h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Gif

Just a quick one on some of those points, with more to follow later.

<>

Although as I pointed out before Manetho only gives 120 years for the XXII dynasty, giving a starting date of about 825 BC.

<<(I think the battle refered to is Qarqar). >>

I know about Qarqar. The only record (AFAIK) is the annals of Shalmaneser III, who lists his opponents at the battle. He doesn't mention the Egyptians, though, which he surely would if they had been there. (He does list Ahab of the House of Omri, our earliest reliably dated mention of an Israelite king. The Mesha stele is of about the same age, though we don't have an exact date - it was probably a little later.)

<< If we have a consistent Egyptian chronology...>>

The nub of my argument is that we don't. Rohl is not the only one to argue this (he was preceded by James et al, Velikovsky, and more surprisingly, by Isaac Newton, but more on that another time. Suffice to say that a version of the conventional chronology existed that far back, before heiroglyphics had been read, and archaeology was just a bit of sporadic tomb robbing).

IIRC, there are no Hittite references to the Battle of Kadesh. What we have is a copy of the treaty between Hattusilis and Rameses II. It's not an independent date, however. The timetable of the Hittite empire is derived from the Egyptian dates. I have already mentioned the stratigraphy of Gordium, and would add the Gold Tomb at Carchemish, as indicators that the Hittite empire is displaced in time. But a fuller exposition later.

Noggin

Hi Nog,

Just a quick response 'cos I is at w**k

>The timetable of the Hittite empire is derived from the Egyptian dates.

The Hittite Old Kingdom is dated by the Sack of Babylon and a list of Hittite kings. The New Kingdom (the 'real' Hittite Empire) can be dated by the solar eclipse that happened in the reign of Mursili: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mursili%27s_eclipse

Combined with the Hittite King Lists, we can thereby get dates for some interactions with the Egyptians (e.g. Qadesh).

Gif

With apologies to Zagreb off whom I nicked this link on another forum would anyone like to join me in chuckling at this wonderful bit form Conservapedia?

http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project

FB

So the new fundamentalism is that the Bible is the inerrant word of god……except for the liberal parts.

gosh darn it, probably the funniest thing I have seen or read in ages.....

FB

Nice.

There's a link there to a page I've seen before: http://conservapedia.com/Adulteress_story I may have to hire these guys to help me out with the Bible Study.

>Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]

>Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

So they don't want it dumbed down, but they do want it in simple, plain, modern English. Did they just string together a list of catchphrases?

Gif

It's all quite reasonable actually. Conservatives take control of the school boards, dumb down the curriculum then re-imagine the inerrant word of god to suit.

Hi Nog,

In more detail:

>Manetho only gives 120 years for the XXII dynasty, giving a starting date of about 825 BC.

Sure, Manetho is far from perfect. He was writing at least half a millennium after the 22nd Dynasty, and his list has not survived, so we need to piece it together from other sources. We know from other lists - not leastly temple inscriptions contemporary to that Dynasty - that his list is not complete.

>Shalmaneser III ... lists his opponents at the battle. He doesn't mention the Egyptians

The Kurkh Stela is notoriously full of errors, and it has been suggested that the absence of the Egyptians may be no more than a spelling mistake. Certainly it's hard to see where else Zerah / Osorkon was going in such a hurry...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurkh_Monolith

>Rohl is not the only one to argue this (he was preceded by [...] Velikovsky,

Exactly!

I'm not saying that we have a clear and simple picture - but the basics of the chronology are pretty solid.

Gif

Now you've gone and got me browsing Conservapedia. My, what a site (yes, I'd seen it before, but... well, let's just say I'm not a habitual reader).

Try this page:
http://conservapedia.com/Homosexuality_in_animals_myth

Go on, keep reading. A bit further. Further than that...

Yes! There you are! Archaeoraptor is evidence that animals do not indulge in same-sex sex.

Gif

Hi Gif

<>

This kind of solid?

(From the american journal of archaelogy - Rodney Young at Gordion)

"The Phrygian stratum is covered by a layer of clay. For purposes of dating the sherds from this layer of clay are of little use; they are almost entirely Hittite... clearly a deposit that was already in the clay when it was brought from elsewhere to be laid down over the surface of the Phrygian city mound... a procedure evidently highly extravagant of labour" (The layer is four metres thick and covers the entire expanse of the city. It would have involved the transfer of millions of tons of clay soil over a considerable distance.)

Moreover - "The new city (Persian period) built over the clay layer dates from the second half of the sixth century. There is thus a lacuna of about a century and a half in the history of the site..."

Still can't find where the claim about Osorkon's army comes from. Are you sure it's not just a surmise based on context?

The eclipse site is interesting though. It does fit well with the standard chronology (but see above). I'm less sure about using the date of the sack of Babylon (where is the date derived from?) and the rather fragmentary king lists for dating purposes.

Noggin

An addendum on Osorkon II

http://www.varchive.org/tac/jeroboam.htm

I know you won't like the source, but read it anyway. It's not long.

Noggin

<<>Rohl is not the only one to argue this (he was preceded by [...] Velikovsky,

Exactly!

I'm not saying that we have a clear and simple picture - but the basics of the chronology are pretty solid.>>

I'm not sure what this "exactly" actually means. It's easy to get the impression from some academics that the revisionists are nutjobs. They may of course be wrong, as I'm quite willing to concede, but ridicule and abuse don't constitute refutation. True, the work of James and his colleagues ("Centuries of Darkness") received a cautious welcome, being more modest in scope, and being more concerned with delineating the problem than with providing a "grand solution" (they were also professional historians - insiders, not outsiders). But that there is a chronological problem with the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age is more than the view of an insignificant minority.

And the biggest anomaly is the dark age of Greece and Anatolia that gave James the title of his book. The problem is that the story simply doesn't make sense.

Noggin

Oh dear. Looks like I killed it.

Noggin

so the original argument was about the calender when the jews left egypt with moses in tow

has there ever been any evidence of the jewish comunity ever being in egypt in the first place??????

if the babylonians recorded the exile of the jews, you can be sure as eggs is eggs the pharohs did

Naughty Noggin.

http://www.auaris.at/html/history_en.html

I was just looking at this. Tell el Daba is believed to be the ancient city of Avaris, and the place where the Israelites were oppressed.

In the 12th dynasty it was home to people of Asiatic origin and Canaanite culture, but was abandoned in the late 13th dynasty (roughly the time of the papyrus ipuwer, the document that started this discussion.

Noggin

Hi Nog,

No, not killed - I just don't know much(*) about the Greek Dark Ages.

So I'm starting with W***pedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages ) which paints a fairly clear picture:
the former lack of archaeological evidence in a period that was mute in its lack of inscriptions has been shown to be an accident of discovery rather than a fact of history. The archaeological evidence shows a widespread collapse of civilization in the eastern Mediterranean world during the same period, as the great palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans were destroyed or abandoned. [...] artifacts from excavations at Lefkandi on the Lelantine Plain in Euboea show that significant cultural and trade links [between the Greeks and] the east, particularly the Levant coast, developed from c 900 BC onwards [the Dark Age running from 1200 to 800 BC], and evidence has emerged of a migration of Hellenes to sub-Mycenaean Cyprus.

So not so much a 'dark age', more a 'dim age' from the sounds of it. And presumably if there was a Greek Dark Age - as there seems to have been - that would rip the guts out of James' theory (and his book title).

Gif

(*) read: anything

Hi again Nog,

> http://www.auaris.at/html/history_en.html

Against that you would need to weigh clear evidence that the Hebrew people developed from nomadic / pastoral peoples in Canaan. There is very little to tie the 'habiru' mentioned as living in Egypt with the 'Hebrews' other than a similarity in name. 'Habiru' are described more as bandits than a specific ethnic people.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_Unearthed

Gif

Hi gif

The question is - Why do historians believe there is a dark age in Greece?

We have a reliable history of classical Greece that extends back to the 7th century, and more patchily back to the 8th and possibly 9th century.

Before that we have the Mykenean Greeks. We know a lot about the internal history and chronology of this period from the archaeology, but no absolute chronology derived internally from Greece, because there are no documents or archaeology across the dark age. Instead the absolute chronology of Mykenae is fixed by cross reference to Egypt, and particularly the el-Amarna pottery (because this site (Akhet-Aten) was only occupied for about 15 years there are no stratigraphical complications).

The dark age of Greece, and of Anatolia, where the Hittite chronology is derived from Egypt, is solely derived from Egyptian chronology, and not from any vertical evidence from these regions.

So we have two vibrant flourishing civilisations which suddenly disappear; no writing, no buildings, no signs of habitation, no connections with the outside world. And then equally suddenly we find these countries with flourishing, literate societies, building stuff, and generally leaving loads of evidence of their existence. Almost as if the Dark Ages had never happened

Noggin

Hi Nog,

Again I stress: I really don't know any Greek archaeology, so this is a question not a statement:

What Greek items were found at Amarna? (Or, alternatively, what Amarna-period Egyptian items have been found in Greece?)

The Wiki article I referenced suggested that your sentence is in the wrong tense:
>there WERE no documents or archaeology across the dark age.

My understanding is that more recent work has gone some way to filling this gap (though I would imagine that much remains to be done).

>So we have two vibrant flourishing civilisations which suddenly disappear; no writing, no buildings, no signs of habitation, no connections with the outside world. And then equally suddenly we find these countries with flourishing, literate societies, building stuff, and generally leaving loads of evidence of their existence. Almost as if the Dark Ages had never happened

Again, I don't think that's strictly true. There was a large-scale displacement across the eastern Med at this time, which has left a great deal of evidence of social upheaval - the Wiki entry suggests 150 years of decline in Mycenae. Then there is archaeology during the 'dark ages' (there just isn't very much), followed by a slow, steady recovery.

Like I said, I hate to be single-source (especially on W***pedia), but I really don't know much(*) about Greek archaeology.

Gif

(*)You know how to read that...