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  • From: Brian Roberts <formoria AT carolina.rr.com>
  • To: MarianneLuban AT aol.com
  • Cc: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Rohl's Chronology Deconstructed
  • Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 14:16:52 -0400

Dear Marianne,


On Monday, July 26, 2004, at 01:58 PM, MarianneLuban AT aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 7/26/2004 9:37:18 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
peterkirk AT qaya.org writes:


David Rohl is also trained in archaeology and Egyptology.

By the way, I have found in Rohl's book "From Eden to Exile", p.11, a
clear statement: "The fact that Shoshenk is dated solely by identifying
him with Shishak - and therefore entirely through biblical chronology -
comes as a bit of a shock to [Israeli archaeologists]." So Rohl has
anticipated Yigal's confusion.

Yes, Rohl is trained in Egyptology, but that doesn't mean most of his
arguments stand on terra firma. His "Shishak" is Ramesses II and his argument for
that is that an attested nickname for a king named Ramesses is "sisi". Now that
much is so, but the way Rohl accounts for the final "k" just doesn't wash.
Given the tendancy of Ramesses II for self-glorification, if he had conquered
Jerusalem, we would have heard about it. After all, he boasted plenty about
the Battle of Kadesh--and that was not even a true victory for the Egyptians but
a kind of "draw"--where neither side really gained much.

Do the pharaohs ever defy our expectations?

The enemy. the
Hittites, continued to be a problem until the treaty I spoke of previously was
cemented. Also, Rohl puts the exodus in the 13th Dynasty due to a pharaoh of
that time called Kaneferrre--on the mere assertain of an historian, Artapanos,
that a pharaoh "Chenephres" came 60 years before another named "Achencheres", in
whose sway Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt. Yes, indeed, "Chenephres" is
the way someone who wrote in Greek would have rendered Kaneferre, but what
Rohl "omits" to say is that Manetho and his copiers all put this "Achencheres" in
the 18th Dynasty. Rohl's assertions are mostly based on stuff that could
only impress people who really know very little about ancient Egyptian
history--and among these he has a big fan base. The only time, in my opinion, where
Rohl makes any real points is when he talks about the Third Intermediate Period
and it is quite possible that this era is shorter than the consensus allows.
But that time is getting late in the history of ancient Egypt and assists not
at all with making Ramesses II, who lived long before the TIP, a contemporary
of King Rehoboam. Someone else said that Egypt was weak in the time of
Akhenaten. That is not exactly true. Akhenaten had a firm enough hold in Egypt for
some years--but he evidently neglected his empire. By the time of his
successor, Tutankhamun, Egypt was still prosperous enough--as anyone who has ever
seen the wonderful artifacts from his tomb can attest. No poor king of Egypt
could afford to put a ton of gold into his coffins alone and when Egypt finally
did hit the skids, much later, the impoverished kings took to looting the tombs
of ther royals of previous eras to keep them afloat--and even recycled the
funerary articles of the same for their own use--a terrible sacriledge, reallly,
but that is what they were reduced to--at about the same same Israel arose as
a kingdom. Previously, kings of Egypt had not sent their daughters to become
wives of foreign rulers (insofar as we know--we know at least that Amenhotep
III refused to give one of his many daughters to the king of Babylon, telling
him "it just isn't done") but Solomon got a daughter of one of the negligible
rulers of Egypt of the TIP, when Egypt was no longer a united kingdom, itself,
and it was no big deal--because the rulers of Egypt were "no big deal",
themselves, at that time. Another thing that pretty much rules out a Jewish united
kingdom emerging around the time of Akhenaten is the Hittites. If, by the
time of the death of Tutankhamun, Egypt was feeling a bit shaky, these Hittites
certainly weren't in that position. The Egyptians were so scared the Hittites
would march on their land that Tutankhamun's widow made the savvy move of
asking for a son of the Hittite king to be her new husband and king of Egypt--so
that at least the takeover would be bloodless. But that young man was
murdered by one of the contenders for the throne of Egypt at that time. And so the
Hittites went to war with the Egyptians, anyway. According to them, they
prevailed--but failed to reckon with the plagues of Egypt. The Egyptian prisoners
of war gave the Hittites some pathogen with which they were very ill equipped
to deal and they began dying like flies. But the time of Akhenaten was no
time at all for any "golden age" to emerge in Canaan. Akhenaten still had plenty
of clout--but he was no military pharaoh and thought he could keep the pax
Egyptiaca with diplomacy, like his father before him had done. He couldn't fill
his predecessor's shoes but in that time the people of Canaan were still
between the hammer and the anvil--Egypt and Hatti. Despite all the rebellion
there, this was no time of unification of anything in Canaan.

I think you're underplaying the significance of the rebellions in Canaan. After all, the campaigns of the Habiru did have the governor of Jerusalem very shaken, quite panicky. What did Akhenaten's clout buy him in Canaan? We have no indication that he sent troops or war materiele that helped turn the tide for the Egyptians. By the way, Canaan could not have been too much under the Egyptian thumb directly, because there's no evidence of Egyptian development on the ground in the period concerned.

Best Salaams,

Brian





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