Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

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Rob Acosta:

 

Having set forth the Biblical background in my prior post, let me now review your statement of the key facts and ask whether the Amarna Letters confirm a Year 13 date for Maya’s disgrace, per the Biblical dating.

 

To your key set of assertions, I will insert in brackets a few important clarifications of my own.  You wrote:  “You often refer to Milk-i-lu, Placing him in Years 12-14 and beyond [actually, Years 12-13] in your personal reconstruction of the Amarna period.  Readers should know the Egyptian commissioner of Milkilu's time was Yanhamu [in Year 12, per Amarna Letter EA 270, which I see Milk-i-Ilu as having sent to Akhenaten at the beginning of Akhenaten’s sole reign as the governing pharaoh].  Milkilu was killed in an uprising that swept away several rulers, (Abdi Heba, ruler of Jerusalem, for example is never heard from again after the uprising)...something you, Mr Stinehart, never mention.  [We don’t know if Milk-i-Ilu was killed;  he was an old man already in Year 12, per EA 270, and no one ever says he was killed.  The reason why we hear nothing of IR-Heba of Jerusalem after Year 14 is because we have no contentious Amarna Letters from south-central Canaan after Year 14;  no one knows what, if anything, happened to IR-Heba.  IR-Heba and Milk-i-Ilu were hated rivals, so it’s inherently unlikely that the same uprising would have swept away both of them, as you assert;  there is no support for that either in the Amarna Letters or Genesis.]   Yanhamu is transferred to Sumer after the murder of commissioner Pawuru by Aziru [in Year 12;  everything fits perfectly chronologically on my view;  this is happening shortly after Akhenaten finally becomes the governing pharaoh in Year 12;  this is precisely when Aziru took over from his recently deceased father, and is shortly before Labaya tries to carve out an independent state just south of the Jezreel Valley in Years 12-13], and a new commissioner, Maya is put in place as commissioner with the successor Milikilu of Gezer.  [It’s unclear if Maya is Egypt’s military commander in Canaan, or a commissioner, or both.  In any event, Maya operates in Canaan only in Years 12-13.  Then Maya is recalled in Year 13, apparently having been disgraced.  In Year 14, this is recounted in Amarna Letter EA 292 from Adda-danu, whom most historians see as eventually becoming the new ruler of the Ayalon Valley from Gezer after the fall from power of Yapaxu, who had succeeded Milk-i-Ilu as his firstborn son and ruled the Ayalon Valley most of Year 14.  One thing confusing about the exact chronology here is that the eventual third ruler of the Ayalon Valley, Adda-danu, apparently is writing his Amarna Letters somewhat unofficially as he tries to become the de facto new ruler of the Ayalon Valley during the course of Year 14, before he was [presumably] officially appointed to that position by Akhenaten at the end of Year 14.  Maya falls from grace in Year 13, and this is later referred to in Year 14 by the last ruler we hear of in the Ayalon Valley.]   The point is this.  According to E. F. Campbell in his book "the Chronology of the Amarna letters"...from which all the details are taken, ALL of Maya's letters from Gezer were written before Year 9 of Akhenaten.  [No!  This is explicitly refuted by pre-eminent historians Redford and Aldred as quoted below.  All that we know that pre-dates Year 9 is the spelling of the name “Aten” in Maya’s titles in his tomb 14 at Akhetaten.]  By then Maya had fallen into disgrace, was removed from office and his tomb defaced.”  [Maya fell from grace in Year 13, not before Year 9.]

 

As to chronology, the fact that the pre-Year 9 form of the divine name “Aten” is used in Maya’s titles in his rock tomb at Amarna does not mean that he was disgraced in Year 9!  Rather, it just means that Maya was one of the first top officials of Akhenaten at Amarna, having gained his titles prior to Year 9.  Please note that the earlier forms [pre-Year 9] of the name Aten were not removed after Year 9.  Even in the Maru-Aten sunshade temple that was re-dedicated to Akhenaten’s daughter Meritaten/Mayati in Year 13, four percent of the names of Aten are the old pre-Year 9 style.  So the fact that Maya’s titles in his tomb at Amarna use the pre-Year 9 form does not mean that he was disgraced by Year 9;  it just means that he was a top official at Amarna from its earliest days.

 

The  o-n-l-y  time when top officers came under suspicion at Amarna was in Year 13, when work on  a-l-l  the nobles’ tombs at Amarna was temporarily stopped.  No tomb was ever finished [although some work on a few tombs was done after Year 13].  It’s also unclear when the defacement of Maya’s tomb occurred:  it may have occurred long after the Amarna Age, which is why most leading historians see such defacement as having little or no significance.  As noted in my prior post, Biblically the “Chief Baker” is impaled when Joseph is age 13 years [in 12-month years].  Historically, it was Year 13 when the “Overseer of the House of Pacifying the Aten”/Maya [the Biblical “Chief Baker”] fell from Akhenaten’s grace, and soon was removed from his short-lived duties in Canaan.

 

You have mixed up the fact that Maya’s titles use the pre-Year 9 spelling of “Aten” with the question of when Maya fell from grace, which did not happen until Year 13.  Campbell wrote his booklet over 50 years ago when he was still a student;  it raises interesting questions but nothing more than that.  Let’s see what two big-name historians think of his theory that Maya was disgraced before Year 9:

 

(1)  “The offices Maya occupies (to judge from the titular in the tomb) were later assumed by others, suggesting that a monopoly on these offices was broken by a fall from favour.  The latter Albright dated to year 7.  This argumentation is not compelling.”  Redford, D. B. (1990), “Egypt and Canaan in the New Kingdom”, in “Beer-Sheva 4”, Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University, p. 14.

 

(2)  “Albright and Campbell have made large deductions.  Unfortunately they have overlooked a number of serious objections to their thesis.  …In any case the fact that the tomb of Maya was still incomplete before Year 9 at the latest is of no significance.”  Cyril Aldred, “Akhenaten, Pharaoh of Egypt” (1968), p. 202.

 

Maya probably did fall from grace, but that was not until Year 13.  Maya’s fall from grace in Year 13 was remembered by Milk-i-Ilu’s eventual successor in the Ayalon Valley, who refers to it in Year 14 in Amarna Letter EA 292.  In that Amarna Letter, Adda-danu [his exact name being unclear] has not yet become the official ruler of Gezer, but nevertheless he has already been instructed by Akhenaten to work with commissioner Reanap, who has replaced Maya.  Years 13-14 were fluid and troubled in the Ayalon Valley!  Milk-i-Ilu died.  His firstborn son Yapaxu succeeded him, but soon fell from power, though there may have been many months when it wasn’t certain whether Yapaxu would regain power or not.  Adda-danu eventually seems to have become the successor ruler of the Ayalon Valley, though our last Amarna Letters regarding him never refer to him as having yet been formally appointed as the new official ruler by Akhenaten.  Everything was fine in Year 12, and order seems to have been restored to the Ayalon/)LN Valley/(MQ by the end of Year 14, but in between, late Year 13 and most of Year 14 were chaotic, frightful, and fluid.  For the better part of two years [Years 13-14], it wasn’t quite clear who would come out on top as the new ruler of the Ayalon Valley, or whether tent-dwellers like the first Hebrews in the northern half of the Ayalon Valley would be permitted to remain there. 

 

Milk-i-Ilu himself was still alive in Year 12 and writing to Akhenaten, per Amarna Letter EA 270.  You have unfortunately left out all of the Amarna Letters of Milk-i-Ilu’s firstborn son, Yapaxu [Biblically the “iniquitous Amorite”], who was Milk-i-Ilu’s immediate successor, all of which letters date to Year 14 [perhaps mainly from the first half of Year 14].

 

The events you reference that had a direct impact on south-central Canaan in Years 12-14 are all nicely represented in the Patriarchal narratives, with exact, accurate Years supplied by the Biblical text.  Maya’s fall from grace in Year 13 as the “Chief Baker”/“Overseer of the House of Pacifying the Aten” is at Genesis 40: 22, being portrayed as occurring when Joseph is age 13 years, hence Year 13.  Milk-i-Ilu as the fine Amorite princeling ruler of the Ayalon Valley is at Genesis 14: 13 regarding “Mamre the Amorite” [although a slight amount of artistic license has been taken there in portraying him as still being in power through early Year 14, when in historical fact he probably died in late Year 13].  After chapter 14 of Genesis everything changes in the valley/(MQ quickly, as Genesis 15: 16 speaks darkly of “the iniquity of the Amorite”, referring specifically to Yapaxu as Milk-i-Ilu’s firstborn son who succeeded him by early Year 14 and who, per Amarna Letters EA 298 and 299, hated tent-dwellers in the Ayalon Valley, including the first Hebrews. 

 

The one big mistake you have made, which has totally thrown off your chronology [being the faulty chronology that was provisionally proposed as a suggestion over 50 years ago by Campbell, and which is refuted by preeminent historian Cyril Aldred], is that the fact that Maya’s titles have the pre-Year 9 spelling of “Aten” does not mean that he fell from grace in Year 9!  No, Maya didn’t fall from grace until Year 13, just as Genesis 40: 22 effectively tells us.  The early Hebrew author of the Patriarchal narratives knows  m-u-c-h  more about Years 12-14 at Amarna than does E.F. Campbell.

 

Jim Stinehart

Evanston, Illinois