Well, I'm now probably moving away again from the Mizraim was in Arabia theory.
As I've said before, even as I've become more critical of Velikovsky in terms of the 18th Dynasty, I've become more convinced then ever of his models for the 19th, 20th and 21st Dynasties.
I've been considering the Implications of keeping that aspect of Velikovsky while at the same time considering that Rohl may have been at least partly right in his view of the Amarna Letters.
Mutbaal as Ishbaal/Eshbaal has always been Rohl's strongest argument. Even conventionalists agree that Mutbaal also means Man of Baal. We have someone ruling mainly in the Trans-Jordan but who's father controlled Shechem, and with basically the same name. Too many perfect alignments to just ignore.
The name Labaya is suspected to be related to a Hebrew word usually translated Lion, Labiy Strong Number 3833. The primary verse using this word I've seen so far cited to support it being a name for Saul is Psalm 57:4 which David wrote while on the run from Saul, and there it appears in a Plural form, Labaim. Sometimes the plural suffix is used of an individual in Hebrew as a sign of respect.
I however have been looking at Prophecies in the Torah, Genesis 49:9, Numbers 23:24 and Numbers 24:9, where two words for Lion get used, Ari and Labiy. Ari is definitely the Lion of Judah since only Ari is used in Micah 5:8, and Isaiah 29 uses Ariel (Lion of God) as a name for Zion, The City of David (Which is Bethlehem), and the Lions of Solomon's Throne were Ari. So I wonder if it's possible that in these prophecies the Ari is David and the Labiy is Saul?
Rohl doesn't seem to have an identity for Abdi-Heba the King of Jerusalem in the Amarna Letters. Probably because he assumed The Bible never names the Jebusite King of the region. But that's because English translations obscure that the Hebrew of 2 Kings 24:23 says Araunah was a King. And both accounts agree he was a Jebusite.
The fact that Abdi-Heba seems to have later started working with the same Hapiru that he'd complained about Labaya working with, is probably his alliance with David. It can be inferred from the Biblical Narrative that they were on friendly terms already even before the Plague happened.
Now one implication of combining those two views, is bringing us right back to the 22nd Dynasty seemingly being the era of Solomon, Jeroboam and Rehoboam. The starting point of Revised Chronology is usually saying that identification is obviously wrong.
Unless there is a forgotten dynasty, or forgotten final phase of the 18th, to come between the end of the Amarna period and the Libyan take over.
One criticism of the Shoshenq as Shishak view to come to me recently is that The Bible would have called Shosenk a Libyian (either by calling him a Lubim or of Phut). When it refers to the Nubian Dynasty ruler Taharka it calls him a Cushite King, and doesn't call him Pharaoh or even directly say that he rules Egypt.
And then there is the fact that even the conventional date for Shoshenq is too late for when I place the end of Solomon's Reign, being Ussher's date (975 BC) at the latest. Conventional Chronology places Ussher's date for Solomon's Death during the reign of Siamun of the 21st Dynasty.
This returns me to the mystery of how Manetho's 18th Dynasty does seem to last longer then Archeologists usually think. And has him seemingly recording Ramses Minaium twice, once as part of the 18th Dynasty and then in the 19th Dynasty. But Seti exists only in the 19th Dynasty account.
I still think Orus of Manetho is Akhenaten, and Rathotis is Tutankamun. And then Acheneres as Ay and finally Armasis'Harmais as Horemheb.
Rohl has Horemheb as the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon Married, that adds up well. Since Labaya is now agreed to have probably died before Amenhotep III did, Horemheb was probably King when Solomon took the Throne 40 and one half years after Saul died. Still it's possible that even though he was King at the time the daughter Solomon married was one of Akhenetan's, or any woman who held the title "King's Daughter". Maybe Solomon wound up marrying the same Queen who had written to Suppiluliuma I?
That still leaves the Shishak question up in the air.
Showing posts with label Shishak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shishak. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2018
Friday, November 4, 2016
Adjusting the 18th Dynasty
I still think Shishak is most likely an 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, or rather 18th Dynasty at the latest.
There are some out there now who support Velikovsky's identity for Shishak but can't his view of the 19th Dynasty. And will thus try to argue a place for the 19th Dynasty putting it right after Velikovsky has the 18th end. One variation is arguing Seti I is the "Saviour" of Jahoash.
And with that one could argue, though I haven't seen it yet, for placing the Libyan (22nd and 23rd) dynasties between 19 and 20. Since Rameses III alludes to a foreign occupation then.
The thing is, I'm actually more convinced of Velikovsky's arguments for the 19th, 20th and 21st Dynasties then anything else, and I will be posting more on that in the future. So I'm the opposite of others in this regard.
My desire to adjust the 18th Dynasty began only with problems I saw in which specific campaign of Tuthmosis III Velikovsky identified with Shishak taking treasures form The Temple. We keep criticizing the conventional Shoshenk view by pointing out how Shoshenk's campaigns were in the North, ruled by Shishak's effective puppet Jeroboam. But Tuthmosis III's 21st year campaign (first year of his sole rule) was mainly a siege of Megiddo, also a northern city. Velikovsky talks about Megiddo being one of Solomon's main fortresses, but that doesn't matter, everything Solomon had north of Bethel became Jeroboam's by this point.
Something else I noticed. The Bible records Shishak and Rehoboam fighting no battle. The more detailed Chronicles account includes a description of his army, but because Rehoboam listened to the Prophet (unlike the Kings in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel) Temple treasures were turned over without a fight.
So if it is a campaign of Tuthmosis III, it could easily be one of the campaigns that focused only on collecting tribute. Or maybe it could fit Tuthmosis I's Syrian campaign where he describes how no one resisted him, a fact which has confused historians. But it could also fit Amenhotep II's campaigns from his 3rd, 7th or 9th years.
Solomon's marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh isn't mentioned in Chronicles, only in Kings, though Chronicles does mention Solomon bringing horses from Egypt. And Gezer isn't mentioned when the marriage is first refereed to. Pharaoh taking Gezer is thus based on only one verse, 1 Kings 9:16. I shall quote it in the context of the verses before and after.
When one allows that option, the possibility that Gezer somehow became an error for Megiddo is plausible. I who do not consider it possible for the Masoretic text to be in error, am willing to consider that this whole account is a summery and by Pharaoh taking Gezer it might mean all three cities at the end of the previous verse.
That then opens up the option that Tuthmosis III's 21st-23rd years campaign is during Solomon's reign not Rehoboam. When in Solomon's reign Gezer was taken isn't clear. This verse seems to refer to it in past tense (the context of Solomon's reign at this point is about 20-25 years in). But I think this did happen later then the marriage since Gezer isn't mentioned in the initial account of it. And maybe in that case Gezer or Hazor is the city called Kadesh by Tuthmosis III. Gezer did have a Canaanite High Place, so it too could have been a Holy City. Hazor is actually quite close to Kadesh-Naphtali, not just both being in Naphtali, but very northern Naphtali, both significantly north of the Sea of Galilee.
So this could make the Shishak campaign either one of the very late campaigns of Tuthmosis III, or of Amenhotep II. And could make the daughter of Pharaoh Solomon married either a daughter of Tuthmosis III or Neferure.
Karnak does list Gezer as a city Tuthmosis III conquered. And Wikipedia's page for Gezer lists Tuthmosis as the only Pharaoh known to have conquered the city.
While I have many potential nitpicks of Velikovsky's Amarna view. The strong evidence for the Amarna period being being contemporary with Shalmanezzer III I do find quite compelling. But again for my view that would be Jehoram's reign over the north not Ahab's.
I tried to entertain David Rohl's Amarna view, his Mutbaal/Ishbaal connection is his strongest argument. It's not only Rohl who argued Mutbaal means "Man of Baal" it's at the start of Mutbaal's wikipedia page. However Labaya as Saul doesn't add up to me, I could see a Northern Kingdom ruler being defined mainly as Shechem, even the ones ruling from nearby Samaria. But Saul's capitals were all in Benjamin. Rohl also identifies Joab with a king of a very far northern city, which is just random.
The Amarna period must be some period of the Divided Kingdom. Even how conventional chronology defines it has the area of Israel mostly being defined by the rivalry between Labaya in Shechem and the King of Jerusalem.
I read an argument once for Labaya as Basha. I can't find it now.
But here is the thing, the beginning of the reign of Akhenaten is almost exactly 100 years after Tuthmosis III's battle of Megiddo, the Amarna period begins a decade before that, so 90 years later. The Biblical timeline of the divided kingdom has 90 years after Shishak plundered Rehobaom as during the brief reign of Athaliah, and thus the Amarna period mostly after she died. That's going off Ussher's dates.
So Velikovsky's synchronization for Shishak and Amarna can't both be right.
If the taking of Gezer can be synchronized to the Battle of Megiddo, then Amarna can be moved down a couple decades and perhaps fit much better.
And if the taking of Gezer was very early in Solomon reign, then 90 years after that takes us to right after Omri moved his capital from Tirzah to Samaria, in the region of Shechem. The Bible doesn't tell us how Omri died, but it was about 6 years after he moved the capital to Samaria. The death of Labaya has sometimes been dated to while Amenhotep III still reigned.
If Ebed-Tov is a name all Kings of Judah used, then the letters might not even notice when Asa changed to Jehoshaphat. Or maybe Jehoshaphat was writing the letters during the later part of his father's reign?
In my earlier Amarna post I had suggested the possibility that the grandfather of Jehu was a son of Omri other then Ahab who was placed in charge of the Transjordan. Now that I'm considering Omri as Labaya, Mutbaal could have been an alternate name of Nimshi grandfather of Jehu. Nimshi may be a name given to him post-mortem considering it's meaning.
But even without a Jehu connection, it would be logical for Omri to place a son as a governor in the Trans-Jordan. And maybe it's because he ruled in the same region that he took the name of the much earlier Ishbaal.
End of part 1, Beginning of Part 2.
That timeline still has the issues so many find so unacceptable of the 19th Dynasty not immediately following the 18th. I will make further arguments for the gap between the 18th and 19th Dynasties in the future. But for the rest of this post I want to consider one more hypothetical timeline for the 18th Dynasty, one that would have it end pretty close to when Velikvosky has the 19th Dynasty begin.
The dates for Horemhab's reign are inconsistent, with most archeologists certain he didn't have more then 14 years, but with at least one ancient reference to 59 years. Maybe power struggles with Nubia/25th dynasty are a part of that confusion.
If Horemhab can be placed about when Velikovsky argued him to be (which he did in the context of removing him from the 18th dynasty altogether) it can become possible to argue for the Amarna period being contemporary with Menahem and Pekah. Menahem I think it is a bit easier to hypothetically identify with Labaya.
Let's talk about the sons of Labaya. We know he had more then one, and we know the name of only one. There is however no definitive proof Mutbaal was even among the sons referenced in other contexts. I will not argue for identifying Mutbaal with Pekaiah. I will for the next five paragraphs copy something I argued elsewhere not connected to revised chronology at all, for possibly making Hoshea a son of Menahem. And at the same time giving his dynasty a link to the Transjordan (where Mutbaal reigned) via Gad.
King Menahem is called Ben Gadi or "Son of Gadi", Gadi is the same in the Hebrew as "Gadite", so perhaps Gadi wasn't the personal name of his father but rather this phrase identifies him as a Gadite?
The house of Menahem does NOT like Jeroboam, Baasha or Ahab have a declaration that it's male line was or will be entirely blotted out. His son Pekahiah was killed in a coup by Pekah ben Remaliah. Pekah is later killed in a coup by Hoshea ben Elah. Could Hoshea have been of Menahem's house, that is often called the House of Gadi? Hoshea and Menahem both paid tribute to the same Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pileser.
Maybe Elah was Pekahiah's brother? Or Sister, ending with a Heh is usually grammatically feminine in Hebrew but our assumptions about some names forget that. Or maybe Elah was a wife of Menahem or Pekahiah?
We are repeatedly told there is more to the story in an alluded to Northern Kingdom counterpart to Chronicles, but it hasn't been preserved since it (being kept by a less faithful Kingdom) wasn't God's Word.
The idea of Kings coming from Gad is intriguing to me because I've noticed something about Moses Blessing on The Tribe of Gad in Deuteronomy 33:20-21 that most don't. It's a blessing that seems to imply Royal status, similar terminology to that used of Judah in Genesis 49:9-10. So Lost Tribes speculation aside that convinced me Samaria did have a Gadite dynasty.
Maybe Hoshea could be Mutbaal, or maybe another brother. If this dynasty was a Gadite one then it could have been important to them to place a potential heir as the governor of Gad, or of the whole Transjordan.
Maybe the Shalmanezzer alluded to is V rather then III?
There are some out there now who support Velikovsky's identity for Shishak but can't his view of the 19th Dynasty. And will thus try to argue a place for the 19th Dynasty putting it right after Velikovsky has the 18th end. One variation is arguing Seti I is the "Saviour" of Jahoash.
And with that one could argue, though I haven't seen it yet, for placing the Libyan (22nd and 23rd) dynasties between 19 and 20. Since Rameses III alludes to a foreign occupation then.
The thing is, I'm actually more convinced of Velikovsky's arguments for the 19th, 20th and 21st Dynasties then anything else, and I will be posting more on that in the future. So I'm the opposite of others in this regard.
My desire to adjust the 18th Dynasty began only with problems I saw in which specific campaign of Tuthmosis III Velikovsky identified with Shishak taking treasures form The Temple. We keep criticizing the conventional Shoshenk view by pointing out how Shoshenk's campaigns were in the North, ruled by Shishak's effective puppet Jeroboam. But Tuthmosis III's 21st year campaign (first year of his sole rule) was mainly a siege of Megiddo, also a northern city. Velikovsky talks about Megiddo being one of Solomon's main fortresses, but that doesn't matter, everything Solomon had north of Bethel became Jeroboam's by this point.
Something else I noticed. The Bible records Shishak and Rehoboam fighting no battle. The more detailed Chronicles account includes a description of his army, but because Rehoboam listened to the Prophet (unlike the Kings in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel) Temple treasures were turned over without a fight.
So if it is a campaign of Tuthmosis III, it could easily be one of the campaigns that focused only on collecting tribute. Or maybe it could fit Tuthmosis I's Syrian campaign where he describes how no one resisted him, a fact which has confused historians. But it could also fit Amenhotep II's campaigns from his 3rd, 7th or 9th years.
Solomon's marriage to the daughter of Pharaoh isn't mentioned in Chronicles, only in Kings, though Chronicles does mention Solomon bringing horses from Egypt. And Gezer isn't mentioned when the marriage is first refereed to. Pharaoh taking Gezer is thus based on only one verse, 1 Kings 9:16. I shall quote it in the context of the verses before and after.
And this is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised; for to build the house of the Yahuah, and his own house, and Millo, and the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, and Megiddo, and Gezer.
For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up, and taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slain the Canaanites that dwelt in the city, and given it for a present unto his daughter, Solomon's wife.
And Solomon built Gezer, and Bethhoron the nether.....Velikovsky is willing to consider The Bible account imperfect or corrupted, as shown by his discussion of Ahab and Jehoram, which I responded to in my Amarna post. And Rhol does the same when arguing for his view of Babel, I adjust his argument in a way that can be more consistent with viewing God's word as inspired and preserved.
When one allows that option, the possibility that Gezer somehow became an error for Megiddo is plausible. I who do not consider it possible for the Masoretic text to be in error, am willing to consider that this whole account is a summery and by Pharaoh taking Gezer it might mean all three cities at the end of the previous verse.
That then opens up the option that Tuthmosis III's 21st-23rd years campaign is during Solomon's reign not Rehoboam. When in Solomon's reign Gezer was taken isn't clear. This verse seems to refer to it in past tense (the context of Solomon's reign at this point is about 20-25 years in). But I think this did happen later then the marriage since Gezer isn't mentioned in the initial account of it. And maybe in that case Gezer or Hazor is the city called Kadesh by Tuthmosis III. Gezer did have a Canaanite High Place, so it too could have been a Holy City. Hazor is actually quite close to Kadesh-Naphtali, not just both being in Naphtali, but very northern Naphtali, both significantly north of the Sea of Galilee.
So this could make the Shishak campaign either one of the very late campaigns of Tuthmosis III, or of Amenhotep II. And could make the daughter of Pharaoh Solomon married either a daughter of Tuthmosis III or Neferure.
Karnak does list Gezer as a city Tuthmosis III conquered. And Wikipedia's page for Gezer lists Tuthmosis as the only Pharaoh known to have conquered the city.
While I have many potential nitpicks of Velikovsky's Amarna view. The strong evidence for the Amarna period being being contemporary with Shalmanezzer III I do find quite compelling. But again for my view that would be Jehoram's reign over the north not Ahab's.
I tried to entertain David Rohl's Amarna view, his Mutbaal/Ishbaal connection is his strongest argument. It's not only Rohl who argued Mutbaal means "Man of Baal" it's at the start of Mutbaal's wikipedia page. However Labaya as Saul doesn't add up to me, I could see a Northern Kingdom ruler being defined mainly as Shechem, even the ones ruling from nearby Samaria. But Saul's capitals were all in Benjamin. Rohl also identifies Joab with a king of a very far northern city, which is just random.
The Amarna period must be some period of the Divided Kingdom. Even how conventional chronology defines it has the area of Israel mostly being defined by the rivalry between Labaya in Shechem and the King of Jerusalem.
I read an argument once for Labaya as Basha. I can't find it now.
But here is the thing, the beginning of the reign of Akhenaten is almost exactly 100 years after Tuthmosis III's battle of Megiddo, the Amarna period begins a decade before that, so 90 years later. The Biblical timeline of the divided kingdom has 90 years after Shishak plundered Rehobaom as during the brief reign of Athaliah, and thus the Amarna period mostly after she died. That's going off Ussher's dates.
So Velikovsky's synchronization for Shishak and Amarna can't both be right.
If the taking of Gezer can be synchronized to the Battle of Megiddo, then Amarna can be moved down a couple decades and perhaps fit much better.
And if the taking of Gezer was very early in Solomon reign, then 90 years after that takes us to right after Omri moved his capital from Tirzah to Samaria, in the region of Shechem. The Bible doesn't tell us how Omri died, but it was about 6 years after he moved the capital to Samaria. The death of Labaya has sometimes been dated to while Amenhotep III still reigned.
If Ebed-Tov is a name all Kings of Judah used, then the letters might not even notice when Asa changed to Jehoshaphat. Or maybe Jehoshaphat was writing the letters during the later part of his father's reign?
In my earlier Amarna post I had suggested the possibility that the grandfather of Jehu was a son of Omri other then Ahab who was placed in charge of the Transjordan. Now that I'm considering Omri as Labaya, Mutbaal could have been an alternate name of Nimshi grandfather of Jehu. Nimshi may be a name given to him post-mortem considering it's meaning.
But even without a Jehu connection, it would be logical for Omri to place a son as a governor in the Trans-Jordan. And maybe it's because he ruled in the same region that he took the name of the much earlier Ishbaal.
End of part 1, Beginning of Part 2.
That timeline still has the issues so many find so unacceptable of the 19th Dynasty not immediately following the 18th. I will make further arguments for the gap between the 18th and 19th Dynasties in the future. But for the rest of this post I want to consider one more hypothetical timeline for the 18th Dynasty, one that would have it end pretty close to when Velikvosky has the 19th Dynasty begin.
The dates for Horemhab's reign are inconsistent, with most archeologists certain he didn't have more then 14 years, but with at least one ancient reference to 59 years. Maybe power struggles with Nubia/25th dynasty are a part of that confusion.
If Horemhab can be placed about when Velikovsky argued him to be (which he did in the context of removing him from the 18th dynasty altogether) it can become possible to argue for the Amarna period being contemporary with Menahem and Pekah. Menahem I think it is a bit easier to hypothetically identify with Labaya.
Let's talk about the sons of Labaya. We know he had more then one, and we know the name of only one. There is however no definitive proof Mutbaal was even among the sons referenced in other contexts. I will not argue for identifying Mutbaal with Pekaiah. I will for the next five paragraphs copy something I argued elsewhere not connected to revised chronology at all, for possibly making Hoshea a son of Menahem. And at the same time giving his dynasty a link to the Transjordan (where Mutbaal reigned) via Gad.
King Menahem is called Ben Gadi or "Son of Gadi", Gadi is the same in the Hebrew as "Gadite", so perhaps Gadi wasn't the personal name of his father but rather this phrase identifies him as a Gadite?
The house of Menahem does NOT like Jeroboam, Baasha or Ahab have a declaration that it's male line was or will be entirely blotted out. His son Pekahiah was killed in a coup by Pekah ben Remaliah. Pekah is later killed in a coup by Hoshea ben Elah. Could Hoshea have been of Menahem's house, that is often called the House of Gadi? Hoshea and Menahem both paid tribute to the same Assyrian King, Tiglath-Pileser.
Maybe Elah was Pekahiah's brother? Or Sister, ending with a Heh is usually grammatically feminine in Hebrew but our assumptions about some names forget that. Or maybe Elah was a wife of Menahem or Pekahiah?
We are repeatedly told there is more to the story in an alluded to Northern Kingdom counterpart to Chronicles, but it hasn't been preserved since it (being kept by a less faithful Kingdom) wasn't God's Word.
The idea of Kings coming from Gad is intriguing to me because I've noticed something about Moses Blessing on The Tribe of Gad in Deuteronomy 33:20-21 that most don't. It's a blessing that seems to imply Royal status, similar terminology to that used of Judah in Genesis 49:9-10. So Lost Tribes speculation aside that convinced me Samaria did have a Gadite dynasty.
Maybe Hoshea could be Mutbaal, or maybe another brother. If this dynasty was a Gadite one then it could have been important to them to place a potential heir as the governor of Gad, or of the whole Transjordan.
Maybe the Shalmanezzer alluded to is V rather then III?
BTW the Deuteronomy Prophecy about Gad uses the same Hebrew word for Lion that Rohl argued is root of the name Labaya.
This could place the start of the 18th Dynasty already after the time of Rehoboam. And open the possibly that Shishak was a Hyksos.
I argued before that Shishak is in fact a Hebrew name the etymology of which can be 100% explained as Hebrew in origin, coming from a word for linen. And did so for the purpose of suggesting that we need not look for it in Egyptian records at all. And I stand by that in terms of the first model I argued for in this post.
But the Hyksos used Semitic names. Did they use one that could explain the origin of Shishak? There is one very hotly debated figure of the second intermediate period who comes awfully close. Sheshi.
Rohl attempted to argue Sheshi was the Sheshai who was an Anakim king. In the Strongs that name is located close to some of the variants of Shishak, like Shashak and Sheshech. One other attested Egyptian king some have sought to identify Sheshi with is Sharek. So that is evidence for a version of the name with a K at the end.
Sheshi is also theorized to be the same as Shenshek. If Shoshenk proponents can add an n to the name, then adding one in a different spot is also acceptable.
The two theories about Sheshi provided by mainstream Egyptologists I find most interesting here are, that he may have been a Hyksos who reigned between Khyan and Apepi. Or that he was a Hyksos vessel who ruled in southern Canaan.
Shishak is NOT in either Kings or Chronicles called Pharaoh, the King who's daughter Solomon married was. Shishak is only called the King (Melek) of Egypt. But could it be this actually meant a King from or representing Egypt? Perhaps ruling from Al-Arish or Sharuen?
And then, could the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married be Khyan? Arguably the Hyksos ruler who's influence was the most extensive? And the Hyksos may not have shared the hostility to marrying their daughter to foreign rulers that Amenhotep II and III did.
Josephus's version of Manetho seems to place Khyan after rather then before Apepi/Apophis. Modern Egyptologists are pretty sure him reigning before is correct. Either way aspects of what I just argued could be seen as weakening the Amalekites/Hyksos connection. But as I said the Hyksos were always a collection of tribes.
Sheshi's successor has been theorized to be Nehesy Aaserhe. With Nehesy being interpreted to mean "The Nubian". Could Aaserhe somehow become Zerah? Maybe it could come from an attempt in the Egyptian language to represent Ha-Zerah (Zerah with a definite article, because Hebrew did use those before personal names). And "The Nubian" used to translate "The Cushite".
This second model is perhaps better compatible with a 6th Dynasty Exodus Model then a Middle Kingdom model.
This could place the start of the 18th Dynasty already after the time of Rehoboam. And open the possibly that Shishak was a Hyksos.
I argued before that Shishak is in fact a Hebrew name the etymology of which can be 100% explained as Hebrew in origin, coming from a word for linen. And did so for the purpose of suggesting that we need not look for it in Egyptian records at all. And I stand by that in terms of the first model I argued for in this post.
But the Hyksos used Semitic names. Did they use one that could explain the origin of Shishak? There is one very hotly debated figure of the second intermediate period who comes awfully close. Sheshi.
Rohl attempted to argue Sheshi was the Sheshai who was an Anakim king. In the Strongs that name is located close to some of the variants of Shishak, like Shashak and Sheshech. One other attested Egyptian king some have sought to identify Sheshi with is Sharek. So that is evidence for a version of the name with a K at the end.
Sheshi is also theorized to be the same as Shenshek. If Shoshenk proponents can add an n to the name, then adding one in a different spot is also acceptable.
The two theories about Sheshi provided by mainstream Egyptologists I find most interesting here are, that he may have been a Hyksos who reigned between Khyan and Apepi. Or that he was a Hyksos vessel who ruled in southern Canaan.
Shishak is NOT in either Kings or Chronicles called Pharaoh, the King who's daughter Solomon married was. Shishak is only called the King (Melek) of Egypt. But could it be this actually meant a King from or representing Egypt? Perhaps ruling from Al-Arish or Sharuen?
And then, could the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married be Khyan? Arguably the Hyksos ruler who's influence was the most extensive? And the Hyksos may not have shared the hostility to marrying their daughter to foreign rulers that Amenhotep II and III did.
Josephus's version of Manetho seems to place Khyan after rather then before Apepi/Apophis. Modern Egyptologists are pretty sure him reigning before is correct. Either way aspects of what I just argued could be seen as weakening the Amalekites/Hyksos connection. But as I said the Hyksos were always a collection of tribes.
Sheshi's successor has been theorized to be Nehesy Aaserhe. With Nehesy being interpreted to mean "The Nubian". Could Aaserhe somehow become Zerah? Maybe it could come from an attempt in the Egyptian language to represent Ha-Zerah (Zerah with a definite article, because Hebrew did use those before personal names). And "The Nubian" used to translate "The Cushite".
This second model is perhaps better compatible with a 6th Dynasty Exodus Model then a Middle Kingdom model.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Friday, May 22, 2015
Nefrubity and Solomon
I've expressed before my theory that Nefrubity is probably the Daughter of Pharoh whom Solomon married, since the Pharaoh at the start of reign was Tuthmosis I. I'm not the only one to come to that conclusion.
Mainstream Egyptologists assume her vanishing from the Egyptian records means she died young.
Skeptics of The Bible see a problem here regardless of chronology, there is seemingly no documentation from Egyptian records of any Egyptian Princess ever being married to a foreign ruler. And they add to that absence of evidence as evidence of absence logic, Amenhotep II and Amenhotep III.
The king of the Mitanni had asked Amenhotep II for his daughter's hand in order to cement a political alliance. Amenhotep refused, offended by the suggestion that an Egyptian princess be submitted for that ridicule of being married off to a foreign leader.
There is a written account that the King of Babylon sent a princess to King Amenhotep III to marry and requested an Egyptian Princess be sent to Babylon to marry him. Amenhotep III turned down the request replying, "That since the days of old no Egyptian king’s daughter has been given to anyone."
It amazes how determined secular scholars are to discredit The Bible. Since clearly these two Amenhoteps were offended by the suggestion, they would not have been honest about it if there was any prior precedent for it. Politicians frequently lie about the history of their country.
In fact if Egypt during the later 18th Dynasty decided they fond the idea offensive, they probably would have sought to destroy all documentation of past examples. We know many cases in Egyptian history where trying to erase their past history was something they wanted to do, like the entire existence of Akhneton.
Egypt during the reign of Tuthmosis I was not in the same position as the reign of Amenhotep III or II, who were both post Tuthmosis III (Shishak). The early 18th Dynasty Pharaoh's were still trying to secure and establish Egypt's independence in the wake of throwing out the Hycsos/Amalekites. It was primarily under Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III that Egypt regained their old Hegemony and became a World Superpower again.
So Tuthmosis I seeking such a move to secure an alliance with Solomon is perfectly plausible. But after Shishak's conquests the game changed, and now they only took and never gave.
At the very least, Nefrubity being married to a foreign leader and some later Pharaohs wanting to erase that fact is at least an equally likely explanation for her disappearance then that she just died but was seemingly never buried or mourned.
It is absurd to think Amenhotep III's stubbornness on this subject could be maintained at other times in history when Egypt didn't hold old the bargaining chips. And in conventional chronology, the time of Siamun was one such time, his dynasty was about to die.
As I read the Amarna exchange between Amenhotep III and Kadashman-Enlil (EA 1-5). Kadash seems quite incredulous of the absoluteness of Amenhotep's claim in EA#4. What really confused me however is, EA#2 has Kadash seemingly saying his wife was Amenhotep III's sister.
Mainstream Egyptologists assume her vanishing from the Egyptian records means she died young.
Skeptics of The Bible see a problem here regardless of chronology, there is seemingly no documentation from Egyptian records of any Egyptian Princess ever being married to a foreign ruler. And they add to that absence of evidence as evidence of absence logic, Amenhotep II and Amenhotep III.
The king of the Mitanni had asked Amenhotep II for his daughter's hand in order to cement a political alliance. Amenhotep refused, offended by the suggestion that an Egyptian princess be submitted for that ridicule of being married off to a foreign leader.
There is a written account that the King of Babylon sent a princess to King Amenhotep III to marry and requested an Egyptian Princess be sent to Babylon to marry him. Amenhotep III turned down the request replying, "That since the days of old no Egyptian king’s daughter has been given to anyone."
It amazes how determined secular scholars are to discredit The Bible. Since clearly these two Amenhoteps were offended by the suggestion, they would not have been honest about it if there was any prior precedent for it. Politicians frequently lie about the history of their country.
In fact if Egypt during the later 18th Dynasty decided they fond the idea offensive, they probably would have sought to destroy all documentation of past examples. We know many cases in Egyptian history where trying to erase their past history was something they wanted to do, like the entire existence of Akhneton.
Egypt during the reign of Tuthmosis I was not in the same position as the reign of Amenhotep III or II, who were both post Tuthmosis III (Shishak). The early 18th Dynasty Pharaoh's were still trying to secure and establish Egypt's independence in the wake of throwing out the Hycsos/Amalekites. It was primarily under Hatshepsut and Tuthmosis III that Egypt regained their old Hegemony and became a World Superpower again.
So Tuthmosis I seeking such a move to secure an alliance with Solomon is perfectly plausible. But after Shishak's conquests the game changed, and now they only took and never gave.
At the very least, Nefrubity being married to a foreign leader and some later Pharaohs wanting to erase that fact is at least an equally likely explanation for her disappearance then that she just died but was seemingly never buried or mourned.
It is absurd to think Amenhotep III's stubbornness on this subject could be maintained at other times in history when Egypt didn't hold old the bargaining chips. And in conventional chronology, the time of Siamun was one such time, his dynasty was about to die.
As I read the Amarna exchange between Amenhotep III and Kadashman-Enlil (EA 1-5). Kadash seems quite incredulous of the absoluteness of Amenhotep's claim in EA#4. What really confused me however is, EA#2 has Kadash seemingly saying his wife was Amenhotep III's sister.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Menhet, Menwi and Merti were possibly Davidic Princesses
That's my wild guess, it could be wrong, but consistent with the Chronology I support.
Menhet Menwi and Merti. In case you don't know, were three foreign wives married to Tuthmosis III. They are the subject of much speculation.
They definitively came from the Levant (modern Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan). Some speculate them to have been related, maybe Sisters, maybe Cousins. But others think they look quite distinct.
You might be thinking an Israelite princess marrying a Gentile who doesn't worship Yahweh would be a sin? The passages on spiritual intermarriage being bad are mostly all about Israelite men marrying Heathen women rather then the other way. Deuteronomy 7, I think is the only one that defined it as going both ways.
Esther marrying Ahasuerus worked out quite well. I don't know why the two scenarios would be considered different, maybe the assumption is a wife is considered more likely to spiritually influence her husband then other way around.
In terms of Deuteronomy 7 political marriages to foreign leaders may have been considered a necessary exception. This isn't the part that has commands specific for the King. And at any-rate there is often no choice when you've been conquered.
These three becoming his wives is considered most likely to be the result of them being tribute from his early Syrian campaigns. Because we know Tuthmosis III was Shishak and the chief of his campaigns was against Rehoboam, and he was allied with Jeroboam, that becomes quite interesting from a Biblical perspective.
Rehoboam we are told had 18 wives and 60 concubines by whom he had 28 sons and 60 daughters. Rehoboam was 41 when Solomon died, four or five years before Shishak attacked. Some of those kids, maybe even most, I think he could have had already at the start of his reign. Maybe a good number had already reached marriageable age.
Could these three wives be daughters of Rehoboam? I think it's plausible.
Menhet Menwi and Merti. In case you don't know, were three foreign wives married to Tuthmosis III. They are the subject of much speculation.
They definitively came from the Levant (modern Syria, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan). Some speculate them to have been related, maybe Sisters, maybe Cousins. But others think they look quite distinct.
You might be thinking an Israelite princess marrying a Gentile who doesn't worship Yahweh would be a sin? The passages on spiritual intermarriage being bad are mostly all about Israelite men marrying Heathen women rather then the other way. Deuteronomy 7, I think is the only one that defined it as going both ways.
Esther marrying Ahasuerus worked out quite well. I don't know why the two scenarios would be considered different, maybe the assumption is a wife is considered more likely to spiritually influence her husband then other way around.
In terms of Deuteronomy 7 political marriages to foreign leaders may have been considered a necessary exception. This isn't the part that has commands specific for the King. And at any-rate there is often no choice when you've been conquered.
These three becoming his wives is considered most likely to be the result of them being tribute from his early Syrian campaigns. Because we know Tuthmosis III was Shishak and the chief of his campaigns was against Rehoboam, and he was allied with Jeroboam, that becomes quite interesting from a Biblical perspective.
Rehoboam we are told had 18 wives and 60 concubines by whom he had 28 sons and 60 daughters. Rehoboam was 41 when Solomon died, four or five years before Shishak attacked. Some of those kids, maybe even most, I think he could have had already at the start of his reign. Maybe a good number had already reached marriageable age.
Could these three wives be daughters of Rehoboam? I think it's plausible.
Friday, April 25, 2014
Hatshepsut was not the Queen of Sheba
This is my most unique quality as a supporter of the basic Velikovsky model starting with Tuthmosis III as Shishak. I seem to be the lone voice in the wilderness on this particular pairing of beliefs.
If the Queen of Sheba was an Egyptian queen The Bible wouldn't have obscured that, it dealt with Solomon's interactions with Egypt unambiguously both before and after this. Also since Tuthmosis I must be the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married (Nefrubity is my hunch on that), Hatshepsut was her full blooded Sister. If this Queen was Solomon's sister in law that is a strange thing to overlook.
Shishak is Tuthmosis III, his invasion of Retenu that corresponds to Shishak's taking Jerusalem was in the first year of his sole reign (21st year total). Which means over 5 years earlier when Jeroboam fled to Egypt was while Hatshepsut was still alive.
The visit of the Queen of Sheba I believe is meant to be understood as taking place very near the events of the previous chapter, 1 Kings 9. Which opens about 24 years into Solomon's 40 year reign. Which means timing wise it's either before Tuthmosis II died or very early in Hatshepsut's reign. The reigning Pharaoh of Egypt is mentioned in the prior chapter, it might seem the Kings narrative isn't consistent with this being no longer the same Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married, but I don't think that's a big deal. The Biblical authors I think weren't always concerned with distinguishing different Pharaohs. But a Pharaoh of Egypt they always refereed to as Pharaoh.
Hatsheput like other Egyptian Queens ruled as if she were a man. And the term Pharaoh that the Bible uses actually refers to the Royal Palace, so it's like saying "The White House". So I really would not expect The Bible to refer to Hatsheput any differently then it would a male Pharaoh.
The Punt expedition was in Hatsheput's Eight year. So it's too late.
Jesus calls her the "Queen of The South" in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. Daniel 11 is cited where the "King of The South" is consistently Egypt. So this correlation is the start of attempts to argue she was an Egyptian queen.
South in Biblical geography is south of Israel/Jerusalem, in the context of Alexander's successors only Ptolemy is south of Israel, and Egypt was the core of his Kingdom though not all of it. But without that context South by no means always means Egypt, and usually refers to further south then that. In Jesus' time I'm inclined to think South of anything Rome ruled might have been the context. And Rome ruled Egypt at that time.
The word translated South in Daniel 11 (Negev) isn't the only Hebrew word used to communicate the idea of the South, there at least three others. Jesus I believe was actually speaking the above quote in Hebrew, but we have no idea if he used the same word. And I argued in one Bible study that it's used of Egypt there only when the Ptolemies ruled the Negev desert.
Another Hebrew word for South is Teman, which is interesting since Temani is also a name used of Yemenite Jews, not unlike Germanic Jews being Ashkenazim after Ahskenaz ben Gomer. In fact there is an argument to be made for the name Yemen itself coming from Teman/Teyman. Espically given the tendency of Hebrew naming to treat the Y/I/J and T as interchangeable, examples Yeshua/Teshua, Yerekh/Terekh, and Judas/Thadeus. And another word for South used in Yamen, derived from Yam.
Velikovsky unintentionally argued once that Mount Sinai was in Yemen. What's interesting about that is Habbukah 3:3 is a verse that parallels the reference to Seir and Sinai in Deuteronomy 33, that possibly justifies using Teman as a name for where Sinai is.
Then Josephus (Antiquities of The Jews Book 8 Chapter 6 Section 5) is cited. I'll address why I think Josephus was mistaken on this later. But the point here is that while Josephus is a good source for history near contemporary to himself, before the Hellenistic era he screws many things up (including the Persian King Esther married). The farther back he goes the more he's basing his Extra-Biblical information on legends of questionable reliability. In fact this very section of Josephus is totally absurd and he admits dependence on Herodotus. He acts like Pharaoh was an actual name the Pharaoh's used like Caesar.
There are three Shebas in the Table of Nations, Two in Genesis 10 and another being Abrahamic (of Keturah). The two in Genesis 10 are one Hamitic/Cushite and the other Semitic/Joktanite. But in both I Kings 10 and II Chronicles 11 the Queen of Sheba narrative is linked to Ophir another Joktanite name. I think Bill Cooper's biggest mistakes in After The Flood's appendices are in how he dealt with the repeat names.
Serious Archaeologists all know that Sheba was the name of a Kingdom in southern Arabia, modern Yemen. ( Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition p. 167).
Do not think that the Ancient Yemenite kingdom who's capital was Ma'rib is called Sheba only because of a desire to put that Biblical identification on it. They are known by that name independent of Biblical or Judeo-Christian influences.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti paragraph 26.5, (a funeral inscription of Augustus).
They were a seafaring people and were known to have had significant trade with the Northeast African kingdom of DŹæmt, across the Red Sea in Somalia, Eritrea, the only other source of both frankincense and myrrh. But the desire to use that African connection to make Axum or Nubia part of what's defined as Sheba is horribly flawed, those kingdoms were no where near those coastal lands.
The Yemen region was a place many Jews fled to following the fall of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the 8th-6th centuries BC. The Lemba tribe used to live in Yemen according to their oral history.
Very early on in Church History the Gospel came to this region. Among those who became Christians were the Ghassanids, who later migrated north and became a significant Arab-Christian Kingdom in roughly modern Jordan.
The famous Arabic proverb “They were scattered like the people of Saba” refers to them and other tribes of the Yemen region leaving after the destruction of the Ma'rib Dam.
The ancient Nubian city of Saba (which was later renamed Meroe during the time of Cambyses) I feel probably got that name not from a Sheba but from Cush's son Seba/Sebah. In English that name looks very similar to Sheba, and they could also transliterate into African languages similarly, but in Hebrew they begin with a different letter. Isaiah 43 refers to "Seba and Ethipoia" after mentioning Egypt, in a context where by Seba it could mean a city or region in Ethiopia. And Ethipoia/Cush linked to Egypt in this way always means the Nubian civilization just to the south of Egypt.
Seba and Sheba are mentioned next to each other in the Messianic Kingdom Psalm 72 verse 10. "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts." The point here I think is nations that Israel's contact with was by Sea bringing gifts to The Messiah. Tarshish and it's isles (British isles) to the west, and Seba and Sheba are both through the Red Sea port, in that context Yemen or India could work for Sheba while Seba is Nubia.
The Cushite Sheba of Genesis 10 I believe settled in Ancient India where he was deified as Shiva and his father Ramaah as Rama an avatar of Vishnu. Rama and his wife Sita had two sons just like Ramaah. One of those sons was named Kush. So the Indian mythology has confused the genealogy over the ages, but I believe that's where Ramaah and his sons went.
The Sheba and Dedan of Keturah I think probably lived in northern Saudi Arabia like the other Keturite tribes. They are probably the Sabeans who are mentioned in Job.
I do believe the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia. But the Menelik legend is propaganda created by the Christian Auxomite kings to give them a Biblical lineage. I believe Graham Hancock and Bob Cornuke's theory for how it got there. First being at Elephantine island from sometime after King Manasseh's reign to the time of Cambyses, then was on Tana Kirkos until the Auxomite Kingdom took it. The Menilik legend was invented by the Auxomite Kings as propaganda do give them a Biblical;y significant Royal lineage (making them Davidic kings). The Jews of Ethiopia do not believe that story at all.
The Arabic traditions of Balqis/Bilqis/Bilquis did exist in Pre-Islamic times (Mohammed didn't really come up with much of anything new) and so have good reason to be viewed as more ancient and valid then the purely invented Ethiopian legend. However the details of the Bilqis legend as presented in the Koran and other surviving Arabic sources do not seem credible. I would not bet on that actually being her original real name. But if I wrote any fiction based on this I'd probably use something like it.
I do believe Hatshepsut probably visited Solomon also. The Bible says many rulers came to visit Solomon and witness his Wisdom. The Queen of Sheba is singled out NOT because she's the most important by secular standards, but because she became a Saved individual. Which is why Jesus cited her as such alongside the "men of Nineveh" who believed the message of Jonah.
That's the biggest problem to me actually, Hatshepsut was a faithful worshiper of the Egyptian gods to the end, no evidence she responded to Solomon how the Queen of Sheba did.
Actually, back to Psalm 72. It's also called a Psalm of Solomon, because Solomon foreshadowed the Messianic Kingdom. So the Sheba and Sebah reference could show both Ethiopia and Sheba had rulers visit Solomon, but they were distinct from each other.
Strictly speaking, what we call the Nubian civilization was kind of born around 800 BC. During the Old and Middle Kingdom as well as early 18th Dynasty, the civilization in that region was Kerma. During the reign of Tuthmosis I Kerma was conquered by Egypt, and campaigns further south were carried out during the reign of Hatshepsut. So yes, the logic for saying Hatshepsut could be called a Queen of Ethiopia is justifiable.
I don't think the similarity between Make-Ra (A name of Hatshepsut) and Makeda (The name of the Queen of Sheba in the Ethiopian traditions) is entirely a coincidence. I think various Egyptian Jews, first at Elephantine and then later in Alexandria and the Onias colony (and maybe much later Coptic Christians), drew the same conclusion Velikovsky thinks they did, and began giving The Queen of Sheba that name (adjusting it to remove the pagan god). And this may have influenced Josephus who was very familiar with Alexandrian Jewish traditions.
I can't make up my mind if I feel the Punt expedition was her visit to Solomon. The arguments for it being synonymous with or part of Retenu (the Egyptian name for Canaan) are valid, but so are plenty of arguments for it being in the South. Maybe there was more then one land called Punt and "God's Land", after all the Egyptians believed in more then one god. Maybe even her specific Punt expedition was to more then one place.
The fact that Parahu and Ati (of the Punt expedition) are often refereed to as King and Queen is based on creative assumptions. Breasted translated Parahu's title as "Chief" and refereed to Ati only as his wife.
Velikovsky saw Parahu as being Paruah father of Jehosophat governor of Issachar from 1 Kings 4:17. Numbers 26:23 dealing with the offspring of Issachar says "Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites:" So maybe the Punite clan has something to do with where the name Punt came from.
But there are also Pre-Islamic Arabian legends that say the Sheba kingdom of Yemen once had a ruler named Phar’an or "Pharaoh" who annexed Ophir and Havilah. But after that King Sheba was ruled only by Women.
Genesis 10:30 referring to the sons of Joktan including Sheba, Ophir and Havilah settling near a mountain called Sephar. That mountain is Mount Zafar in the heart of Yemen, where the Capital of the Himyarite kingdom was. Also the Kingdom of Hadramaut came from Joktan's son Hazarmaveth.
The idea of Punt being the same as Sheba is suggested in Nicholas Clapp's book about Sheba.
Tuthmosis III had three mysteries foreign wives. Menhet, Menqi and Merti. All three seem to have been Semitic. Two are said to be West Semitic, the idea that they could be daughters of Solomon or Rehoboam or Jeroboam I find interesting. I have also read it suggested that one could have been from Sheba, and thus used to support the idea of Punt being Sheba.
Also, while this is mostly irrelevant to the actual study here. I feel like saying that I also disapprove of the desire to interpret Solomon and Sheba as Romantically and/or Sexually involved with each other. The Bible gives no hints of that, the fact that it nearly universally happens in Extra-Biblical expansions just speaks the problems society has with gender relations.
Update: A follow up I did about the Magi.
If the Queen of Sheba was an Egyptian queen The Bible wouldn't have obscured that, it dealt with Solomon's interactions with Egypt unambiguously both before and after this. Also since Tuthmosis I must be the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married (Nefrubity is my hunch on that), Hatshepsut was her full blooded Sister. If this Queen was Solomon's sister in law that is a strange thing to overlook.
Shishak is Tuthmosis III, his invasion of Retenu that corresponds to Shishak's taking Jerusalem was in the first year of his sole reign (21st year total). Which means over 5 years earlier when Jeroboam fled to Egypt was while Hatshepsut was still alive.
The visit of the Queen of Sheba I believe is meant to be understood as taking place very near the events of the previous chapter, 1 Kings 9. Which opens about 24 years into Solomon's 40 year reign. Which means timing wise it's either before Tuthmosis II died or very early in Hatshepsut's reign. The reigning Pharaoh of Egypt is mentioned in the prior chapter, it might seem the Kings narrative isn't consistent with this being no longer the same Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married, but I don't think that's a big deal. The Biblical authors I think weren't always concerned with distinguishing different Pharaohs. But a Pharaoh of Egypt they always refereed to as Pharaoh.
Hatsheput like other Egyptian Queens ruled as if she were a man. And the term Pharaoh that the Bible uses actually refers to the Royal Palace, so it's like saying "The White House". So I really would not expect The Bible to refer to Hatsheput any differently then it would a male Pharaoh.
The Punt expedition was in Hatsheput's Eight year. So it's too late.
Jesus calls her the "Queen of The South" in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. Daniel 11 is cited where the "King of The South" is consistently Egypt. So this correlation is the start of attempts to argue she was an Egyptian queen.
South in Biblical geography is south of Israel/Jerusalem, in the context of Alexander's successors only Ptolemy is south of Israel, and Egypt was the core of his Kingdom though not all of it. But without that context South by no means always means Egypt, and usually refers to further south then that. In Jesus' time I'm inclined to think South of anything Rome ruled might have been the context. And Rome ruled Egypt at that time.
The word translated South in Daniel 11 (Negev) isn't the only Hebrew word used to communicate the idea of the South, there at least three others. Jesus I believe was actually speaking the above quote in Hebrew, but we have no idea if he used the same word. And I argued in one Bible study that it's used of Egypt there only when the Ptolemies ruled the Negev desert.
Another Hebrew word for South is Teman, which is interesting since Temani is also a name used of Yemenite Jews, not unlike Germanic Jews being Ashkenazim after Ahskenaz ben Gomer. In fact there is an argument to be made for the name Yemen itself coming from Teman/Teyman. Espically given the tendency of Hebrew naming to treat the Y/I/J and T as interchangeable, examples Yeshua/Teshua, Yerekh/Terekh, and Judas/Thadeus. And another word for South used in Yamen, derived from Yam.
Velikovsky unintentionally argued once that Mount Sinai was in Yemen. What's interesting about that is Habbukah 3:3 is a verse that parallels the reference to Seir and Sinai in Deuteronomy 33, that possibly justifies using Teman as a name for where Sinai is.
Then Josephus (Antiquities of The Jews Book 8 Chapter 6 Section 5) is cited. I'll address why I think Josephus was mistaken on this later. But the point here is that while Josephus is a good source for history near contemporary to himself, before the Hellenistic era he screws many things up (including the Persian King Esther married). The farther back he goes the more he's basing his Extra-Biblical information on legends of questionable reliability. In fact this very section of Josephus is totally absurd and he admits dependence on Herodotus. He acts like Pharaoh was an actual name the Pharaoh's used like Caesar.
There are three Shebas in the Table of Nations, Two in Genesis 10 and another being Abrahamic (of Keturah). The two in Genesis 10 are one Hamitic/Cushite and the other Semitic/Joktanite. But in both I Kings 10 and II Chronicles 11 the Queen of Sheba narrative is linked to Ophir another Joktanite name. I think Bill Cooper's biggest mistakes in After The Flood's appendices are in how he dealt with the repeat names.
Serious Archaeologists all know that Sheba was the name of a Kingdom in southern Arabia, modern Yemen. ( Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition p. 167).
Do not think that the Ancient Yemenite kingdom who's capital was Ma'rib is called Sheba only because of a desire to put that Biblical identification on it. They are known by that name independent of Biblical or Judeo-Christian influences.
Res Gestae Divi Augusti paragraph 26.5, (a funeral inscription of Augustus).
"By my command and under my auspices two armies were led at about the same time into Ethiopia and into Arabia, which is called the Blessed [?]. Great forces of each enemy people were slain in battle and several towns captured. In Ethiopia the advance reached the town of Nabata, which is close to Meroe; in Arabia the army penetrated as far as the territory of the Sabaeans and the town of Ma'rib."This reference could interestingly make Ma'rib as far South as Roman armies ever went.
They were a seafaring people and were known to have had significant trade with the Northeast African kingdom of DŹæmt, across the Red Sea in Somalia, Eritrea, the only other source of both frankincense and myrrh. But the desire to use that African connection to make Axum or Nubia part of what's defined as Sheba is horribly flawed, those kingdoms were no where near those coastal lands.
The Yemen region was a place many Jews fled to following the fall of the Northern and Southern Kingdoms in the 8th-6th centuries BC. The Lemba tribe used to live in Yemen according to their oral history.
Very early on in Church History the Gospel came to this region. Among those who became Christians were the Ghassanids, who later migrated north and became a significant Arab-Christian Kingdom in roughly modern Jordan.
The famous Arabic proverb “They were scattered like the people of Saba” refers to them and other tribes of the Yemen region leaving after the destruction of the Ma'rib Dam.
The ancient Nubian city of Saba (which was later renamed Meroe during the time of Cambyses) I feel probably got that name not from a Sheba but from Cush's son Seba/Sebah. In English that name looks very similar to Sheba, and they could also transliterate into African languages similarly, but in Hebrew they begin with a different letter. Isaiah 43 refers to "Seba and Ethipoia" after mentioning Egypt, in a context where by Seba it could mean a city or region in Ethiopia. And Ethipoia/Cush linked to Egypt in this way always means the Nubian civilization just to the south of Egypt.
Seba and Sheba are mentioned next to each other in the Messianic Kingdom Psalm 72 verse 10. "The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts." The point here I think is nations that Israel's contact with was by Sea bringing gifts to The Messiah. Tarshish and it's isles (British isles) to the west, and Seba and Sheba are both through the Red Sea port, in that context Yemen or India could work for Sheba while Seba is Nubia.
The Cushite Sheba of Genesis 10 I believe settled in Ancient India where he was deified as Shiva and his father Ramaah as Rama an avatar of Vishnu. Rama and his wife Sita had two sons just like Ramaah. One of those sons was named Kush. So the Indian mythology has confused the genealogy over the ages, but I believe that's where Ramaah and his sons went.
The Sheba and Dedan of Keturah I think probably lived in northern Saudi Arabia like the other Keturite tribes. They are probably the Sabeans who are mentioned in Job.
I do believe the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia. But the Menelik legend is propaganda created by the Christian Auxomite kings to give them a Biblical lineage. I believe Graham Hancock and Bob Cornuke's theory for how it got there. First being at Elephantine island from sometime after King Manasseh's reign to the time of Cambyses, then was on Tana Kirkos until the Auxomite Kingdom took it. The Menilik legend was invented by the Auxomite Kings as propaganda do give them a Biblical;y significant Royal lineage (making them Davidic kings). The Jews of Ethiopia do not believe that story at all.
The Arabic traditions of Balqis/Bilqis/Bilquis did exist in Pre-Islamic times (Mohammed didn't really come up with much of anything new) and so have good reason to be viewed as more ancient and valid then the purely invented Ethiopian legend. However the details of the Bilqis legend as presented in the Koran and other surviving Arabic sources do not seem credible. I would not bet on that actually being her original real name. But if I wrote any fiction based on this I'd probably use something like it.
I do believe Hatshepsut probably visited Solomon also. The Bible says many rulers came to visit Solomon and witness his Wisdom. The Queen of Sheba is singled out NOT because she's the most important by secular standards, but because she became a Saved individual. Which is why Jesus cited her as such alongside the "men of Nineveh" who believed the message of Jonah.
That's the biggest problem to me actually, Hatshepsut was a faithful worshiper of the Egyptian gods to the end, no evidence she responded to Solomon how the Queen of Sheba did.
Actually, back to Psalm 72. It's also called a Psalm of Solomon, because Solomon foreshadowed the Messianic Kingdom. So the Sheba and Sebah reference could show both Ethiopia and Sheba had rulers visit Solomon, but they were distinct from each other.
Strictly speaking, what we call the Nubian civilization was kind of born around 800 BC. During the Old and Middle Kingdom as well as early 18th Dynasty, the civilization in that region was Kerma. During the reign of Tuthmosis I Kerma was conquered by Egypt, and campaigns further south were carried out during the reign of Hatshepsut. So yes, the logic for saying Hatshepsut could be called a Queen of Ethiopia is justifiable.
I don't think the similarity between Make-Ra (A name of Hatshepsut) and Makeda (The name of the Queen of Sheba in the Ethiopian traditions) is entirely a coincidence. I think various Egyptian Jews, first at Elephantine and then later in Alexandria and the Onias colony (and maybe much later Coptic Christians), drew the same conclusion Velikovsky thinks they did, and began giving The Queen of Sheba that name (adjusting it to remove the pagan god). And this may have influenced Josephus who was very familiar with Alexandrian Jewish traditions.
I can't make up my mind if I feel the Punt expedition was her visit to Solomon. The arguments for it being synonymous with or part of Retenu (the Egyptian name for Canaan) are valid, but so are plenty of arguments for it being in the South. Maybe there was more then one land called Punt and "God's Land", after all the Egyptians believed in more then one god. Maybe even her specific Punt expedition was to more then one place.
The fact that Parahu and Ati (of the Punt expedition) are often refereed to as King and Queen is based on creative assumptions. Breasted translated Parahu's title as "Chief" and refereed to Ati only as his wife.
Velikovsky saw Parahu as being Paruah father of Jehosophat governor of Issachar from 1 Kings 4:17. Numbers 26:23 dealing with the offspring of Issachar says "Of the sons of Issachar after their families: of Tola, the family of the Tolaites: of Pua, the family of the Punites:" So maybe the Punite clan has something to do with where the name Punt came from.
But there are also Pre-Islamic Arabian legends that say the Sheba kingdom of Yemen once had a ruler named Phar’an or "Pharaoh" who annexed Ophir and Havilah. But after that King Sheba was ruled only by Women.
Genesis 10:30 referring to the sons of Joktan including Sheba, Ophir and Havilah settling near a mountain called Sephar. That mountain is Mount Zafar in the heart of Yemen, where the Capital of the Himyarite kingdom was. Also the Kingdom of Hadramaut came from Joktan's son Hazarmaveth.
The idea of Punt being the same as Sheba is suggested in Nicholas Clapp's book about Sheba.
Tuthmosis III had three mysteries foreign wives. Menhet, Menqi and Merti. All three seem to have been Semitic. Two are said to be West Semitic, the idea that they could be daughters of Solomon or Rehoboam or Jeroboam I find interesting. I have also read it suggested that one could have been from Sheba, and thus used to support the idea of Punt being Sheba.
Also, while this is mostly irrelevant to the actual study here. I feel like saying that I also disapprove of the desire to interpret Solomon and Sheba as Romantically and/or Sexually involved with each other. The Bible gives no hints of that, the fact that it nearly universally happens in Extra-Biblical expansions just speaks the problems society has with gender relations.
Update: A follow up I did about the Magi.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
More evidence for Shishak being Tuthmosis III
The Tablets of Ras Shamra of Ugarit are contemporary with the 18th
Dynasty. This is agreed by Conventional and Revised chronology. The
Amarna letters record Ugarit's destruction (Letter 151). So none of them
could be referring to any 22nd dynasty Pharaoh.
One of the Ugarit tablets uses the name. "Le mot swsk semble, un nom propres, a rapprocher peut-etre de l'egyptien Sosenq, hebreu Sosaq, et Sisag." Dhorme, Revue biblique, XL (1931),55.
This is definitive proof on top of everything cited before that Shishak should be looked for in the 18th Dynasty.
I argued before for trying to find Shishak among Egyptian names of Tuthmosis, but I now mostly reject that.
Shishak is a Hebrew name that means "greedy of fine linen"-Strong# 7895. It's similar to Sheshach Strong # 8347 which is an Atbash encryption for Babylon and means "thy fine linen". It's possible referring to conquerors who pillage the Temple as something about fine Linen is a pattern.
Shishak actually has two different spellings across it's various appearances in the Masoretic text of Kings and Chronicles. Shin-Yot-Shin-Qoph and Shin-Vav-Shin-Qoph, it's numbering in the Strong's is based on the Yot version being the presumed default, the latter spelling would be pronounced Shushak. Yot and Vav have in common that they started being used as Vowls once later Hebrew scribes become more concerned with representing vowels. So that they are interchangeable in regards to this name suggests to me that originally neither was there. And Shin-Shin-Qoph is the spelling of Strong's number 8349, which is the Hebrew name Shashak, the name of a Benjamite mentioned in 1 Chronicles 8:14&25.
The Hebrew root it comes from in Shesh, Strong's number 8336, which means Linen. The only difference between 8347 and 8349 is Jeremiah's ends with Kaph rather then Qoph. Those two represent similar sounds, but I think Jeremiah used a different letter only to fit his Atbash.
So the name is not Egyptian and not the Pharaoh's actual name, period.
Velikovsky's source for proving that Ahmose had a wife named Tahpenes or Tanthap/Tanthape (to tie in with 1 Kings 11:19-20) isn't in English so I can't verify it. The source in question is Gauthier, Le Livre des rois d'Egypt. Wikipedia doesn't list a wife with that name for Ahmoses, nor for Khamose, Amenhotep I or Tuthmosis I.
The relevant passage of 1 Kings seems weird regardless of chronology. That Pharoh's wife would wean her sister's son for her. But hardly impossible.
On checking The Hebrew, I noticed the word for Queen used here, isn't really a word for Queen, it's not a feminine form of Melek or Sar. It means Mistress. So this is probably a lesser wife of his Harem and not an actual Queen or Royal wife.
The source for the claim that Genubath is mentioned by name in 18th dynasty Egyptian records of Tuthmosis III as Gebybatye is Breasted Records Volume II Section 474.
The Ugarit Poem of Keret refers to an army of Tereh, who parallels both the Biblical Zerah the Ethiopian of the days of King Asa, and the Egyptian campaigns in this region during the reign of Amenhotep II. As I said before I equate Zerah with User-tatet, Amenhotep's Nubian (Ethiopian) commander.
Menhet, Menwi and Merti were three minor foreign-born wives of pharaoh Thutmose III who were buried in a lavishly furnished rock-cut tomb in Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud. Two of their names are West-Semitic in origin though none are Hurrian. ( Christine Lilyquist, The Tomb of Thutmosis III's foreign wives: A survey of Architectural Type, Contents and Foreign Connections in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge 3–4 September 1995; ed. C.J. Eyre, Uitgeberij Peeters, Leuven, 1998. pp.679-680).
The possibility of them being connected to either the House of David or Jeroboam I find interesting.
One of the Ugarit tablets uses the name. "Le mot swsk semble, un nom propres, a rapprocher peut-etre de l'egyptien Sosenq, hebreu Sosaq, et Sisag." Dhorme, Revue biblique, XL (1931),55.
This is definitive proof on top of everything cited before that Shishak should be looked for in the 18th Dynasty.
I argued before for trying to find Shishak among Egyptian names of Tuthmosis, but I now mostly reject that.
Shishak is a Hebrew name that means "greedy of fine linen"-Strong# 7895. It's similar to Sheshach Strong # 8347 which is an Atbash encryption for Babylon and means "thy fine linen". It's possible referring to conquerors who pillage the Temple as something about fine Linen is a pattern.
Shishak actually has two different spellings across it's various appearances in the Masoretic text of Kings and Chronicles. Shin-Yot-Shin-Qoph and Shin-Vav-Shin-Qoph, it's numbering in the Strong's is based on the Yot version being the presumed default, the latter spelling would be pronounced Shushak. Yot and Vav have in common that they started being used as Vowls once later Hebrew scribes become more concerned with representing vowels. So that they are interchangeable in regards to this name suggests to me that originally neither was there. And Shin-Shin-Qoph is the spelling of Strong's number 8349, which is the Hebrew name Shashak, the name of a Benjamite mentioned in 1 Chronicles 8:14&25.
The Hebrew root it comes from in Shesh, Strong's number 8336, which means Linen. The only difference between 8347 and 8349 is Jeremiah's ends with Kaph rather then Qoph. Those two represent similar sounds, but I think Jeremiah used a different letter only to fit his Atbash.
So the name is not Egyptian and not the Pharaoh's actual name, period.
Velikovsky's source for proving that Ahmose had a wife named Tahpenes or Tanthap/Tanthape (to tie in with 1 Kings 11:19-20) isn't in English so I can't verify it. The source in question is Gauthier, Le Livre des rois d'Egypt. Wikipedia doesn't list a wife with that name for Ahmoses, nor for Khamose, Amenhotep I or Tuthmosis I.
The relevant passage of 1 Kings seems weird regardless of chronology. That Pharoh's wife would wean her sister's son for her. But hardly impossible.
On checking The Hebrew, I noticed the word for Queen used here, isn't really a word for Queen, it's not a feminine form of Melek or Sar. It means Mistress. So this is probably a lesser wife of his Harem and not an actual Queen or Royal wife.
The source for the claim that Genubath is mentioned by name in 18th dynasty Egyptian records of Tuthmosis III as Gebybatye is Breasted Records Volume II Section 474.
The Ugarit Poem of Keret refers to an army of Tereh, who parallels both the Biblical Zerah the Ethiopian of the days of King Asa, and the Egyptian campaigns in this region during the reign of Amenhotep II. As I said before I equate Zerah with User-tatet, Amenhotep's Nubian (Ethiopian) commander.
Menhet, Menwi and Merti were three minor foreign-born wives of pharaoh Thutmose III who were buried in a lavishly furnished rock-cut tomb in Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud. Two of their names are West-Semitic in origin though none are Hurrian. ( Christine Lilyquist, The Tomb of Thutmosis III's foreign wives: A survey of Architectural Type, Contents and Foreign Connections in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge 3–4 September 1995; ed. C.J. Eyre, Uitgeberij Peeters, Leuven, 1998. pp.679-680).
The possibility of them being connected to either the House of David or Jeroboam I find interesting.
Friday, March 21, 2014
On Shishak and Agag
Shoshenk's City List
Shoshenk I campaign into Palestine: His city list is an imitation of that of Thutmoses III but very instructive. The first 9 names are the `Nine Bows', #10 is the introduction saying simply "List of the towns". They are: 11=Gaza, 12=Makkedah, 13=Rubuti, 14=Aijalon, 15=Kiriathaim?, 16=Beth- horon, 17=Gibeon, 18=Mahanaim, 19=Shaud[y], 20=?, 21=Adoraim, 22=Hapharaim, 23=Rehob, 24=Betshan, 25= Shunem, 26=Taanach, 27=Megiddo, 28=Adar, 29=Yadhamelek, 30=[Heb]el?, 31=Honim?, 32=Aruna, 33=Borim, 34=Gathpadalla, 35=Yahma, 36=Betharuma, 37=Kekry, 38=Socoh, 39=Bethappuah... Between #17 & 18 should be Jerusalem by sequence if that is where he went according to conventional history, 1.Kings 14:25-26 & 2.Chronicles 12:2-9. In fact he went no where near there.
Kadesh comes from Qdsh, the Hebrew word for Holy, it applied to many cities in the region, to assume Egyptian records always meant the same one is naive, The Bible repeatedly refers to Jerusalem as Holy.
While the "n" is sometimes dropped from Shoshenk, it never is in inscriptions recognizing him from this region.
It is well known that the later Egyptian pharaohs had as many as five names. Now Birch has noted in this regard that "... the (Golden) Horus names of Thutmose III comprise variations on: Tcheser-khau, Djeser-khau, Cheser-khau, (Sheser-khau?);" names that come very close indeed to "Shishak" (Hebr. qwaOwi) according to Birch. Nor do these names have the problem of the presence of the letter "n" as found greatly complicating discussions on the name Shoshenq's appropriateness for "Shishak". Regarding the succession of consonants - considered much more important than the changeable vowels in ancient names - we get for Sheser-kau the pattern, Sh-S-K, corresponding almost exactly to Sh-Sh-K, and more suitable than Shoshenq (Sh-Sh-N-K). And since an R is dropped in getting Ozymandias from the Throne Name of Ramses II I see no reason to make that an objection here.
As far as whether or not that's a normal name for a foreigner to call that pharaoh by, again the Bible is often abnormal, Shishak works well as a Hebrew pun, for example it's similar to Jeramiah's code for Babylon.
Among the Treasures looted from Tuthmosis's campaign are many matching relics of Solomon's Temple including the Menorah.
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/karnak_loot_english.html
There are a lot of ideas on this site I like. But plenty that annoy me, like Hatshepsut as Sheba but especially Solomon as Senenmut.
In the textbooks, that equate Sosenk I with the biblical Shishak, it is pharaoh Osorkon IV - or his (Nubian) general (un-named) - who is usually regarded as "Zerah the Ethiopian" who, in c.897 BC, attacked king Asa of Jerusalem with a massive army of Ethiopians and Libyans, but was soundly defeated by the Jewish king (2 Chronicles 14:9-15). Velikovsky had synchronized this biblical incident with the reign of the belligerent Amenhotep II (son of Thutmose III, Velikovsky's "Shishak") whom he equated with Zerah. Whilst I completely accept Velikovsky's dating here, I believe that his attempts to 'prove' that pharaoh Amenhotep II had Ethiopian blood flowing in his veins was not quite convincing.
Nor does the Bible say that Zerah was even a pharaoh; nor that he led native Egyptian troops. I, for my part, prefer to equate Zerah with Amenhotep's old friend, User-tatet, Nubian (Ethiopian) commander. I do not think that it is stretching the imagination too far to believe that Semites - who in the EA letters called Akhnaton, Naphuria, from his coronation name, Nepher-kheperura - could have turned User into Zerah. Moreover, we know from the Egyptian records that User-tatet did campaign in the vicinity of Maresha, in the Shephelah plain of Israel (given in the Egyptian records as Retenu - and distinguished from Upper Retenu, or the hill country). The Egyptian records, as it is thought, are not going to record any military defeat.
Now that I've synchronized Tuthmosis III's Kadesh campaign with the 5th year of Rehoboam, lining up Biblical dates with 18th Dynasty dates we get the final overthrow of the Hycsos in the same year the Amalekites attacks Ziklag and David became king. And the overthrow of Apepi is about 10-11 years before that, which is only a year or to before when Saul was sent to war against Agag.
I agree with Ages in Chaos about Agag being Apepi,
Shoshenk I campaign into Palestine: His city list is an imitation of that of Thutmoses III but very instructive. The first 9 names are the `Nine Bows', #10 is the introduction saying simply "List of the towns". They are: 11=Gaza, 12=Makkedah, 13=Rubuti, 14=Aijalon, 15=Kiriathaim?, 16=Beth- horon, 17=Gibeon, 18=Mahanaim, 19=Shaud[y], 20=?, 21=Adoraim, 22=Hapharaim, 23=Rehob, 24=Betshan, 25= Shunem, 26=Taanach, 27=Megiddo, 28=Adar, 29=Yadhamelek, 30=[Heb]el?, 31=Honim?, 32=Aruna, 33=Borim, 34=Gathpadalla, 35=Yahma, 36=Betharuma, 37=Kekry, 38=Socoh, 39=Bethappuah... Between #17 & 18 should be Jerusalem by sequence if that is where he went according to conventional history, 1.Kings 14:25-26 & 2.Chronicles 12:2-9. In fact he went no where near there.
Kadesh comes from Qdsh, the Hebrew word for Holy, it applied to many cities in the region, to assume Egyptian records always meant the same one is naive, The Bible repeatedly refers to Jerusalem as Holy.
While the "n" is sometimes dropped from Shoshenk, it never is in inscriptions recognizing him from this region.
It is well known that the later Egyptian pharaohs had as many as five names. Now Birch has noted in this regard that "... the (Golden) Horus names of Thutmose III comprise variations on: Tcheser-khau, Djeser-khau, Cheser-khau, (Sheser-khau?);" names that come very close indeed to "Shishak" (Hebr. qwaOwi) according to Birch. Nor do these names have the problem of the presence of the letter "n" as found greatly complicating discussions on the name Shoshenq's appropriateness for "Shishak". Regarding the succession of consonants - considered much more important than the changeable vowels in ancient names - we get for Sheser-kau the pattern, Sh-S-K, corresponding almost exactly to Sh-Sh-K, and more suitable than Shoshenq (Sh-Sh-N-K). And since an R is dropped in getting Ozymandias from the Throne Name of Ramses II I see no reason to make that an objection here.
As far as whether or not that's a normal name for a foreigner to call that pharaoh by, again the Bible is often abnormal, Shishak works well as a Hebrew pun, for example it's similar to Jeramiah's code for Babylon.
Among the Treasures looted from Tuthmosis's campaign are many matching relics of Solomon's Temple including the Menorah.
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/karnak_loot_english.html
There are a lot of ideas on this site I like. But plenty that annoy me, like Hatshepsut as Sheba but especially Solomon as Senenmut.
In the textbooks, that equate Sosenk I with the biblical Shishak, it is pharaoh Osorkon IV - or his (Nubian) general (un-named) - who is usually regarded as "Zerah the Ethiopian" who, in c.897 BC, attacked king Asa of Jerusalem with a massive army of Ethiopians and Libyans, but was soundly defeated by the Jewish king (2 Chronicles 14:9-15). Velikovsky had synchronized this biblical incident with the reign of the belligerent Amenhotep II (son of Thutmose III, Velikovsky's "Shishak") whom he equated with Zerah. Whilst I completely accept Velikovsky's dating here, I believe that his attempts to 'prove' that pharaoh Amenhotep II had Ethiopian blood flowing in his veins was not quite convincing.
Nor does the Bible say that Zerah was even a pharaoh; nor that he led native Egyptian troops. I, for my part, prefer to equate Zerah with Amenhotep's old friend, User-tatet, Nubian (Ethiopian) commander. I do not think that it is stretching the imagination too far to believe that Semites - who in the EA letters called Akhnaton, Naphuria, from his coronation name, Nepher-kheperura - could have turned User into Zerah. Moreover, we know from the Egyptian records that User-tatet did campaign in the vicinity of Maresha, in the Shephelah plain of Israel (given in the Egyptian records as Retenu - and distinguished from Upper Retenu, or the hill country). The Egyptian records, as it is thought, are not going to record any military defeat.
Now that I've synchronized Tuthmosis III's Kadesh campaign with the 5th year of Rehoboam, lining up Biblical dates with 18th Dynasty dates we get the final overthrow of the Hycsos in the same year the Amalekites attacks Ziklag and David became king. And the overthrow of Apepi is about 10-11 years before that, which is only a year or to before when Saul was sent to war against Agag.
I agree with Ages in Chaos about Agag being Apepi,
The early Hebrew written signs as they are preserved on the STELE OF MESHA show a striking resemblance BETWEEN THE LETTERS G (GIMEL) AND P (PEI). NO OTHER LETTERS are so much alike in shape as these: each is an oblique line connected to a shorter, more oblique line, and is similar to the written number 7, THE SIZE. OF THE ANGLE BETWEEN THE TWO OBLIQUE LINES CONSTITUTES THE ONLY DIFFERENCE.
Nevertheless, it seems that not the Hebrew reading but rather the EGYPTIAN MUST BE CORRECTED....Almost EVERY hieroglyphic consonant [Egyptian] stands for MORE THAN ONE SOUND, and only empirically are all the sounds symbolized by a consonant found.
but
I don't agree with how this is presented in many other theories were
Saul's war with him is the same battle as when the Thebans overthrew
him.
Apepi seems to have been a usurper to begin with.
Apepi seems to have been a usurper to begin with.
Apepi is thought to have usurped the throne of northern Egypt after the death of his predecessor, Khyan, since the latter had designated his son, Yanassi, to be his successor on the throne as a foreign ruler.
Ryholt, p.256
Who knows maybe neither his predecessor or successor where even Amalekites but of other Hyksos tribes.
Velikovsky and others are wrong in citing Genesis 14 as proving the Amalekites existed already before Esau/Edom. The reference to them there is an editorial gloss from Moses, telling his reader where on the Geography their familiar with he's referring to. Like how we after say "near modern _____".
So when it was his tyrannical behavior, particularly killing Seqenenre Tao, sparked the Theban revolution, I suspect the other Hyksos leaders overthrew him with a coup and banished him. He then with whatever supporters he had (mainly the fellow Amalekites) and set himself up a new home base in southern Israel.
Saul's refusal to simply kill Agag as ordered may have been politically motivated, seeing Agag as a useful hostage. Now if as generally thought he was just a leader of violent nomads I don't see him being to useful. But if he was an exiled former Pharaoh of Egypt? That makes sense. I Samuel 30 records an Amalekite having an Egyptian slave.
The timing also makes Tuthmosis I the Pharaoh when Solomon began his reign, and this who's Daughter Solomon married.
Velikovsky and others are wrong in citing Genesis 14 as proving the Amalekites existed already before Esau/Edom. The reference to them there is an editorial gloss from Moses, telling his reader where on the Geography their familiar with he's referring to. Like how we after say "near modern _____".
So when it was his tyrannical behavior, particularly killing Seqenenre Tao, sparked the Theban revolution, I suspect the other Hyksos leaders overthrew him with a coup and banished him. He then with whatever supporters he had (mainly the fellow Amalekites) and set himself up a new home base in southern Israel.
Saul's refusal to simply kill Agag as ordered may have been politically motivated, seeing Agag as a useful hostage. Now if as generally thought he was just a leader of violent nomads I don't see him being to useful. But if he was an exiled former Pharaoh of Egypt? That makes sense. I Samuel 30 records an Amalekite having an Egyptian slave.
The timing also makes Tuthmosis I the Pharaoh when Solomon began his reign, and this who's Daughter Solomon married.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefrubity
Nefrubity (Akhbetneferu) was an ancient Egyptian princess of the 18th dynasty. She was the daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I and Ahmose, the sister of Hatshepsut and the half-sister of Thutmose II, Wadjmose and Amenmose.
Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton: The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson, 2004, ISBN 0-500-05128-3 p.140
She is depicted with her parents in Hatshepsut's Deir el-Bahari mortuary temple, then vanishes. It is assumed that she died young.
Dodson & Hilton, p.130
Joyce Tyldesley: Queens of Egypt. 2006
The
assumption she died young is of course I feel a false one. She
disappears from Egyptian records because she was married to Solomon and after that remained in Israel.
Where I differ from Velikovsky
I agree with the basic pillars of Immanuel Velikovsky's Egyptian
chronology (Middle Kingdom Exodus with the Hyksos invading some time
after the Red Sea incident, Thuthmosis III as Shishak, El Amarna era
during the divided Kingdom, Ramses II as Necho, Ramses III as Nectenbos
of Diodorus with the Prstt being the Persian Empire and Sea Peoples as
Ionian Greeks, The Maunier Stele depicts Alexander's visit to the Siwa Oasis).
I don't agree with his weird theories about the planets though.
Rohl I don't agree with on Egyptian chronology, but I like his identification of Enmerkar with Nimrod and Eridu with Babel and have written my own study on that subject.
I do want to discus some of the details of Velikovsky and his contemporary supporters' model I disagree with.
On the Hyksos Amalekites connection which I've touched on elsewhere I just want to say I feel it's not that simple. The Hyksos were many tribes of Asiatic peoples. They included the Amalekites and possibly other Edomite tribes (I think the king remembered by Greek myth as Belus was an Edomite King connected in some way to Bela son of Beor of Genesis 36:32&33), I think they had a Midianite aspect too (Hor II of the 13th Dynasty I think was the Midanite king Hur mentioned in The Bible). Archaeology clearly shows they had an Amorite aspect at all.
The most prominent is Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba. If she was an Egyptian queen The Bible wouldn't have obscured that, it dealt with Solomon's interactions with Egypt unambiguously both before and after this. Also since Tuthmosis I must be the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married, Hatshepsut was her Sister. If this Queen was Solomon's sister in law that wouldn't been overlooked.
Yeshua calls her the "Queen of The South" in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. And then Daniel 11 is cited where the "King of The South" is consistently Egypt. South in Biblical geography is south of Israel/Jerusalem, in the context of Alexander's successors only Ptolemy is south of Israel, and Egypt was the core of his Kingdom but not all of it.
There are three Shebas on the Table of Nations, Two in Genesis 10 and another being Abrahamic. The two in Genesis 10 are one Hamitic/Cushite and the other Semitic/Joktanite. But in both I Kings 10 and II Chronicles 11 the Queen of Sheba narrative is linked to Ophir another Joktanite name. And the other two Shebas are virtually inseparable from the Dedan who is their brother, but no Dedan is alluded to here.
Serious Archaeologists all know that Sheba was the name of a Kingdom in southern Arabia, modern Yemen. ( Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman,David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition p. 167). The Saba that was a capital of Nubia/Ethiopia didn't appears till very late, Meroƫ was their Capital until after the fall of the 25th Dynasty (When Nubia ruled Egypt). The Cushite Sheba of Genesis 10 I believe settled in Ancient India where he was deified as Shiva and his rather Ramaah as Rama an avatar of Vishnu.
I do believe the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia. But the Menelik legend is propaganda created by the Christian Auxomite kings to give them a Biblical lineage. I believe Graham Hancock and Bob Cornuke's theory for how it got there. First being at Elephantine island from sometime after King Manasseh's reign of terror to the time of Cambyses.
The Arabic traditions of Balqis/Bilqis/Bilquis did exist in Pre-Islamic times (Mohammed didn't really come up with much of anything new) and so have good reason to be viewed as more Ancient and Valid then the purely invented Ethiopian legend.
I do believe Hatshepsut probably visited Solomon also. The Bible says many rulers come to visit Solomon and witness his Wisdom. The Queen of Sheba is singled out NOT because she's the most important by secular standards, but because she became a Saved individual, so Yeshua cited her as such.
So I do agree that Punt was an Egyptian name for Canaan/Israel. And I don't think the similarity between Make-Ra (A name of Hatshepsut) and Makeda (The name of the Queen of Sheba in the Ethiopian traditions) is a coincidence. I think various Egytpian Jews, first at Elephantine and then latter in Alexandria and the Onias colony, drew the same false conclusion and began giving her that name. And this may have influenced Josephus who was very familiar with Alexandrian Jewish traditions.
El Amarna period.
I agree with Velikovsky's on Jehoshaphat as Ebed-Tov/Abdi-Heba King of Jerusalem and Mesha King of Moab with the Mesh of the Amarna letters. The Amarna letters also lsit 3 of the Captains of Jehoshaphat from II Chronicles 17:14-19. Addudani/Addadani=Adna and Ada-danu mentioned by Shalmaneser in 825 BC, "Son of Zuchru" = "son of Zichri", Iahzibada=Iehozabad/Jehozabad.
And I agree about the Habiru being bandits or mercenaries, not an ethnic term.
But his identity for Ahab is very problematic. Gubla is the Amarna letters name for Byblos not Jezreel. So Rib-Addi/Rib-Hadda was not Israelite.
Labaya I feel is logically is Ahab, (or whoever the Northern Kingdom ruler was at the time). The whole Jezebel-Nefertiti connection suggested by SpecialtyInterests I don't like however.
Velikovsky's references to "Sodomites" is really weird, he's unaware that that is a reference to Sodom only in English.
Velikovsky did NOT believe in the infallibility of Scripture. Which of course is an assumption many critics of revised chronology make about all revised chronologists. This fact about him is most apparent in the part of Age sin Chaos about the Death of Ahab. He basis it on what he saw as a contradiction between this verse.
II Kings 1:17 "So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."
And these two verses.
II Kings 3:1 "Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years."
II Kings 8:16 "And in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign."
There is no contradiction here however, he'd know this if he'd studied Ussher's chronology. Jehoshaphat made his son a co ruler for the latter years of his reign, this is why the 18th year of Jehoshaphat can also be the second year of Jehoram.
As for the fact that Ahab did Repent after Elijah rebuked him over the Naboth business. That was negated when Ahab sinned again believing the False Prophets over Micaiah.
But Velikovsky creates a whole convoluted theory that Ahab survived the battle of Ramoth-Gilead and lived another 9 years.
Mesha of Moab's rebellion was right after Israel's defeat at Ramoth-Gilead, Velikovsky sees the Moabite stone documenting this event as saying it was in the Middle of Ahab's reign, not after he died. First off the stone sounds like he's relating a Prophesy made by a Prophet of Chemosh, who's Prophecy may have came true not not completely accurately. But also if it was made immediately at the start of the rebellion he may not have heard of Ahab's death yet.
Regardless of those arguments, not all readings of the Mesha Stele even agree with the one Velikovsky used to support his theory.
The Denyen of the Greek Islands
I said I agreed about the Prstt being the Persian Empire and Sea Peoples as Ionian Greeks. But his Identity of the "Peoples of the Islands" the Denyen as Athens I think is silly. The Denyen are also in the Amarna letters where they are in northern Syria, very northern, by the modern Turkish border. Associated with Hammath. Their also identified with Adana is Cilicia.
"And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan." Deuteronomy 33:22
The Tribe of Dan originally settled north of the Philistine Lands, around the port city of Joppa/Jaffa modern Tel-Aviv. The books of Joshua and Judges both record events when Danites left their allotted land traveled north conquered a city and renamed it Dan.
"And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for them: therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father." Joshua 19:47
The Judges 18 account, where the City is Laish, is often assumed to be the same event. There are however several differences between the two accounts:
1. In the Book of Joshua the children of Dan had received an inheritance in the south but it was insufficient for them and so they went to fight against Leshem. In Judges though the Danites were in the region of Zorah and Eshtaol (in the south) they had yet not taken possession of their own.
2. In Judges, at least at first, only six hundred went forth after receiving the report of a reconnoitering mission: on the other hand, the Book of Joshua may be understood to say that all (or nearly all) of Dan went to fight.
3. In the Book of Joshua the city taken is called Leshem: In Judges the city is called LAISH. Some Commentators have tried to state that "Leshem" and "Laish" are different forms of the same word but "leshem" in Hebrew is a type of precious stone (maybe amber) while "laish" means a young male lion.
The Joshua account refers to the Dan that is frequently used as an idiom of the Northern Border of the Kingdom, where Jeroboam built one of his Idols, and which on the map of modern Israel is in the Golan heights on the Lebanon border.
The Judges event is clearly much further north. They encountered Sidonians, but those Sidonians are also implied to be far from home. Laish is also know as Luash and the Danites who migrated there became known as Dananu.
The king of Sma'al in the valley north of ASI (Orontes embouchemont) on the edge of LUASH (LIASH) called himself "KING of the DANIM" i.e. of the Danes of Dan. The Danes (Dananu) also controlled the neighbouring area of Cilicia and at one stage their capital was Adana by Tarsis of Cilicia and their suzerainity reached as far north as Karatepe. A bi-lingual inscription of theirs found at Karatepe employs a Phoenician type of Hebrew and a version of Hittite. Branches of the Hittites in Anatolia neighboured the Dananu of Cilicia. This northern portion of Dan is referred to variously as Dananu, Danau, Denye, Denyen, Danuna.
Above I've borrowed a great deal from Britam's "Dan and the Serpent Way" study. I don't agree with all of Britam's premise obviously, or any other form of British Israelism, but Dan does have a unique history.
Secular scholars agree on connecting the Denyen to the Tribe of Dan, you can read about it on Wikipedia's Denyen and Dan pages, but the sequence is reversed. They believe the Denyen traveled south and became incorporated into the Hebrew confederation. This supports their desire to claim that the various Tribes of Israel didn't even really have a common origin. Traditional chronology makes that argument easy for them but still doesn't make the Biblical picture impossible. But revised chronology makes it indisputable which Dan came first.
The connection Dan has to Greece, is Biblically alluded to in Ezekiel 27.
I don't agree with his weird theories about the planets though.
Rohl I don't agree with on Egyptian chronology, but I like his identification of Enmerkar with Nimrod and Eridu with Babel and have written my own study on that subject.
I do want to discus some of the details of Velikovsky and his contemporary supporters' model I disagree with.
On the Hyksos Amalekites connection which I've touched on elsewhere I just want to say I feel it's not that simple. The Hyksos were many tribes of Asiatic peoples. They included the Amalekites and possibly other Edomite tribes (I think the king remembered by Greek myth as Belus was an Edomite King connected in some way to Bela son of Beor of Genesis 36:32&33), I think they had a Midianite aspect too (Hor II of the 13th Dynasty I think was the Midanite king Hur mentioned in The Bible). Archaeology clearly shows they had an Amorite aspect at all.
The most prominent is Hatshepsut as the Queen of Sheba. If she was an Egyptian queen The Bible wouldn't have obscured that, it dealt with Solomon's interactions with Egypt unambiguously both before and after this. Also since Tuthmosis I must be the Pharaoh who's daughter Solomon married, Hatshepsut was her Sister. If this Queen was Solomon's sister in law that wouldn't been overlooked.
Yeshua calls her the "Queen of The South" in Matthew 12:42 and Luke 11:31. And then Daniel 11 is cited where the "King of The South" is consistently Egypt. South in Biblical geography is south of Israel/Jerusalem, in the context of Alexander's successors only Ptolemy is south of Israel, and Egypt was the core of his Kingdom but not all of it.
There are three Shebas on the Table of Nations, Two in Genesis 10 and another being Abrahamic. The two in Genesis 10 are one Hamitic/Cushite and the other Semitic/Joktanite. But in both I Kings 10 and II Chronicles 11 the Queen of Sheba narrative is linked to Ophir another Joktanite name. And the other two Shebas are virtually inseparable from the Dedan who is their brother, but no Dedan is alluded to here.
Serious Archaeologists all know that Sheba was the name of a Kingdom in southern Arabia, modern Yemen. ( Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman,David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition p. 167). The Saba that was a capital of Nubia/Ethiopia didn't appears till very late, Meroƫ was their Capital until after the fall of the 25th Dynasty (When Nubia ruled Egypt). The Cushite Sheba of Genesis 10 I believe settled in Ancient India where he was deified as Shiva and his rather Ramaah as Rama an avatar of Vishnu.
I do believe the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia. But the Menelik legend is propaganda created by the Christian Auxomite kings to give them a Biblical lineage. I believe Graham Hancock and Bob Cornuke's theory for how it got there. First being at Elephantine island from sometime after King Manasseh's reign of terror to the time of Cambyses.
The Arabic traditions of Balqis/Bilqis/Bilquis did exist in Pre-Islamic times (Mohammed didn't really come up with much of anything new) and so have good reason to be viewed as more Ancient and Valid then the purely invented Ethiopian legend.
I do believe Hatshepsut probably visited Solomon also. The Bible says many rulers come to visit Solomon and witness his Wisdom. The Queen of Sheba is singled out NOT because she's the most important by secular standards, but because she became a Saved individual, so Yeshua cited her as such.
So I do agree that Punt was an Egyptian name for Canaan/Israel. And I don't think the similarity between Make-Ra (A name of Hatshepsut) and Makeda (The name of the Queen of Sheba in the Ethiopian traditions) is a coincidence. I think various Egytpian Jews, first at Elephantine and then latter in Alexandria and the Onias colony, drew the same false conclusion and began giving her that name. And this may have influenced Josephus who was very familiar with Alexandrian Jewish traditions.
El Amarna period.
I agree with Velikovsky's on Jehoshaphat as Ebed-Tov/Abdi-Heba King of Jerusalem and Mesha King of Moab with the Mesh of the Amarna letters. The Amarna letters also lsit 3 of the Captains of Jehoshaphat from II Chronicles 17:14-19. Addudani/Addadani=Adna and Ada-danu mentioned by Shalmaneser in 825 BC, "Son of Zuchru" = "son of Zichri", Iahzibada=Iehozabad/Jehozabad.
And I agree about the Habiru being bandits or mercenaries, not an ethnic term.
But his identity for Ahab is very problematic. Gubla is the Amarna letters name for Byblos not Jezreel. So Rib-Addi/Rib-Hadda was not Israelite.
Labaya I feel is logically is Ahab, (or whoever the Northern Kingdom ruler was at the time). The whole Jezebel-Nefertiti connection suggested by SpecialtyInterests I don't like however.
Velikovsky's references to "Sodomites" is really weird, he's unaware that that is a reference to Sodom only in English.
Velikovsky did NOT believe in the infallibility of Scripture. Which of course is an assumption many critics of revised chronology make about all revised chronologists. This fact about him is most apparent in the part of Age sin Chaos about the Death of Ahab. He basis it on what he saw as a contradiction between this verse.
II Kings 1:17 "So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."
And these two verses.
II Kings 3:1 "Now Jehoram the son of Ahab began to reign over Israel in Samaria the eighteenth year of Jehoshaphat king of Judah, and reigned twelve years."
II Kings 8:16 "And in the fifth year of Joram the son of Ahab king of Israel, Jehoshaphat being then king of Judah, Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah began to reign."
There is no contradiction here however, he'd know this if he'd studied Ussher's chronology. Jehoshaphat made his son a co ruler for the latter years of his reign, this is why the 18th year of Jehoshaphat can also be the second year of Jehoram.
As for the fact that Ahab did Repent after Elijah rebuked him over the Naboth business. That was negated when Ahab sinned again believing the False Prophets over Micaiah.
But Velikovsky creates a whole convoluted theory that Ahab survived the battle of Ramoth-Gilead and lived another 9 years.
Mesha of Moab's rebellion was right after Israel's defeat at Ramoth-Gilead, Velikovsky sees the Moabite stone documenting this event as saying it was in the Middle of Ahab's reign, not after he died. First off the stone sounds like he's relating a Prophesy made by a Prophet of Chemosh, who's Prophecy may have came true not not completely accurately. But also if it was made immediately at the start of the rebellion he may not have heard of Ahab's death yet.
Regardless of those arguments, not all readings of the Mesha Stele even agree with the one Velikovsky used to support his theory.
The Denyen of the Greek Islands
I said I agreed about the Prstt being the Persian Empire and Sea Peoples as Ionian Greeks. But his Identity of the "Peoples of the Islands" the Denyen as Athens I think is silly. The Denyen are also in the Amarna letters where they are in northern Syria, very northern, by the modern Turkish border. Associated with Hammath. Their also identified with Adana is Cilicia.
"And of Dan he said, Dan is a lion's whelp: he shall leap from Bashan." Deuteronomy 33:22
The Tribe of Dan originally settled north of the Philistine Lands, around the port city of Joppa/Jaffa modern Tel-Aviv. The books of Joshua and Judges both record events when Danites left their allotted land traveled north conquered a city and renamed it Dan.
"And the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for them: therefore the children of Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein, and called Leshem, Dan, after the name of Dan their father." Joshua 19:47
The Judges 18 account, where the City is Laish, is often assumed to be the same event. There are however several differences between the two accounts:
1. In the Book of Joshua the children of Dan had received an inheritance in the south but it was insufficient for them and so they went to fight against Leshem. In Judges though the Danites were in the region of Zorah and Eshtaol (in the south) they had yet not taken possession of their own.
2. In Judges, at least at first, only six hundred went forth after receiving the report of a reconnoitering mission: on the other hand, the Book of Joshua may be understood to say that all (or nearly all) of Dan went to fight.
3. In the Book of Joshua the city taken is called Leshem: In Judges the city is called LAISH. Some Commentators have tried to state that "Leshem" and "Laish" are different forms of the same word but "leshem" in Hebrew is a type of precious stone (maybe amber) while "laish" means a young male lion.
The Joshua account refers to the Dan that is frequently used as an idiom of the Northern Border of the Kingdom, where Jeroboam built one of his Idols, and which on the map of modern Israel is in the Golan heights on the Lebanon border.
The Judges event is clearly much further north. They encountered Sidonians, but those Sidonians are also implied to be far from home. Laish is also know as Luash and the Danites who migrated there became known as Dananu.
The king of Sma'al in the valley north of ASI (Orontes embouchemont) on the edge of LUASH (LIASH) called himself "KING of the DANIM" i.e. of the Danes of Dan. The Danes (Dananu) also controlled the neighbouring area of Cilicia and at one stage their capital was Adana by Tarsis of Cilicia and their suzerainity reached as far north as Karatepe. A bi-lingual inscription of theirs found at Karatepe employs a Phoenician type of Hebrew and a version of Hittite. Branches of the Hittites in Anatolia neighboured the Dananu of Cilicia. This northern portion of Dan is referred to variously as Dananu, Danau, Denye, Denyen, Danuna.
Above I've borrowed a great deal from Britam's "Dan and the Serpent Way" study. I don't agree with all of Britam's premise obviously, or any other form of British Israelism, but Dan does have a unique history.
Secular scholars agree on connecting the Denyen to the Tribe of Dan, you can read about it on Wikipedia's Denyen and Dan pages, but the sequence is reversed. They believe the Denyen traveled south and became incorporated into the Hebrew confederation. This supports their desire to claim that the various Tribes of Israel didn't even really have a common origin. Traditional chronology makes that argument easy for them but still doesn't make the Biblical picture impossible. But revised chronology makes it indisputable which Dan came first.
The connection Dan has to Greece, is Biblically alluded to in Ezekiel 27.
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