A quote from everybody favorite archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, in his
"David and Solomon" page 73 regarding the dating for ****shak notes:
"Due to the very fragmentary nature of Egyptian records in this period, it
is difficult to provide the pharaohs of the Twenty-first and Twenty-second
Dynasties with exact dates. The reign of Sheshonq I has always been dated
by his identification as ****shak, according to the traditional biblical
chronology of the Judahite kings' reigns."
Now, in additional to this, what is not stated is that this dating is not
established based upon Persian or Neo-Babylonian Biblical timelines, but
is
piggy-backed off the Assyrian timeline which mentions Ahab at the battle
of
Qarqar. So basically you have a combination of secular and Biblical
chronology used to date ****shak who then is applied to Sheshonq. That
is,
the 5th of Rehoboam in 925 BCE is calculated to be 72 years prior to the
battle of Qarqar in 853 BCE. Thus note the following:
1. If you revise the Assyrian timeline, then ****shak's dating will
auto-adjust accordingly.
2. It will likewise affect the current Egyptian timelime, but potentially
only during the imprecise periods of the 21st and 22nd Dynasties.
IMPACT OF 709 BCE ECLIPSE REVISION: Of note, theoretically, Xenophon was
paid off by the Persians to revise Greek history, employing his pals Plato
and Aristotle to help mastermind the details. There result was adding 30
years between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars, increasing that from 20
to
50, and also moving an original eclipse dating the beginning of the war
from
403/402 BCE to 431/430 BCE. This 28-year distortion added to the 30
years
of historical expansion distorted the Greek Period by 58 years. This was
adjusted to 56 years to coordinate events with the 40-year Olympic Cycle
(since 50 is not evenly divisible by 4).
As a result of the above, however, later records were revised to reflect
this expansion, pu****ng Neo-Babylonian and Persian dates back in time by
56
years. This was adjusted for the Assyrian Period by a similar eclipse 54
years earlier that could be dated to the month of Simanu using an
alternative dating system that begins the year before the spring equinox.
The original eclipse event was in 709 BCE, the substitute event 54 years 1
month earlier was in 763 BCE, which is the eclipse the currently dated
Assyrian timeline is based upon, and likewise, the dating for ****shak.
But if we correct this using the 709 BCE eclipse, ****shak's invasion would
be down-dated 54 years to 871 BCE rather than 925 BCE. The best
available
RC14 dating for that event, based upon short-lived grains found at the
destructive level by ****shak of Rehov, a city he mentions in his
inscription
as being conquered is c. 871 BCE (874-867 BCE higest "relative
probability").
http://www.geocities.com/ed_maruyama/rehov872.html
Therefore, that results in about a 54 to 60-year expansion in the Egyptian
timeline. Since the original dating problems were related to indefinite
dating for the 21st and 22nd dynasties, the expansion is presumed to have
occurred during that time. Perhaps with some missing or shortened
king****ps. It would be difficult to tell. But what we can do is
compare
the dating of the earlier dated dynasties which are coordinated with
archaeological dating and see how that 54-year expansion affects that
dating. Well does it? NO.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPARISON: Fall of Jericho. Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon
dates the fall of Jericho by the Israelites between 1350-1325 BCE. This
is
coordinated with the Egyptian timeline, and thus will be our comparative
reference:
Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up Jericho, Jericho and the Coming of the
Israelites, page 262:
"As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites, all
that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my
view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is
a
date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the entry
of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which
prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C."
A second potential "absolute" reference is the KTU 1.78 astrotext, which
is
currently dated by David Rohl to year 12 of Akhenaten. The official
dating
for that eclipse is 1375 BCE which would date the 1st of Akhenaten to 1386
BCE. This is within the archaeological dating by Kenyon for the fall of
Jericho since that would date that event to 1346 BCE. Thus we can
potentially compare the Exodus event in 1386 BCE with the 871 BCE dating
based upon the Biblical timeline, which was used archaeologists to date
****shak's invasion in the first place. How does it compre?
Well, the 4th of Solomon is 480 years after the Exodus which based upon
1386
BCE would be dated to 906 BCE. That means Solomon's 40-year rule would be
dated per the Bible and the KTU 1.78 eclipse event from 910-870 BCE.
****shak's invasion was during the reign of Solmon in the 5th co-ruler****p
year of Rehoboam and thus very late in Solomon's reign. If we presume it
was his 39th year then ****shak's invasion should fall in 871 BCE; which is
exactly where both the RC14 dating AND the 709 BCE original eclipse dating
places it. Please note, dating the 1st of Akhenaten to 1386 BCE only
requires an 8-year adjustment of the early dating of 1378 BCE already
established, keeping in mind Kenyon's dating for the Exodus based on
Jericho's fall in 1350-1325 BCE would be 1390-1365 BCE. So 1386 BCE would
still be considered "archaeologically correct," generally.
As a result of the above, however, there are 60 additional years of
Egyptian
kings that are missing sometime between Akhenaten dated to 1386 BCE and
****shak's invasion in 871 BCE. That direct 60-year comparison is the
dating of the corrected dating for the Exodus in 1386 BCE compared to the
Assyrian-based dating in 1446 BCE, a net 60-year difference. The 54 vs
60-year difference has to do with whether you include a 6-year
co-ruler****p
for Rehoboam and Solomon or not. Most chronologies do not recognize this,
but the Bible clearly shows that Rehoboam was appointed king before
Solomon's death and that he was still king over all 12 tribes at the time
of
****shak's invasion (2 Chronicles 12:2,6).
So the question is, have Egyptologists before now *****sed or suspected
that
this interval was too short, and what other archaeological evidence is
available that could perhaps be consistent with expanding this period by
some 50-60 years? That is, are there any other archaeological or
historical
markers we can consider besides the fall of Jericho? To my knowledge,
there are no direct markers of any events in the Egyptian timeline to the
Biblical timeline between Jericho and the Exodus and ****shak; ****shak is
the
first dated Egyptian event after the Exodus.
So I thought if archaeologists indeed needed an extra 60 years to play
with
during this period based upon other indicators, they certainly have the
time
available now since obviously this interval is 60 years too short.
SUMMARY: The Greek Period adjustments which remove 58 fake years from the
artificically expanded Greek timeline by Xenophon drops ****shak's invasion
down by 54 years and adds an additional 60 years to the interval between
the
Amarna Period (Akhenaten) and ****shak. Some Egyptology observations may
have already suggested this interval seemed too short, though now we know
it
was precisely 60 years shorter than is currently reflected, based on more
accurate dating.
Lars Wilson
(New!) Corrected Timeline Outline:
http://www.geocities.com/siaxares/709guide.html
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