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Discussion of Kassite History
Discussion of Israelites History by Damien Mackey |
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CIAS Encyclopedia The History of Zimri Lim A Jewish Heroin |
Toledoth The Old Kingdom But See Merneptah |
(c) Babylonia "Leviathan the Crooked Serpent" |
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A further implication of Velikovsky's revision is that EA's Kassite contemporaries in Babylonia (or Karduniash) need to be brought forward on the time scale. This mysterious people, the Kassites, about whom historians have been able to conclude so little of really positive value (see below), will be found to be most relevant for our study of Hezekiah's Babylonian contemporary, Merodach-baladan. "At that time Merodach-baladan, the son of Baldan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a present to Hezekiah: for he had heard that he had been sick, and was recovered." [Isaiah 39:1]. Let us firstly touch on revisional and conventional attempts to deal with the problem of the Kassites before making some conclusions of our own. Velikovsky's problem, that a drastic lowering of early history can produce a crush, or bottleneck, further down the line, is one that confronts all revisionists, e.g. Dean Hickman. As Velikovsky had lowered EA to the time of the split kingdom of Israel, so, similarly, has Dean Hickman lowered the famous Babylonian king Hammurabi (c.C18th BC, conventional) to the time of the early kingdom of Israel (C10th BC); a massive shift of 800 years with which I fully concur (see Appendix C). Hickman was indeed acutely aware of the ramifications of his major chronological shift : "The end of the 'First Dynasty of Babylon' presents its own set of problems. The major one is how to relate the end of Hammurabi's dynasty to the known history of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BC". [D. Hickman, `Hammurabi'] Hickman did not basically challenge Velikovsky's proposed identification of Shalmaneser III with EA's Burnaburiash. Nor, consequently, was he able to solve the problem of Hammurabi's succession: "Many aspects of Mesopotamian history need to be studied further. There is the problem of the Kassites, for whom the evidence is ambivalent ...". Thus Hickman could not but conclude his stimulating paper by electing "to open for discussion and further exploration the history of Mesopotamia and its neighbours for the time period [under investigation] ...".
Hickman's "problems" however are relatively small when compared with those convention has with its `Dark Ages'. For example, the Hittites - thought to be related to the Kassites as part of a large Indo-European group - are a major headache. Peter James, an expert in Anatolian history, has shown - along Velikovskian lines, rejecting the so-called 'Dark Ages' in Greece and Anatolia - that archaeologists have artificially split Hittite history in two, creating an Old and New Hittite kingdom. The New one, basically in Syria, which is regarded by O. Gurney as "a strange afterglow [of the Old one in Anatolia] which lasted for no less than five centuries" [GTH, 39; GURNEY, O., `The Hittites', (Harmondsworth, 1954)], turns out to be actually one and the same kingdom, representing the natural extension of Hittite power from Anatolia into Syria. All of this was achieved in a short space of time, approximately during the EA era. Here comes into play once again that 500-year hiatus, by-product of Sothic chronology. It has played havoc with our knowledge of who were the Kassites. Roux gives the standard view of from whence came these mysterious peoples, making of them an Indo-European elite [RAI, 225; ROUX, G., `Ancient Iraq' (Penguin Books, 1964).]: |
The Kassites (This portion was put online June 2003) The centuries long Kassite reign over Babylonia is thought to have been brought to its end by the Elamites in the mid-C12th BC. But there emerges quite a new picture about the mysterious Kassites when placed in the context of this revision - with EA's Kassite contemporary, Burnaburiash [II], being lowered 500 years from the mid-C14th (conventional) to the mid-C9th BC. See Excursus E. In this new context, the Kassite people become most relevant in connection with king Merodach-baladan II. So, who were the Kassites? One sparkling pearl that can be plucked from the otherwise excessively radical revision of Heinsohn is that the Kassites of mysterious origin are found to be the much-discussed-in-antiquity, but little-known, Chaldeans. It is thought to have been the Greeks who put the letter (= l) in the name Chaldeans (Kaldi ) whom the Hebrews knew as Kasdim. I think that that is unlikely, though, and that the letter change was instead one quite natural in the Assyrian language. Consider Boutflower's explanation [1]: "The Chaldeans or Kasdim of the Hebrew Old Testament appear in the Assyrian cuneiform as the Kaldi. The original form of Kaldi was probably Kasdi, since according to a rule very common in the Assyrian language a sibilant before a dental is frequently changed into l". Note that the Semitic root Kas- (Kash-) is common to Kassites and Chaldeans. The form Kaldu for the land of the Chaldeans is thought to have been first used by Ashurnasirpal in the mid-9th BC. "The fear of my sovereignty", he wrote, "prevailed as far as the country of Karduniash; the might of my weapons overwhelmed the country of Kaldu" [2]. This alteration, from kas- to kal-, has made it even less easy for historians to make the vital connection between the Chaldeans and the Kassites, who, in Akkadian were known as kashshû. Convention, in fact, has been quite unable to make this connection. The notion that the Kassite era came to an end in the C12th BC, to be replaced by the Second Isin Dynasty (Babylon IV), needs to be greatly revised. There was in fact no complete end this early to the Kassite/Chaldean reign, which continued right down - with some interruptions - to the Chaldean king, Nebuchednezzar II 'the Great' (c.600 BC). Here we are entirely interested in finding out how the lowering of the Babylonian dynasties impacts upon the era of king Hezekiah. Folding the Kassites into the Chaldeans For our 500-year lowering of so-called 'middle' Assyro-Babylonian kings to be convincing, we are going to have to show how these Mesopotamian kings are to be merged with neo-Assyrian and neo-Babylonian kings. Well here is a very good place to start, given that one of the last Kassite kings is called Merodach-baladan [I] (c.1173-1161 BC, conventional); Merodach-baladan [II] being of course the very name of the Chaldean king of Babylon at the time of king Hezekiah. Now identical names, as we well know, do not mean identical persons; but there is more to it than that. For instance: " There is the suspicious difficulty in distinguishing between the building efforts of Merodach-baladan [I] and Merodach-baladan [II] [3]: Four kudurrus ..., taken together with evidence of his building activity in Borsippa ..., show Merodach-baladan I still master in his own domain. The bricks recording the building of the temple of Eanna in Uruk [3b] ..., assigned to Merodach-baladan I by the British Museum's `A Guide to the Babylonian and Assyrian Antiquities' ... cannot now be readily located in the Museum for consultation; it is highly probable, however, that these bricks belong to Merodach-baladan II (see Studies Oppenheim, p.42 ...). " Wiseman contends that Merodach-baladan I was in fact a king of the Second Isin Dynasty which is thought to have succeeded the Kassites [4]. Brinkman, whilst calling this view "erroneous", concedes that [5]: "The beginnings of [the Second Dynasty of Isin] ... are relatively obscure". " There is the same approximate length of reign over Babylonia for Merodach-baladan [I] and [II]. Twelve years as King of Babylon for Merodach-baladan II, as we have already discussed. And, in the case of Merodach-baladan I [6]: "The Kassite Dynasty, then, continued relatively vigorous down through the next two reigns, including that of Merodach-baladan I, the thirty-fourth and third-last king of the dynasty, who reigned some thirteen years.... Up through this time, kudurrus show the king in control of the land in Babylonia". " Merodach-baladan I was approximately contemporaneous with the Elamite succession called Shutrukids. Whilst there is some doubt as to the actual sequence of events [7] - Shutruk-Nahhunte is said to have been the father of Kudur-Nahhunte - the names of three of these kings are identical to those of Sargon/ Sennacherib's Elamite foes." Consider these striking parallels: C12th BC " Some time before Nebuchednezzar I, there reigned in Babylon a Merodach-baldan [I]." " The Elamite kings of this era carried names such as Shutruk-Nahhunte and his son, Kudur-Nahhunte." " Nebuchednezzar I fought a hard battle with a Hulteludish-Inshushinak." C8th BC " The Babylonian ruler for king Sargon's first twelve years was a Merodach-baldan [II]. Sargon/Sennacherib fought against the Elamites, Shutur-Nakhkhunte and Kutir-Nakhkhunte. Sennacherib had trouble also with a Hallutush-Inshusinak. Too spectacular I think to be mere coincidence! These peculiar circumstances between the C12th BC and the C8th BC could hardly be duplicated in such detail after a period of [four] hundred years. Having established this fairly solid base around king Merodach-baladan, we can now use the better documented C8th BC to help sort out the more fragmentary C12th BC so-called. Assyro-Babylonian Connections With Merodach-baladan now recognised as both a Kassite (Chaldean) and a contemporary of the early Second Isin Dynasty, he is to be brought squarely into range with the great 'middle' Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077 BC, conventional), who dominates this era. We saw in our previous discussion of Assyrian history that Tiglath-pileser I stands out amidst a most poorly documented age of so-called 'Middle Assyrian' history that James has called a 'Dark Age'. I suspect the reason for this is that the documents for this period are actually to be found in neo-Assyrian history. That Tiglath-pileser [I], son of Ashur-resh-ishi, grandson of Ashur-dan is none other than Tiglath-pileser [III], son of Ashur-nirari (var. Adad-nirari), grandson of Ashur-dan, contemporary of Merodach-baladan II - whom he encountered before the latter had progressed to ruler of Babylon - and of Hezekiah). Assyria had, for Tiglath-pileser I/III, the same enemies, Aramaeans, Nairi and Urartians. Tiglath-pileser I's renowned exploits against the Phrygians too seem far more appropriate in a neo-Assyrian context. With his alter ego of Shalmaneser, as discussed earlier, Tiglath-pileser may also be the same as Shalmaneser I. Not that the reign of Tiglath-pileser III itself can be perfectly reconstructed. Whereas we have detailed and methodical records from the reign of Sargon/Sennacherib, much of Tiglath-pileser III's reign was later vandalised by Sennacherib's son, Esarhaddon. Thus Archer writes [8]: "The domination of military affairs in the reign of Tiglath-pileser left little time for building. Little remains of the palace that Tiglath-pileser built for himself at Nimrud, for it was unfinished at the time of his death and left empty. A later king used the palace as a quarry for relief scenes, and because of these acts of vandalism by Esarhaddon, no official record survives for many years of Tiglath-pileser's reign". Sumerians Any interruptions to the flow of Kassite/Chaldean rulers of Babylon, most notably by Nebuchednezzar I (c.1124-1103 BC, conventional), can now be seen as Assyrian - and possibly occasional Elamite - interventions in Babylonia. Nebuchednezzar himself, who had a famous battle with the Elamites outside Dêr, is now to be recognised as the Babylonian version of Sargon/Sennacherib, who fought with the Elamites outside Dêr. The Assyrian had succeeded Merodach-baladan as king of Babylon in his 13th year, and reigned there for about a decade. Much of this Nebuchednezzar I's history is recorded in Sumerian, about which Heinsohn makes the following intriguing connection with Chaldean [9]: Though the ancient Greeks freely admitted that their science teachers were Chaldaeans (from Southern Mesopotamia/Babylonia), they never gave any hint that they trailed their inspirers by one-and-a-half millennia. They rather gave the impression that Chaldaean knowledge was obtainable by travelling Greek students. Today, we are taught that there were no Chaldaean teachers to speak of. This supposedly most learned nation of mankind, did not leave us bricks or potsherds, not to mention written treatises. .... Nevertheless, researchers before 1868 - when Jules Oppert created the term Sumerian - had called proto-Chaldaean that today is called Sumerian. Up to the end of the 19th century, art historians labeled as Chaldaean artifacts which today are called Sumerian artifacts. At the turn of the century, major European museums underwent a relabeling procedure from Chaldaean to Sumerian on their exhibition pieces from Southern Mesopotamia. Sweeney writes in support of Heinsohn [10]: "The Chaldaeans, according to Assyrian sources from the first millennium, occupied 900 cities, 88 of which were walled. Many of these were presumably located in Lower Mesopotamia, where the Assyrians regularly located the Kaldu, yet of the 900 cities not a trace, not a single brick, or inscription, has been discovered. On the other hand, a whole civilisation (Sumerian), unknown to the ancients, but which left an abundance of records and remains, has been discovered in exactly the same area. ... Concomitant with the loss of the Chaldaean cities was the loss of the Chaldaean language. Yet against this painful loss was the great gain of the Sumerian tongue, previously unknown". Archaeology seems basically to lean in the direction of this identification, in that the old 'Sumerian' remains of the Ur III dynasty are frequently found directly underneath the remains of the later Babylonian kings. This, Heinsohn's explanation, appears to have solved the age-old Sumerian problem. Nebuchednezzar I as the Babylonian Face of Sargon/Sennacherib Apart from the above approximate synchronisms with the Elamite Shutrukids, we find too that: " Nebuchednezzar I's reign length of 22 years conforms nicely to the standard estimate of Sennacherib's total period of rule of around 24 years." " This new scenario puts a new slant too on Sargon/Sennacherib's presumed modesty in not taking the title of 'King of Babylon' as had Tiglath-pileser III, preferring to use the older shakkanaku ('viceroy')." Modesty, however, was not - as we have amply seen - an Assyrian characteristic; and so lacking in this virtue was Sargon in fact that historians have had to create a complete Babylonian king, namely, Nebuchednezzar I, to accommodate the Assyrian's rôle as 'King of Babylon'. " All added up, this Nebuchednezzar I, the Assyrian conqueror of Babylon, makes a compelling 'Nebuchednezzar the Assyrian' of Judith, showing the latter drama to be correct in its most controversial detail, of an Assyrian king with a Babylonian name. Chaldea, a cunning, 'crooked serpent' diplomatically, has also been a tortuous riddle for historians to try to unravel. Notes and references [1] BBI, 93. [2] As cited in BBI, 95. Ashurnasirpal's juxtaposition here of Karduniash and Kaldu might, as an example of Semitic style repetition, provide the key to the derivation of Karduniash, as a variant of Kaldu. [3] BPH, 87 footnote (456). [3b] See also Henri Limet, `The Cuisine of Ancient Sumer', `Biblical Archaeologist', Sept. 1987, pp. 132-147. `Eanna' is presumably also spelled `Inanna'. A list of ingredients for bread making included: x sila of flower; x sila of dates; ½ sila, 5 gin of butter; 9 gin of white cheese; 9 gin of grape juice; 5 gin of apples; 5 gin of figs; (Sigrist, 1977: 169) [4] Wiseman [5] Op. cit., 90. [6] Ibid., 87. Emphasis added. [7] Ibid., 109. [8] AAE, 64. Emphasis added. [9] In HRA. [10] SGH, 20-21. Concluding remark Chaldea was truly a cunning, 'crooked serpent' diplomatically. And it has been an equally tortuous riddle for historians to try to unravel. |
(d) Israel/Judah "A River Flows Out from Eden" |
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With regard to the early history of Israel, the problem that confronts us is truly an enormous one. It is not simply a case here of alignment and chronological precision. Early Israel in fact needs to be rescued completely from oblivion in some quarters. Professor Heinsohn is not entirely exaggerating in his first sentence when he writes [1]: "Mainstream scholars are in the process of deleting Ancient Israel from the history books. The entire period from Abraham the Patriarch in the -21st century (fundamentalist date) to the flowering of the Divided Kingdom in the -9th century (fundamentalist date) is found missing in the archaeological record. ...." The attack on Israel's rôle in antiquity is launched in various ways; for example by: dismissing the patriarchs and early kings as a complete myth. Thus Birgit Liesching of Brussels writes of having been converted to her current belief that David and Solomon were not real historical characters "in the 1980's [by a] French-language serialisation of the Bible .... denying the real existence of these two kings." [2] Well before that Eduard Meyer, inventor of the Sothic system, had expressed the view in 1906 that Moses was not a historical personality. Meyer further remarked [as quoted in Martin Buber's Preface to Moses]: "After all, with the exception of those who accept tradition bag and baggage as historical truth, not one of those who treat [Moses] as a historical reality has hitherto been able to fill him with any kind of content whatever, to depict him as a concrete historical figure, or to produce anything which he could have created or which could be his historical work." In arriving at this conclusion, as in many other ways, Meyer may have been a victim of his own system; for one of the unhappy consequences of Sothic displacement is that historical characters get tossed into eras where they do not belong, where no one can possibly identify them. metamorphosing the Hebrew patriarchs into, say, Egyptians. Sigmund Freud blindly followed Meyer in his own forays into Egyptian chronology - though not in Meyer's view that Moses did not exist. For Freud, though, Moses was "an Egyptian" (and not simply in the sense of looking like one, cf. Exodus 2:19). Commenting on Freud's Egyptianising of Moses, Trude Weiss Rosmarin wrote in RHM [3]: "This ... statement ... is not so original as it may seem. In the last fifty years, or so, Higher Biblical Criticism, aptly termed by Solomon Schechter `Higher anti-Semitism,' has gone far afield for the `origins' of all and everything worthwhile and important in the Bible. Most of the Biblical critics base their investigations on the prejudiced notion that the ancient Hebrews were a primitive, barbarous horde, devoid of higher mental faculties and wanting in even a trace of originality and creativeness. It is due to such biased and prejudiced reasoning that so many `Theories of Hebrew origins' have been promulgated. In the [1870-80's], when archaeologists recovered the glory that had been Ancient Babylonia and Assyria, the `Pan-Babylonian Theories', which ascribe practically the entire Bible to Ancient Mesopotamian influences, flourished among Biblical scholars. ... It is obvious ... that Freud is anything but original in labeling Moses `an Egyptian' and in deriving the Jewish religion from Egypt. He is, however a very faithful disciple of the radical critics who deny the very possiblity of the existence of even a slight degree of ingenuity and originality in Ancient Israel." Most recently Islamic writer Ahmed Osman has, along Freudian lines, written a provocative book, `Out of Egypt. The Roots of Christianity Revealed', in which he identifies, as 18th dynasty Egyptian characters, not only some of the early patriarchs of Israel, but even the New Testament's revered trio of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. [3b] These famous biblical characters, some traditionally separated from others by as much as one and a half millennia, are all herded together by Osman into the 18th dynasty. There, King David becomes Pharaoh Thutmose III (and father of Isaac, no less); Moses becomes Akhnaton, the supposed founder of monotheism; Jesus becomes Tutankhamun; and Mary, Nefertiti. In 1999 Dr. Norman Simms, of the University of Waikato (N.Z.), air-mailed Osman's book to me, asking me for a review of it, suggesting that it was "right up [my] alley". He may have had especially in mind here that I had just written an article for TGN in answer to Meyer's supposed 'annihilation' of Moses and his writings. In this latter article I had applied the revision to the events surrounding the life of Moses, the Exodus, the desert sojourn and Conquest. The upshot was that these events had to be lifted away from convention's locating of them during the New Kingdom of Egypt, and restored to their proper place, as I see it, during the latter part (and, ultimately, collapse) of the Old Kingdom (which the revision synchronises with the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. (See Appendix B) [4]. In my subsequent review, which I called "Osman's 'Osmosis' of Moses", I further applied the revision to Osman's major premises, leading to my debunking of almost the entire book as nonsense. And I do not think that I would be alone in reacting so strongly to Osman's effort. In fact I doubt if Osman would be over-impressed by the The Wanderer's quotation of noted biblicist Hershel Shanks, who puts a recent commentator "in the same category as those cranks who claim that Jesus was not Jewish but Egyptian" [5]. late dating the Hebrew writings, making them dependent upon Babylonian myths. The view that Genesis & Exodus were very late compilations, having been handed down by oral tradition before being committed to writing during the Babylonian Exile, was formed by biblical commentators of the C19th, before the ancient scribal methods of antiquity had become properly known. This approach culminated in what is known as Graf-Wellhausen's "Documentary Hypothesis". It was created at a time, too, when scholars were of the widely mistaken belief that writing could not have existed before the time of King David (in c.1000 BC). We now know of course how completely naïve this view is. In those Graf-Wellhausen days there had not yet been sufficient time for the new archaeological data to be properly sifted and understood. Indeed most of it was still under the ground. The C19th is, for us, past history. What is most alarming however is that this obsolete Graf-Wellhausen system 'based' upon, shall we say, archaeological ignorance, still today prevails in all the commentaries and textbooks. The issue is far too large to go into here and will be reserved for more substantial consideration in Appendix A. Suffice it to say that the language and structure of the Pentateuch completely refute the Graf-Wellhausen system of Pan Babylonianism; because (a) the language of the Pentateuch is found to be absolutely saturated with Egyptian - a fact of which the Pan Babylonianists seem blissfully unaware; and (b) the Pentateuchal texts contain the most ancient of scribal structural elements, attesting them to be very early compilations. [See Toledoth] How could linguists have so overlooked the prevailing Egyptian element in the Pentateuch? [5a] Apparently this has happened due to the Egyptologists' lack of knowledge of - even, in some cases, contempt for - Hebrew and the Bible. Professor A. Yahuda, who lacked expertise in neither Hebrew, Egyptian or Akkadian, summed up and fully explained the unhappy situation. Scholars in the study of antiquity, he wrote, have tackled the many challenging aspects of the Book of Genesis with greater or lesser success. "The Assyro-Babylonian school", for instance, "has undoubtedly been very successful in shedding new light on many parts of the Bible and also on some chapters of Genesis. But far from solving the problems of composition and antiquity of the Pentateuch, it rather complicated them". Similarly Yahuda found that Egyptology, despite its useful contributions, has been too hamstrung by the "Documentary Hypothesis" to have been able to shed sufficient light [6]: Egyptology, too, failed, to furnish a solution only because after the rise of the Graf-Wellhausen School some of the leading Egyptologists accepted its theories without having sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and the Bible to enable them to take any initiative in these questions. As they could not find more than any occasional connexions between Hebrew and Egyptian, they simply took it for granted that Egyptology had very little to yield for the study of the Bible, and as to the Bible itself, Professor Adolf Erman went so far as to affirm that all 'that the Old Testament had to say about Egypt could not be regarded with enough suspicion'. Not surprisingly the entrenched attitude of Professor Erman, W. Spiegelberg and their colleagues, of which Yahuda spoke, posed an obstacle for enterprising students [7]: Such a statement [as Erman's] and others of like purport, coming as they did from Egyptologists of established authority, brought it about that students who might have perhaps undertaken to penetrate more deeply into a study of Hebrew-Egyptian relationships, were intimidated and deterred from approaching the matter; and on the other hand, Biblical critics could always refer to such statements as highly authoritative in support of their views on the late origin of the Pentateuch and the unreliable character of those parts which deal with Egypt. As for the small number of scholars who were courageous enough to challenge the entrenched system, these were severely penalised for so doing [7]: The endeavours of those few scholars who dared to go beyond the limits prescribed by the 'official' view of representative Egyptologists were either ignored altogether or only condescendingly considered, the results of their research being contemptuously rejected as unscientific and even fantastic. Academic Bullying
Shortly, in our treatment of Egypt in 3 (a), we are going to look at one of the most classic cases of academic bullying in archaeological history [8].
Professor Heinsohn, who himself seems to be quite comfortable with deleting whole æons of history, in all sorts of places, testifies to what appears to be a degree of Israeli indifference in this matter [12]: |
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Notes and references [1] HRA, HEINSOHN, G., "The Restoration of Ancient History" (Internet), 18. [2] In her response to my MSA. MACKEY, D., "Solomon and Sheba", C&CH Review, 1997:1. [3] RHM, ROSMARIN, T., `The Hebrew Moses. An Answer to Sigmund Freud', 5,7,8,9. [3b] From what I have read so far of the scholastic ability of some Arab speaking university graduated individuals makes me wonder about their scholastic fairness and abilities. [Comment by CIAS] [4] I have spelt all this out in much more detail in MRT, using in part the expertise of Professor Emmanuel Anati, basically a conventionalist who has realised that the Exodus and Conquest eras can only be plausible in an Old Kingdom, Early Bronze context. [5] "Thiede's Witness", in The Wanderer (June 12, 1997). Emphasis added. [5a] From Genesis 39 to Exodus 40 - These chapters reveal some Egyptian religious and social customs, administrative procedures, and funeral practices. [6] YLP,YAHUDA, A., `The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian', (Oxford University Press, 1933). On p.ix, Professor Yahuda made the following statement however in favour of the contribution by the established Egyptologists: "I particularly desire to point out that I owe a great part of my knowledge of Egyptian matters to the works of those Egyptologists who have most persistently adopted a sceptical standpoint with regard to a Hebrew-Egyptian relationship. Whilst I unreservedly acknowledge my indebtedness to them, I cannot refrain from expressing some disappointment at the quite incongruous fact, that strong opposition was forthcoming precisely from these Egyptologists, as they ought to have been the first to hail the important results derived from their works. That such an attitude should have been taken up by these scholars, can, I regret to say, only be explained by the fact that the abundant evidence brought forward in my book thoroughly and definitely disproved views which they had maintained with an almost 'Pharaonic' stubborness during the past forty years, affirming again and again that there was very little to be obtained from Egypt and Egyptian for the elucidation of the Old Testament". Yahuda's quote from A. Erman was taken from the latter's `Ägypten und Ägyptisches Leben im Altertum' (1885), 6. Erman reaffirmed this view in the revised edition, by H. Ranke (1923), 5. Similarly, Egyptologist Dr. Alan H. Gardiner said about the Exodus that "all the story of the Exodus ought to be regarded as no less mythological than the details of creation as recorded in Genesis", and that "at all events our first task must be to attempt to interpret these details on the supposition that they are a legend". Études Champollion (1922), 205. [7] Ibid., i. Emphasis added. [8] I dwell at some length, in MTP[MACKEY, D., "The Pharaoh Who Looted Solomon's Temple", upon the sad fate of Harold H. Nelson, Professor Breasted's talented pupil, who was "intimidated" (according to the context of the previous quote) into persevering with a doctoral thesis whose predetermined conclusions the young researcher had come to realise could not be squared with the facts. Nelson, unfortunately, was "deterred from" (see same quote) attempting a fresh approach to the subject, since his Rockefeller-funded master, Breasted, was expecting his student to prove the latter's own conclusions in relation to the first military campaign of pharaoh Thutmose III. The consequences for anyone who, in Nelson's situation, might have been daring enough to have practised scrupulous academic honesty, according to the evidence at hand, would almost certainly have been to have had one's doctoral thesis "contemptuously rejected as unscientific and even fantastic" (see same quote). [9] Op. cit., xxix. Emphasis added. [10] Ibid., 107. [11] CBS, 4-5. CARMIGNAC, J., `The Birth of the Synoptics', trans. Fr. M. Wrenn, Chicago (Franciscan Herald Press), 1987 [12] Op. cit., 26. [13] Some insist, however, that the specification, "Ur of the Chaldees", is meant to differentiate Abraham's Ur from the famous Ur in southern Mesopotamia. [14] MFT. MACKEY, D., "Fallen Towers", The Glozel Newsletter, Vol.6, No. 6, Hamilton, N.Z. (Outrigger Publishers, 2001), 1-11 [15] E.g. St. Jerome; the Jewish scholars. Summary. Putting 2 into Perspective. Note: The chronological aspects presented here are the personal view of Damien. What is the relevance for Hezekiah's era of this broad chronological revision? Briefly, let us consider it from the aspect of the Assyrian king, Tiglath-pileser III, who was an older contemporary of Hezekiah. (a) Egypt By lowering the Early Bronze Age of history by about half a millennium, and thereby getting rid of the 'Dark Ages' of Assyria, Greece, Anatolia, etc., we end up with the 18th Egyptian dynasty of Akhnaton located to the mid-C9th BC. This necessitates that the 19th dynasty of Ramses II that followed the 18th dynasty must penetrate right down into the C8th BC. (Ramses II can no longer be considered as the Pharaoh of Israel's Oppression). The famous 'Israel Stele' of Ramses' son, Merneptah, telling of Israel's being "desolate and her seed is no more", is now found to belong to the time of Tiglath-pileser III, the effects of whose campaigns fit the terms of Merneptah's Stele. (b) Assyria Ashurnasirpal and Shalmaneser III are found to be, not C9th BC Late Bronze Age kings, cluttering up the revised EA age, but C8th BC Iron Age kings, very close in time to Tiglath-pileser III. (c) Babylonia The Kassites are re-dated half a millennium later than where convention locates them, and are found to be the Chaldean ancestors of Merodach-baladan, contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III and of Hezekiah. (d) Israel/Judah A properly revised stratigraphy saves Israelite history from oblivion, and validates the model provided by the Hebrew chroniclers. Now, contrasting the conventional system against the one proposed in this thesis, we get the following patterns: |
| Figure 1 | Conventional Model |
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Egypt Assyria Babylonia Israel/Judah |
[C14th BC] Akhnaton Assuruballit Kassites In Egypt |
[C9th BC] 21st dynasty Shalmaneser III Marduk-zakir-shumi Jehu/Ahaziah |
[C8th BC] Pharaoh 'So' Tiglath-pileser III Nabonassar Hosea/Ahaz |
| Figure 2 | Revised Model |
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Egypt Assyria Babylonia Israel/Judah |
[C9th BC] Akhnaton Assuruballit Kassites Jehoram/Jehoram |
[C8th BC] Pharaoh 'So' Shalmaneser III |
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