WORLD HISTORY
BIBLE CHRONOLOGY
PART XLII
TRADITIONAL EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY
Hello all my fines friends!
Well, the new year has started off very well. The weather has been nice enough to be outdoors and I am always grateful to be able to spend some time in God’s creation!
With all these studies on ancient man and advanced technology, where does this put our ancestors on the time scale? Where does the stone, bronze, and iron age all fit in? And what about Egyptian chronology? Does it prove the bible wrong? Let’s take a closer look.
It is true that Egyptian chronology dominates today’s understanding of ancient history and though many secular scholars insist this data is indisputable, there are some big problems with it. Remember, we have the only indisputable word--that is the word of God. So in order to see and understand the differences we must compare the two chronologies.
Hopefully you as the reader now have a fairly good idea of Biblical chronology. I have include a chart that will help sum it all up. But what about the traditional Egyptian timeline?
To understand Egyptian chronology you must understand how it was put together. Two influences built the traditional Egyptian chronology; Manetho’s history and the Sothic theory.
Manetho was a a priest commissioned by Ptolomy II, king of Ptolemaic Egypt, in the 3rd century B.C. to compile a history of Egypt. Manetho based his compilation in regnal years, which is the length of reign of a king, or pharaoh in this case. “However, Manetho’s writings are unsuitable for establishing a reliable Egyptian chronology because Manetho’s history; was never intended to be a chronological account of Egyptian history, and is inconsistent with contemporary Egyptian sources.” Indeed Manetho’s writings only survive as a “garbled abridgment”. A fourth century historian by the name of Eusebius argued against putting Manetho’s Egyptian history in regnal years. He said “Several Egyptian kings ruled at the same time….It was not a succession of kings occupying the throne one after the other, but several kings reigning at the same time in different regions.” 1 This brings up big problems. For example, if the pharaoh's dynasties were one after another instead of overlapping, this would put the pyramids before The Flood. And even these great structures would not be able to survive that.
The Sothic cycle was created by Eduard Meyer in 1904. Meyer wanted “to give Egypt a unified calendar that aligns Egyptian regnal years with modern historians B.C. Dates”2. He claimed that the Egyptian calendar fell behind each year because it had no leap year and became accurate only during the year of the “rising of Sothis”. “The theory says the Egyptians knew that 1,460 years were necessary for the calendar to correct itself because the annual sunrise appearance of the star Sirius corresponded to the first day of Egypt’s flood season only once every 1,460 years….”3 But there is no evidence that this Sothic cycle every existed in ancient Egypt.
Understanding the truth behind these two foundations of traditional Egyptian chronology severely effects its reliability. “God determines truth. Historians examine fragmentary clues and fill in the gaps based on their presuppositions. Those presuppositions may be biblical or traditional. Accepting traditional Egyptian chronology necessitates rejection of biblical truth. Accepting Biblical chronology allows a reconstruction of ancient chronology on a foundation of truth. Viewing the evidence from a biblical framework makes the histories of Egypt and the old testament fit together like two sides of a zipper.”4
| Table of Biblical and Egyptian Synchronisms74 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Date B.C. | Bible | Egyptians | Dynasty |
| 4004 | Adam | ||
| 2348 | Noah’s flood | ||
| post-Babel | Mizraim | ||
| late 1900s | Abraham | Khufu | 4 |
| 1706 | Joseph; Jacob to Egypt | Sesostris I | 12 |
| 1635 | Joseph dies | ||
| after 1635 | enslavement | Sesostris III | 12 |
| 1571 | Moses born | Amenemhet III | 12 |
| 1491 | Exodus | Neferhotep I | 13 |
| Judges | Hyksos | 15-17 | |
| late 1000s | David (1 Kings 11:19) | Ahmosis or Amenhotep I | 18 |
| 1012 | Solomon starts temple | Thutmosis I | 18 |
| Queen of Sheba | Hatshepsut | 18 | |
| 971 | Rehoboam; Shishak invades | Thutmosis III | 18 |
| late 900s | Asa; Zerah the Ethiopian | Amenhotep II | 18 |
| late 900s | Ahab; Elijah | Akhenaton | 18 |
| uncertain | Raamses II | 19 | |
| 722 | Assyria destroys Israel | Merneptah | 19 |
| 709 | Hezekiah; Assyrian invasion | Taharka | 25 |
| 664 | Manasseh | Taharka dies | 25 |
| 609 | Josiah dies | Necho | 26 |
| 605 | Necho; Carchemish | 26 | |
| 589 | Jeremiah | Hophra | 26 |
| 586 | Temple destroyed | ||
| 525 | Cambyses of Persia | ||
For further research into this fascinating subject I recommend Newton’s Revised History of Ancient Kingdoms by Issac Newton; and The Chronology of the Old Testament by Dr. Floyd Jones.
God bless and have fun out there!
Willow Dressel
This week in the night skies; Wednesday, “January 8 Jupiter’s moon Europa crosses Jupiter’s face from 6:47 to 9:29 p.m. EST, USA, with its shadow following just 10 minutes behind.
Thursday, January 9, In this coldest time of the year, the dim Little Dipper hangs straight down from Polaris after dinnertime as if (per Leslie Peltier) from a nail on the cold north wall of the sky.”5
For the southern hemisphere; “NOAA predicts G2 and G1 class geomagnetic storms, which have the potential to produce aurora in Tasmania, Southern Victoria, Possibly Southern WA and South Island New Zealand. The Australian IPS has an anodyne prediction of "active".”6
References:
1-4Ham, Ken, The new answers book 2. Green Forest, AR. Master Books, 2012. Pp 246-248, 263.
Ham, Ken, The new answers book 2. Green Forest, AR. Master Books, 2012. Pp 246-248, 263.
No comments:
Post a Comment