synchronisms with other places (such as Greece and Mesopotamia) that make it difficult for the timid to change them much.

In this regard Courville’s work with the Mesopotamian kingdoms really seems to shine... Rohl and James don’t seem to work with the problems there at all. They seem to think they can bail out the chronology by relying on the Mesopotamian chronology, forgetting apparently that it was developed dependent on the Egyptian chronology. [unsnip]

One minor correction, Velikovsky’s chronological framework was first published in outline form in 1945. :’)

[D Rider]

Do you then hold tho the classical chronology that correlates the Exodus with Ramses II?

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths.htm

Lamentations for the City of Ur

excerpt:

Enlil called the storm. The people mourn.
Winds of abundance he took from the land. The people mourn.
Bood winds he took away from Sumer. the people mourn.
Deputed evil winds. The people mourn.
Entrusted them to Kingaluda, tender of storms.

He called the storm that annihilates the land. The people mourn.
He called disastrous winds. The people mourn.
Enlil — choosing Gibil as his helper —
called the (great) hurricane of heaven. The people mourn.
The (blinding) hurricane howling across the skies — the people mourn —
the tempest unsubduable like breaks through levees,
beats down upon, devours the city’s ships,
(all these) he gathered at the base of heaven. The people mourn.

(Great) fires he lit that heralded the storm. The people mourn.
And lit on either flank of furious winds the searing heat of the desert.
Like flaming heat of noon this fire scorched.

The storm ordered by Enlil in hate, the storm which wears away the country,
covered Ur like a cloth, veiled it like a linen sheet.

http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/texts/lamentations/lamentur.html

http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/myths/lamentations.htm

Lament for the Cities of Turin and Sumer

92...The dark time was roasted by hailstones and flames. The bright time was wiped out by a shadow. (2 mss. add 2 lines: On that bloody day, mouths were crushed, heads were crashed. The storm was a harrow coming from above, the city was struck by a hoe.) On that day, heaven rumbled, the earth trembled, the storm worked without respite. Heaven was darkened, it was covered by a shadow; the mountains roared. Utu lay down at the horizon, dust passed over the mountains. Nanna lay at the zenith, the people were afraid. The city ...... stepped outside. The foreigners in the city even chased away its dead. Large trees were uprooted, the forest growth was ripped out. The orchards were stripped of their fruit, they were cleaned of their offshoots. The crop drowned while it was still on the stalk, the yield of the grain diminished...

[SunkenCiv]

Nope. The Exodus happened at the end of the Middle Kingdom; the conventional pseudochronology placing Ramses II far enough back to have been the Pharaoh of the Exodus (in the OT, two cities are named, on Pi-Ramesses “place of Ramesses”, the other Pi-Thom “place of Thom”) may have begun as a prop to the Biblical account, but wound up being used to bash the Bible. The synchronisms are fit exquisitely by Velikovsky in his historical reconstruction — oddly enough, other than the supposed super-eruption of Thera.

Ed Schorr (writing as Israel Isaacson or something like that, to avoid problems with his budding academic career) pointed out that any such eruption would have to date five centuries or so later than what remains the conventional date, circa 1500 BC, in order not to conflict with the reconstruction (basically, he framed it as a choice between Worlds In Collision and Ages In Chaos; the fact is, the Thera eruption is discussed very briefly in WiC, and is immaterial to the thesis of that book; Velikovsky simply made a rare error).

There is no documentary evidence of such a mighty eruption in surviving ancient records (not a peep); Herodotus actually discusses the island, and doesn’t mention anything about it; the only ancient source that mentions an eruption dates one to about 200 BC., and since Latin loan words have been discerned in some of the supposedly much older Linear B texts, and the Romans arrived around 207 BC, Linear B was still in use for a long time after the supposed Dark Age of Greece (another mythical construct that is a consequence of the conventional pseudochronology).

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Fred Nerks!

[night reader]

Bush’s Fault! Women and Children most affected! Just wait ‘til the Barackamites send in FEMA!

[Berosus]

Actually, David Rohl has four books out: Pharaohs and Kings, Legend, From Eden to Exile (called The Lost Testament when it was in hardcover), and The Lords of Avaris. I ordered them in February 2008.

[SunkenCiv]

“Pharaohs and Kings” also had a different title, “Test of Time” — the title of a projected work by Velikovsky which never came about. :’)

[SunkenCiv]

:')