Figure 1. Senusret III of the 12th Dynasty—the pharaoh of Joseph?
Article image and caption.
Posted on 06/05/2019 11:18:07 AM PDT by fishtank
Perspectives on ancient chronology and the Old Testament—part 2
by Murray R. Adamthwaite
6-5-2019
It is well known that dates for the first millennium BC are fairly firm, and that the Assyrian Eponym Canon has a full record of years as far back as 912/911 BC. However, prior to that the chronology is very much ‘up for grabs’. For Egypt, the resort has traditionally been to the so-called ‘Sothic cycle’ and fixing dates by the few astronomical references in Egyptian records. However, the neat scheme established by this method has in recent years started to come unstuck, and serious challenges have been made against Sothic chronology. In particular, the excavations by Manfred Bietak in the Fakus region of the Nile Delta have revealed what looks very much like the Israelite settlement, but much too early for traditional chronology, i.e. the 12th and 13th Dynasties. From the Mesopotamian and Syrian ends serious discrepancies have also arisen in regard to the later second millennium, especially from the texts from Emar in the Middle Euphrates region. In total, the discrepancies could amount to as much as 250 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
Figure 1. Senusret III of the 12th Dynasty—the pharaoh of Joseph?
Article image and caption.
ping
Figure 2. Karnak relief showing Fourth Battle Scene.
Article image and caption.
PinGGG!................
A few links to Manfred Bietak (Egyptologist):
http://www.greatarchaeology.com/archaeologist_list.php?archaeologist=100
https://patternsofevidence.com/2018/09/07/gods-wife-idol-worship-in-ancient-israel/
https://oeaw.academia.edu/ManfredBietak
“The World’s Oldest Alphabet”, by Douglas Petrovich, purports to decipher graffiti on rocks at the Sinai mines. Many of these are apparently in Hebrew
(Google “Sinai Inscriptions”, and then choose “images”, to see them).
Many of these mention biblical figures, and there is even one that translates (roughly) as, “We’re still slaves, but Moses had startled Egypt”.
The storehouses used to store the Seven Years Bounty have been excavated and are, like everything Egyptian, amazing.
Joseph used this famine as a means of buying all the land for the Pharaoh and making the peasants serfs.
Yes, the old “proto-Hebraic” inscriptions that were discovered by William Flinders Petrie. They are quite handy to bring up when people try to tell you that the Bible was written by illiterate sheep herders who passed it down through “oral tradition”, since they prove that the Hebrews had an alphabet and written language before they even left Egypt.
I hadn’t heard of Bietak’s work, but I have been checking out David Ruhl and his “New Chronology” he proposes for Egyptian dating. I’m not sure he gets everything right, but he does make some very compelling points.
Everything in the Bronze Age dating after a certain point is tied back to the Egyptian dating, which is built on a very shaky foundation. This is problematic when it comes to interpreting Biblical or even Greek archaelogy, since the chronology is being held in higher regard than even the physical evidence that is being dug up. If you know your chronology is based on flimsy evidence, and the chronology is not making sense in light of the archaelogy, I think it’s time to re-examine the premises you based the chronology on.
The academy will fight to the death against the Bible ...
- 1888BC. Sesostris III became pharaoh
- 1886BC. Joseph became Prime Minister/Grand Vizier
- 1877BC. The family of Joseph came to Egypt and took up residence in the land of Goshen
- 1850BC. Sesostris III died and was suceeded by Amenemhet III
- 1806BC Joseph died
Paging Dr. Velikovsky.....
Thanks fishtank. Is part 1 around? I may have seen it and merely forgotten, my steel trap mind has some rust now.Joseph and Potiphar, Immanuel Velikovsky
The story of Joseph is one of the best known in the Bible... in order to find out whether the personality of Joseph or the patron of the early stage of his career, Potiphar, is referred to in the historical documents, we have to look into those of the Middle Kingdom. The task appears simple. According to the Book of Genesis Potiphar was "an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard." In the register of the private names to the Ancient Records of Egypt by James Breasted, we find the name Ptahwer... at the service of the Pharaoh Amenemhet III of the Twelfth Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom. According to an inscription of Ptahwer at Sarbut el-Khadem in Sinai dated in the forty-fifth year of Amenemhet III, his office was that of "master of the double cabinet, chief of the treasury." ...The inscription records the successful accomplishment of some peaceful expedition. Since there is only one Ptahwer in the historical documents, and since he lived in the time when we expect to find him, we are probably not wrong in identifying the biblical Potiphar with the historical Ptahwer. This being the conclusion concerning Potiphar, we are curious to find whether any mention of Joseph is found in historical documents, too. the fact that from the great and glorious age of the Middle Kingdom only a very few historical inscriptions are extant. Since a great famine took place in the days of Joseph, it is, of course, important to trace such a famine in the age of which we speak. In the days of Amenemhet III there occurred in Egypt a famine enduring nine long years... Thus it seems that the Pharaoh in whose days was the seven years' famine was the successor of the Pharaoh in whose days began the rise of Joseph's career (if Yatu is Joseph). Potiphar, who lived under Amenemhet III, probably lived also under his successor. The inscription which deals with Ptahwer mentions a man whose name is transliterated by Breasted as Y-t-w. Among the monuments of Amenemhet III's reign is one of the Storekeeper... The inscription that mentions Ptahwer refers to his activity in the mines of the Sinai peninsula. In this respect it is of interest to find that the Jewish traditions connect Joseph with the area of the Sinai Peninsula saying that he kept a large quantity of treasuries near Baal Zaphon, the scene of the Passage of the Sea.
One of *those* topics.
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:^)Hammurabi and the Revised Chronology, Immanuel Velikovsky
King Hammurabi is the best known of the early monarchs of ancient times... belonged to the First BabyIonian Dynasty which came to an end, under circumstances shrouded in mystery, some three or four generations after Hammurabi. For the next several centuries, the land was in the domain of a people known as the Kassites. They left few examples of art and hardly any literary works -- theirs was an age comparable to and contemporaneous with that of the Hyksos in Egypt, and various surmises were made as to the identity of the two peoples. A cartouche of the Hyksos king Khyan was even found in Babylonia and another in Anatolia, a possible indication of the extent of the power and influence wielded by the Hyksos. Until a few decades ago, the reign of Hammurabi was dated to around the year 2100 before the present era... At Platanos on Crete, a seal of the Hammurabi type was discovered in a tomb together with Middle Minoan pottery of a kind associated at other sites with objects of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, more exactly, of its earlier part. This is regarded as proof that these two dynasties were contemporaneous... however... At Mari on the central Euphrates, among other rich material, a cuneiform tablet was found which established that Hammurabi of Babylonia and King Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria were contemporaries. An oath was sworn by the life of these two kings in the tenth year of Hammurabi, The finds at Mari "proved conclusively that Hammurabi came to the throne in Babylonia after the accession of Shamshi-Adad I in Assyria"... The Khorsabad list ends in the tenth year of Assur-Nerari V, which is computed to have been -745... the first year of Shamshi-Adad is calculated to have been -1726 and his last year -1694... it reduced the time of Hammurabi from the twenty-first century to the beginning of the seventeenth century... "a puzzling chronological discrepancy", which could only be resolved by making Hammurabi later than Amenemhet I of the Twelfth Dynasty... If Hammurabi reigned at the time allotted to him by the finds at Mari and Khorsabad -- but according to the finds at Platanos was a contemporary of the Egyptian kings of the early Twelfth Dynasty -- then that dynasty must have started at a time when, according to the accepted chronology, it had already come to its end. In conventionally-written history, by -1680 not only the Twelfth Dynasty, but also the Thirteenth, or the last of the Middle Kingdom, had expired.
With the decipherment of the multitudinous Egyptian texts, a few references to a star spdt were found, and were interpreted as recording the heliacal4 rising of the southern fixed star Sirius—and if from monuments it could also be learned in which months and on what day the star rose heliacally, events could be dated within the 1460-year-long "Sothic cycle." This made it possible to build a chronology of Egypt around the few dates so fixed -- and much work was spent in such an effort. With this as a basis, refinement could be achieved in various ways, most notably by trying to ascertain the length of the years of a king, usually relying on the highest year of his reign found recorded on monuments. Each king counted the years from his coronation -- Egypt had no continuous timetable. However, in Egyptian texts no reference to calculating by Sothic observations was ever found.
Thanks Red Badger. This digest of topic links is from a March 2019 file, there have been subsequent topics, I'm sure of it, see the keywords.
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