The First Use of Chariots in Ancient Egypt

"During the Second Intermediate Period the chariots, composite bow, and narrow ax-headed battle-ax were invented. Most importantly, during the New Kingdom, the scimitar or sickle sword and body armor was invented." [Charles Lugor Leju, 2002; from "http://emuseum.mnsu.edu/prehistory/Old%20Egypt/military/tech.html";References, Miller, P. (1997) Time-Line of Weapons. Ancient Egypt Sites: Weapons; Deffrates, J. (1991) What do we know about the Egyptians? New York, NY.]

The Second Intermediate Period is usually dated from about 1780 - 1570 BC. [Peter A. Clayton, `Chronicle of the Pharaohs', p. 85, 98]

Does that mean that the biblical account of the Exodus mentioning Pharaohs chariots is based on valid information? For we read:

"The Egyptians - all Pharaoh's horses and chariots, horsemen and troops - pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi-Hahiroth, opposite Baal-Zephon." Exodus 12:9.

Since Baal-Zephon was opposite compared to the sea side shore where the Israelites camped, and should be located on the Saudi side of the Gulf of Aqaba looking from Nuweiba Beach. A natural submerged land bridge connects the Saudi side with Sinai at that location, the ideal feature for the biblical crossing of the Red Sea.

However, if the Second Intermediate Period Egyptian chariots belong to the time after ca. 1450 BC then all we can say is that chariots were used before the revised date for the 18th Dynasty but we still are not sure exactly when they came into use in Egypt and should keep searching for such evidence. P. Waterson wrote, "The standard excuses of 'unsuitable native woods' are belied by the existence of Egyptian boats made of quite suitable woods, and a rigged boat requires more design skill, craftsmanship, labor (and for that matter wood) than a chariot. Egypt had the manpower, the craftsmanship and the organization to make chariotry possible. It had neighbors who used, or were in contact with, chariot-using cultures. The only possible reason for not adopting the chariot would be military ineffectiveness."

Even though chariots are not represented in Egyptian art before the New Kingdom we can say, that camels, besides horses, are also not represented in Egyptian art of the conventional Old and Middle Kingdoms. Does that mean the Egyptians did not use camels then? We think it does not mean that. It may have something to do how these animals were regarded at the time.

Concerning the chronological issue, Rohl points to his article posted in JAFC5, "The argument that chariots were not introduced into Egypt until the 15th Dynasty has been used to undermine the proposal for a 13th-Dynasty Exodus. This is because Exodus 14:5-9 describes Egyptian chariots in pursuit of the departing Israelites.

Chariot Construction Locations in Palestine

Three approximate locations in the vicinity between Ephraim and Juda, 1. Kî-y-na, 2. Ra-bu-bu, 3. Ba-y-ti-Sa-â-ru. According to the Papyrus Anastasis come excellent chariots from the region of Pa-hu-ira and Ra-hu-bu with spokes from `O-pa' . [Papyrus Anastasis 4, 16, 11 quoted in Max Müller, `Asien und Europa nach Altägyptischen Denkmälern', Leipzig, 1893, p. 152-153]

In the Sheshonk city list we also find a Ru-ha-ba-'a' located in the general region.

Therefore it doesn't appear to be just a coincident when the scriptures also locate chariot construction in this region, "... and all the Canaanites that dwell in the land of the valley have chariots of iron, both they who are of Beth-Shean and her towns, and they who are of the valley of Jezreel." Joshua 17:16.

During later 18th dynasty times chariot users had improved the technology to built lighter, more maneuverable, wooden chariots using a minimum of metal parts replacing the probably more cumbersome chariots of iron. One of these perfectly preserved Egyptian chariots, found by I. Rosellini, can be seen in KMT, Vol. 15, Summer 2004, p. 42 as well as in the Archaeology Museum in Florence, Italy. See also the Greek four horse chariot found in Tomb 79 at Salamis of a type and function thought to carry warriors into and out of battles. [J.N. Coldstream, `Geometric Greece', London, 1977, p. 348, 352.]
See Yves Calvet, `The House of Urtenu' in Near Eastern Archaeology, Dec 2000, p. 210-211; Excavations at Ugarit (starting 1986) yielded parts of an ancient chariot and harness fittings not further identified, imported pottery (Mycenean craters, Cypriot vases) metal objects, alabaster jars, and several hundred whole or fragmentary tablets (disc. in 1994). Among the tablets there are numerous orders concerning wine, beer, barley, especially oil, goods for dying, wood from Hatti, copper ingots from Cyprus in exchange for horses. Urtenu is thought to belong to the period of Niqmaddu III (conv. 1210-1200 BC), the last king, attested in 4 letters.

The image of a late 17th century Dutch silver Thaler bearing the inscription, "(M?)ONMOVR(T?)VR16*87CONTIDENS:DNO.", and featuring a raised lion was found at Horvat Raqit on Mount Carmel. Only 20 years before the coin was minted, and halfway around the world, colonists in Maryland named their new, official unit of currency the "dollar", an English transliteration of the German word `Taler'. The first Thalers were large silver coins minted in Holland in 1575. How did the Thaler end up at Horvat Raqit? Archaeologists theorized that its owner may have been threatened by highway robbers and hid it in the heavy undergrowth, intending to return for it later. [BAR, Vol. 29, Spe/Oct 2003, p. 21.]

D. Wildung gives the typical biography of Amenhotep the seer as follows: See also here

"Amenhotep was born about 1450 BC* in the time of Thutmosis III at Athribis near the modern town of Benha, about forty kilometers north of Cairo. His father was a nobleman named Hapu, his mother the lady Itu. Amenhotep spent fifty years of his life in his native town where he held the titles of "king's scribe and chief of the priests of Horus-Khentikheti", the local god of Athribis.

… The reigning king, Amenhotep III, called Amenhotep to the royal court at Thebes, when he was in his early fifties. Amenhotep immediately became active as an architect and achieved the rank of the king's chief architect. From his inscriptions we can deduce that he also was a scribe and achieved the rank of "real first scribe of the king", a rank which we can describe as "minister for culture" for education, science, and cult, as well as being responsible for mining and building. Amenhotep also served as the steward for the king's daughter Sat-Amun and was the organizer of the king's jubilees - duties normally performed by the eldest son of the king. His rise was rapid, and Amenhotep's inscriptions indicate that the appointments were extraordinary." [D. Wilding, `Egyptian Saints. Deification in Pharaohnic Egypt', N.Y. UP, 1977]

Comments: Reading the above as it is written it reads like the story of the Patriarchs after the Noachian Flood. Of course historians try to connect civilizations to Neanderthals and even earlier types in order to make their evolutionary theory plausible. But these ages are mere constructions of their imaginations and live only in their books for the Bible states in several places that people were buried in caves and that well within historical times, Genesis 19:30.

Cave Tomb No. 25

Excavations at Ketef Hinnom uncovered a burial cave with a rich assemblage of artifacts. Of particular importance were two damaged, scroll rolled, silver amulets inscribed with paleo looking Hebrew and dated to the end of the First Temple period. The texts were deciphered by Ada Yardeni and are strikingly similar to the priestly benediction of Numbers 6:24-26, forms of which are also found in Psalms 4:7 and 67:2, as well as in an inscription on a pithos jar from Kuntillet Ajrud. [For text and images see L.R. Bailey, `Gehenna, the topography of Hell', in BA, Sep 1986, p. 190.] For an enlarged small siltstone inlaid with ostrich eggshell beads necklace mulet from predynastic(?) Egypt see BAR, Jul 1996, p. 13.

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Transliteration Albright 1942: 23-29.
Translation adapted from `Black' 1958:239.

Schlußfolgerung: Hesjon/Hesion ist ein anderer Name für Hadyan.

According to the report, the Ain Dara temple "... has beautifully preserved structural features, including limestone foundations and blocks of basalt. The original building had a mudbrick superstructure - now lost - which may have been covered with wood paneling The facade and interior walls are enlivened by hundreds of finely carved reliefs depicting lions, cherubim and other mythical creatures, mountain gods, palmettes and ornate geometric designs. Phase I (conv. dated to 1300-1000 BC): oriented toward the southeast it is 65 feet wide by 98 feet long. Built on a raised platform, the temple consists essentially of three rooms, a niche-like portico, or porch; an antechamber (pronaos); a main hall (cella or naos), which housed the innermost shrine (debir), or holy of holies. Phase II (conv. dated to 100-900 BC): essentially the same except for the addition of basalt piers on the front of the facade building, immediately behind the columns, and in the entrances leading from the portico to the antechamber and from the antechamber to the shrine at the back of the main hall. Phase III: an ambulatory, or hall, consisting of a series of side chambers was added on three sides of the building. The chambers were laid on the pre-existing temple platform, which extended beyond this new construction. The foundations of these chambers are not connected to the main part of the temple, indicating they are later additions. The dating of the two earlier phases was determined not by levels (stratigraphy) or by pottery (the excavation report does not record the stratigraphy and pottery of the temple), but by a comparison of the sculpture with that from other excavated sites."

Short from presenting the whole article, the Ain Dara temple also seems to betray features known from Assyrian times. Therefore, the dates for the structure ought to be taken as the personal views of the excavators. While there may be some overall similarities, there are also dissimilarities in distribution of size in particular. Ain Dara would have been in the territory of Yamkhad. It may be premature to draw too many conclusions.

Aperlae, Coast of Turkey
Archaeologists are trying to figure out why the little southern Turkish seacoast town of Aperlae, today under 5-6 feet of water, had some 5-6 churches. Was it a town catering to pilgrims? [BAR, `Another Church Located at Underwater Site', Nov/Dec 2000, p. 17]
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Ahhiyawa - Greeks or who?

The tombs full of Mycenaean pottery in the cemetery at Ialysos on the island of Rhodes led some scholars to characterize Rhodes as one of the most important Mycenaean centers outside of Greece. As such, Rhodes was equated by some with the land of Ahhiyawa, mentioned in Hittite cuneiform texts of the 15th-14th centuries BC. Emil Forrer (1924), a Swiss scholar who studied these texts in the 1920s and 1930s, maintained that although linguistically problematic, Ahhiyawa was the Hittite way of writing Greek Achaiwa, which is equated with the Achaean Greeks of the Homeric epics.

Ferdinand Sommer (1932), a German scholar, strongly contested Forrer's equation, he felt that the resemblance in terms was entirely superficial, and that Ahhiyawa most likely referred to a western Anatolian state. The debate continues to this day.
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Greek Iron

Between the early 7th century and the mid-4th century B.C the Ancient Greeks adopted a form of warfare which set them apart from the other contemporary civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean. This involved the use of heavily-armed infantrymen called hoplites, supported by more lightly armed slingers and archers. They were distinguished by their round shield ('hoplon') of wood and leather faced with bronze, their long thrusting-spear, and their protective armor of bronze, usually a helmet, a corselet and leg-guards. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, can gleam like gold when new, and the close ranks of hoplites with striking and often terrifying blazons on their shields, must have been an impressive and startling sight. In the East, on the other hand, the custom was to wear padded armor of linen and leather, which was lighter and more comfortable than that of the Greek 'bronze men'. The actual weapons employed by the Greeks by this time were usually made of iron and wood and, therefore, have generally perished through the ages, unlike the bronze which tends to remain stable once a patina has formed on the surface. Personal items were seldom buried with a dead warrior after about 700 B.C., and so finds from such contexts are rare. On the other hand, arms and armor were often dedicated to the gods at a sanctuary after a battle, and modern excavation, as for example at Olympia, brings these to light.

The hoplite on display in the Shefton Museum reflects these differences between warfare in the Bronze Age and that of the Archaic and Classical periods. They were used by citizen-soldiers in a specific form of warfare developed only by the Greek city-states. This organization was, of course, not adopted by each at one and the same time. It developed slowly over many years, until the phalanx or formation of heavily-armed infantrymen in close ranks dominated the Greek battlefield. Victory depended on the unity and strength of one's own ranks and the ability to break the enemy's line. For, once the line was broken, the hoplite was poorly equipped to stand and fight alone.

A citizen was not admitted into the hoplite army unless he was able to provide his own equipment. The city-state of Athens, however, certainly after about 335 B.C., presented each young man, on completion of his training, with a spear and a shield. Moreover, if the father had died in battle, other items were supplied as well. An idea of the cost for second-hand items can be gained from the prices recorded at Athens in 415 B.C.: a javelin, 2 drachmai; a spear without a butt, 1 drachma 4 obols. By comparison, the rate of hoplite pay about that time was a drachma a day plus an allowance for food. [http://www.ncl.ac.uk/shefton-museum/arms/armies.html]
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The Persian 4th Century BC - Silver Coins of Johanan the High Priest

The contribution of numismatics to ancient history is especially important for the Persian period of ancient history. In the mid 1930's Eleazar L. Sukenik published his important article on the oldest coins of Judea¹⁾ The importance of these coins is in establishing a chronology of who is who in Judea (`Yehud') during Persian times. Certain coins minted during the period "bear the official Aramaic name of the province of Judea under Persian rule" and "were issued in the 4th century BC before the conquest of Alexander the Great."

Certain coins reveal the following:

1. The image of a falcon appearing to take flight appears on a 4th century BC coin with the Hebrew letters for `Yehud', the Hebrew name for Judea/Israel during the Persian period. [BAR, Sep/Oct 1993 p. 68; Robert W. Funk, The 1957 campaign at Beth-Zur, BASOR, Apr 1959, p. 8-20; Khirbet et-Tubeiqah; Shows images of supposed Hyksos walls.]
2. a) A minute silver coin from the excavations at Beth Zur (Tel Masos?) on which an owl and the paleo-Hebrew inscription of the name `Yehezqiyah' (Hezekiah) is preserved. This coin is attributed to the high priest `Hezekiah' who, according to Josephus, was a friend of Ptolemy I and settled in Alexandria around 312 BC. ²⁾ That would make this high priest Hezekiah a contemporary of the high priest Onias (c. 320-290 BC). The date 320 for Onias may then have to be lowered to closer to 310 BC since it may be unlikely that two high priests officiated at the same time.²⁾
b) For the Plan of excavations of Beth-Zur in 1958/1931 see BA, Vol. XXI, Sep 1958, p. 73. Also shown is an ivory sphinx inlay found in Iron I context; and a cone seal from the same period showing 3 cows(?) and a minute scorpion.
c) At Beth-Zur 3 2nd century BC burial sites were found and not one showed a trace of any mortuary equipment. The lack of such was not due to hurry; for the graves were carefully dug. These geaves show a respect for the dead, but no trust in material objects to help in the hereafter. [BA, Vol. VIII, Feb 1945, p. 16.]
3. Coins with the head of Ptolemy I (305-286 BC) on the obverse and the eagle of Zeus standing on the fulmen (lightening bolt) and the legend `Yehudah' in paleo-Hebrew on the reverse or ...
4. ...with the head of Ptolemy I on the obverse and the head of his spouse Berenice I and `Yehudah' on the reverse. Many of these coins were found between Bethlehem and modern Kefar Ezyon. These coins show that the province of Judea enjoyed a degree of autonomy during the end of the Persian period which enabled it to mint small silver coins bearing its name and that this state of affairs continued during the early days of Ptolemaic rule.
These coins further show that, judging solely by the monumental data from Egypt itself on the `new' era Pharaoh Ptolemy I, one could not guess about such affairs in other parts of the Middle East. This observation we should keep in mind when studying the reign of Pharaoh Ramses III/Nectanebo I.
5. Two Beth Zur like coins from a hoard of silver coins from Tel Gamma [Tell Jemmeh], located southeast of Gaza. The inscription on this type of coin reads, `Yehzqiyah [or `Yehezqiyo'] ha-peha', meaning `Yehezqiyah, the governor' which casts serious doubt in identifying him with the high priest Hezekiah.³⁾
6. A silver coin with `careless (blundered) lettering' bearing the name `Yehezqiyah, the governor'. When D.P.Barag examined the coin he discovered, "... one can clearly read `Johan[an]' and the word `ha-kohen' (or priest) appears to the right of the owl from the top downward.⁴⁾ A mask, perhaps a feminine face with a stylized hairdo, was struck on the reverse of the coin. Except for the legend this coin is exactly similar to one of the types struck by Yehezqiyah, the governor. This demonstrates that Johann was not merely an ordinary priest but was the high priest for he maintained a very important position - his status being equal to that of the governor nominated by the Persians."
The author then intends to identify this high priest Johanan. Nehemiah 12:22 records four high priests: 1. Eliashib, 2. Joiada, 3. Johanan, 4. Jaddua. Josephus mentions the same succession of high priests, describing in detail Jaddua's political struggle during the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333/2 BC.⁵⁾ Jaddua's predecessor and father, Johanan, had a turbulent succession to the high priesthood. According to Josephus, Bagoas, the general of King Artaxerxes, supported Johanan's brother, Jeshua, and promised to obtain the high priesthood for him. With this assurance, Jeshua quarreled with Johanan in the temple and provoked his brother so far that Johanan killed him. Bagoas punished the Jews for this crime by fining them fifty drachmas from the public treasury for every lamb offered during the daily sacrifices.⁶⁾
7. Persian gold `Darics' were frequently quite small in size and had on one side the stamped image of the king, with bow and spear, kneeling on one knee in the archers position. The other side could have merely a rude stamp.

The high priest Johanan is also mentioned in a letter dating to 408 BC sent by the Jews of Elephantine Island in Upper Egypt to Bagoas, governor of Yehud, asking for support in their attempts to rebuild their temple on that island. In the letter they refer to a previous letter dispatched to Bagoas and `Johanan the high priest and his colleagues the priests who are in Jerusalem'. This letter raises a major difficulty. It suggests Johanan was already high priest in 410 BC and since we know that his son Jaddua died around 323 BC,<sup>7)</sup> the father and son would have functioned as high priests for some 87 years during this period of time? A further difficulty is that Josephus refers to Bagoas as `strategos' [general] and not `satrap' [governor] of Judea in contrast to the letter from Elephantine. These were also the years toward the end of the Persian satrap Arsames whose fleezing of Egypt apparently did not affect Judea.
In 1962 documents were discovered in a cave at `Wadi ed Daliyeh' which were said to belong to fugitives from Samaria during the time of about 332 BC. From these documents it became clear that three satraps named Sanbalat were governors of Samaria during the period between Nehemiah (ca. 445 BC) and Alexander the Great. This is significant because Josephus notes Jaddua's brother Manassas, married the daughter of Sanbalat.⁸⁾ Since Josephus mentions only one Sanbalat, his list of governors of Samaria is incomplete. Scholars like Frank M. Cross, Richard J. Saley, Hugh Godfrey M. Williamson and others have similarly concluded that the list of high priests as recorded by Josephus is incomplete and that there is no evidence that Jaddua of Nehemiah 12:22 is identical with the high priest Jaddua who held office during Alexander's conquest. These scholars assume that Josephus' account of the high priest Johanan and Bagoas referred to an incident in the reign of Artaxerxes III, perhaps during the Tennes rebellion (ca. 347-345 BC). Significantly enough, the author repeats what we also caution about on the matter of the names from the workmen's village of Deir el Medinah supposedly linking the 19th with the 20th Dynasty when he writes:

"The custom of naming a grandchild after his grandfather was quite common in families of the high priests and noblemen of Judea and Samaria. For example, the names Onias and Simon appear several times among the high priests during the Helenistic period before the Hasmonean revolt."

This custom of naming children was also popular inside Egypt and we ought to keep this in mind when reading Egyptologists claims for chronological connections referred to as sure `beyond doubt'.

A mask appears on the reverse of Johanan's coin and on the parallel coin-type of Yehezqiyah the governor. It was borrowed from Greek coinage where masks and faces were struck on coins of various cities from the late fifth century BC and onwards and occurred occasionally on the local "Philisto-Arabian" issues of coinage just like today, many countries still follow this custom. Yehezqiyah also struck coins with a winged animal and his name (without the title `governor') on one side and on the other side a head in a style which can hardly antedate the mid-fourth century BC. This, therefore, seems to be the date of the coins of Johanan as well. Is it possible that the Johanan who held the office of high priest in 410 BC, was the same Johanan who struck coins some 50-70 years later? Although this is not impossible it is rather improbable. It is more likely that our coin serves as further evidence that in the generation before Alexander the office of the high priest was held by a Johanan who was the grandson of the high priest Johanan, the addressee of the letter sent from Elephantine in 410 BC. The coin of Johanan the high priest raises many interesting questions and problems. One may assume that the issue of coins by the high priest occurred at a time when he also controlled the secular government. Was this the case during the involvement of Judea in the Tennes rebellion? How is one to understand the fact that the high priest struck such images on his coins? Even if one accepts that the owl, copied from the coins of Athens, was by that time a conventional representation imitated by numerous oriental mints, the meaning of the mask (also borrowed directly or indirectly from Greek coins) is unclear. We may assume that to Johanan and his men these images did not violate the Mosaic commandment against making graven images perhaps because this was no more than mundane currency.

Notes

This paper is not entirely quoted word by word from a translation of an article published in Ephraim Stern's Qadmoniot 17, numbers 2 and 3 (66-67), 1984, and is included here to illustrate Egyptian connections which are not addressed in the original article.

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1) Sukenik, E.L., `Paralipomena Palaestinensia': I. `The Oldest Coins of Judea' in `The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society' 14, 1934, pp. 178-82; and as `More about the Oldest Coins of Judea' in Ibid. 15, 1935, pp. 341-43.
2) Ibid.
3) Rahmani, L.Y., `Silver Coins of the Fourth Century BC' from Tel Gamma. Israel Exploration Journal 21: pp. 158-160.
4) Mildenberg, L., `Yehud: A Preliminary Study of the Provincial Coinage of Judea', pp. 183-196 in Greek Numismatics and Archaeology Essays in Honor of Margaret Thompson, edited by Otto Mørkhølm and Nancy M. Waggoner. Wetteren: NR.
5) Marcus, R., translator 1966, `Josephus VI. Jewish Antiquities, Books IX-XI. Series: The Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA.
6) Ibid., XI, pp. 302-309; 457-461.
7) Ibid., p. 483.
8) Ibid., p. 461.
9) Based on the article in `Biblical Archaeology', Sept. 1985, pp. 166-168.

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Evolutionary "Tree of Life" Rejected, Part 2 - For human specimen found in coal bearing layers click Here

The Mungo Lady

Last month, I reported that evolutionists are abandoning their "tree of life," which theorizes that humans and apes branched out from a common evolutionary ancestor. This "tree" is based on cladistics, which uses computer programs to compare fossils and fossils fragments in order to determine the identity and evolutionary history of a species.

Cladistics has clashed with the more accurate genetic mappings of the human species. Moreover, cladistics and "tree-building" have failed because, as it turns out, visible differences between the remains of two alleged evolutionary cousins do not prove that each represents a "branch" on an evolutionary tree that sprang from a common ancestor. Instead, these differences result from the fact that every living organism, human and otherwise, has a pre-programmed genetic ability to alter its physiology in response to its surroundings.

Thus, the differences among supposed pre-human ancestors like Homo erectus, Neanderthals, Lucy, Java Man, etc., are really just differences that stem from the plasticity of the human genetic code. All these "branches" on the evolutionary tree are not different species of pre-human or ape-man, but human beings who exhibited the astounding changeability pre-programmed into our genes.

A prominent advocate of this new thinking (not new to Creationists, however) is Alan Thorne, former lecturer in the Department of Anatomy, University of Sydney. He had a major hand in the excavation of Mungo Lady, a skeleton found near Lake Mungo in Australia in 1968. Working to extricate the bones from petrified soil, Thorne realized that they belonged to Homo sapiens - modern humans. According to Discover magazine, this discovery "would rock the world of anthropology" (D'Agnese 2002: 53). The magazine explained why:

"In 1968 most anthropologists thought they had a grip on human evolution: Big-browed, thick-skulled humanoids had descended from walking apes. These hulking creatures were eventually replaced by the more advanced, fine-boned humans of our species Homo sapiens. Throughout Australia, anthropologists had found only big-browed, thick-skulled fossils. That made Mungo Lady a puzzle" (ibid., 53-54).

This "puzzle" is the fact that Mungo Lady was found to be OLDER than the hulking, big-browed, thick-skulled types. This cast doubt on the theory that, around 2 million years ago, Homo erectus and other species spread out from Africa and evolved into several species at different spots on the earth. Later, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and, 120,000 to 100,000 years ago, fanned out across the globe, driving the earlier species into extinction. Discover reported that Thorne "believes that the species his opponents insist on calling Homo erectus was in fact Homo sapiens….As he sees it, there was no later migration and replacement: "'Only one species of human has ever left Africa, and that is us'" (ibid., 54). The magazine went on to report that:

...if Thorne and his camp are right, much of what we think we know about human evolution is wrong. In the world according to Thorne, the human family tree is not divided into discrete species such as Homo erectus, Homo antecessor, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis. They are all Homo sapiens. Yes, Thorne agrees, from the outside all these hominids look different from each other, but so do humans today a Korean, a Nigerian, and a Dane hardly resemble each other. Our ancestors displayed great variety, but they were similar in the only way that mattered: They were the same species, which meant they could have sex with each other and produce fertile offspring (ibid.).

That is what Creationists have always said. Differences in appearance among supposed evolutionary cousins do not stem from their having a common ancestor, but are the result of variety within a single species, even if that variety is enormous, such as the difference between a great Dane and a Chihuahua within the dog species. It is good to see evolutionists catching up.

Reference:
D'Agnese, J. 2002. "Not out of Africa." Discover 23, no. 8.
Stephen Caesar holds his master's degree in anthropology and archaeology from Harvard University. He is the author of the e-book The Bible Encounters Modern Science, available at http://www.1stbooks.com.
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When was the Book of Daniel written?
Just a few considerations underscoring the antiquity of the Book of Daniel.

1. If the book of Daniel was a forgery, how did it get into the Old Testament Canon? References from the books of the Maccabees (about 165BC) indicate that Daniel was then a part of the canon of Scripture. [Maccabees 2:51-60; cf. Daniel 1:7; 3:26; 6:23]
2. If the book of Daniel was not written until about 165 BC how did it get into the Septuagint? This great translation has been assigned by some to the 3rd century BC, several decades before 165 BC.
3. Who was the man of genius who penned this book foretelling a) the year the Messiah would begin his ministry, b) the scattering of the Jews by the Romans, c) the apostasy of a great anti-Christ centered power of later centuries?
4. How could such a mystery penman in 165 BC know, after 4 world empires had come on the scene, that no other world power would ever arise? Hold it, hold it! Isn't America such a world power? Answer: Was the USSR such a world power? Soviet communism covered a large land mass but was it a world power? Had it conquered lands like the ancient world powers did? Not really, did it? Isn't America such a world power? Well, we lost the war in Vietnam and the story of todays war has still to be written. At any rate, we in America do not seem to be masters of our own destiny.

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King David's Tomb
Has the tomb of King David ever been found? Though we can't be sure T1 (tomb 1) located in the old City of David, Jerusalem, may be so far the best candidate for having been the tomb of King David. [BAR, Jan/Feb 1995, `Is this King David's Tomb?', p. 63]
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Convention will state: "Kenherkhepshef is known from many documents, official and ephemeral, which have survived from Deir el Medina. He first appears in Year 33 of Ramses II, becomes scribe of the tomb in Year 40 and retains that office until the end of the reign of Seti II - a period of over 40 years." [Reeves, p. 175]

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Picturesque Places
On the norther border with Lebanon is kibbutz Manara in the area of the Hula Valley and the Manara Cliff, a steep rocky outcropping with a gorgeous view. [`Eretz', Aug 2002, p. 58.] See also images of Nahal Mishmar, Tze-elim and Mt. Gilboa, Eretz, Dec 2002, p. 60-66.