Month: October 2018

An image taken from the Ramesseum showing Ramesses II at the Battle of Kadesh.
Exodus

The Reed (Red) Sea

After the Israelites escaped Egypt through the Wadi Tumilat, they did something hard to fathom.  Instead of making a clean break down the west coast of the Sinai as they had intended, they turn northward.  They made their way towards the Way of Horus, the military road that runs along the north Sinai.  After that, they “wandered” in the wilderness aimlessly to lure Pharaoh into thinking they were lost (Exod 14:3). From a strategic perspective, this move makes little sense.  The Israelites essentially boxed themselves in.  Pi-Hahiroth was to the west, desert to the south, Pharaoh’s chariots to the east, and their backs to the sea.  Strategically, this was the worst possible position to be in.  Trapped with nowhere to run.   And yet, the sea opened up and the Israelites escaped what would otherwise be certain death. In several sections, the biblical narrative simply calls this body of water the “Sea.”  But some texts (e.g., Exod 13:18 and 15:22) refer to it as the yam suf (יַם סוּף).  The translation of yam suf as the “Red Sea” entered into English Bibles through the Greek Septuagint (ca. 250 BCE) translation Ερυθρὰ θάλασσα. However, in Hebrew yam suf means “Sea of Reeds.” This place name most likely comes from the Semitic-Egyptian pȜ ṯwfy, “The Reeds.”  Papyrus Anastasi III (2:11-12) mentions this body of water and states that the “foliage and greenery” of Pi-Hahiroth was nearby (Papyrus Anastasi III, 3:3).  Thus, the pȜ ṯwfy was probably one of the lakes (possibly Lake Ballah or Lake Timsah) that were part of the marshy area along what is now the Suez Canal. P. Anastasi III mentions three toponyms (Piramesses, Pi-Hahiroth, and the “Reeds”) in a geographic sequence similar to that found in Exodus.  This suggests a strong correspondence between what the Egyptians knew about the region and the biblical record of the sites.
A bust of Akhenaten from the Louvre Museum.
Egyptology

Atenism, was it really monotheistic?

I have recently given a lot of thought into the relationship between Atenism and monotheism.  Donald B. Redford (1976) described Atenism as after having stripped mythology from Egyptian religion, all that remained “were the concepts of universalism, dependence of life on the sun, transcendence, creativity, cosmic regularity, and absolute power,” concluding Atenism was a monotheism.  But was Redford correct? Amunist theology viewed Amun-Re as the “king of the gods.”  However, Atenism denied other divine authority so Aten was simply “the king.”  The Aten also held the role of creator and father.  But the Aten was not a universal father like the God of Judeo-Christian theology.  He only had this paternal relationship with his unique son, the king:
Aten living daily content in the sky, Your offspring, your august son, Sole one of Re; The Son of Re does not cease to extol his beauty, Neferkheprure, Sole-one-of-Re. I am your son who serves you, who exalts your name. Lichtheim, Literature, 2:91-92.
The theological implication of this is important.  James Hoffmeier summarizes this situation as “the anointing of the king to make him the Son of God.”  Kingship in Atenism is the manifestation of the incarnate Aten. The reference to a unique son speaks to a common theme in ancient Near Eastern literature, which is the idea of an offspring that will carry the legacy of the parent.  This motif appears in the inheritance laws of ancient Mesopotamia.  It also is found in early Israelite thought with the promise of a son to Abraham even though he already had a son in Ishmael.  In ancient Egypt, inheritance often was associated with the passing on of a title or occupation as well as property. Atenism differed from classical Egyptian thought in the belief of creation.  Traditional Egyptian belief focused upon creation myth as foundational.  But Atenism disregarded physical creation altogether while maintaining the Aten as creator.  Akhenaten extolled the Aten as the “creator of all, who makes them live, Great Falcon, bright of plume; a beetle who raised himself, he who was self-created, he who was never born.”  Atenism accepted the idea of immanence in the act of continuous creation.  The substance and breath of the Aten made every living being alive.  “You are One, yet a million lives are in you, To make them live <you give> the breath of life to their noses.” Aten was bidirectionally eternal.  That is the Aten was in eternity past the same as he is today and going forward will remain the same.  Thus, the answer to the question of origins always centered upon manifestations of the Aten. This sort of divinity was not quite henotheism in the classical sense nor was it any kind of monotheism per se.  Because Atenism popularized “the One and the Many” theology, Akhenaten’s religious reforms transformed Egyptian religion from a plurality of gods to one deity radiating from a single source incorporating the substance of all other gods. Atenism was the ultimate deconstruction of deity that Amenhotep III had first attempted, carving out of Egyptian religion a monolatrous pantheism. The preceding  preview was an edited extract taken from a book chapter recently submitted to Oxford University Press.
Seti I relief from Karnak Temple (Illustration from A. H. Gardiner, JEA 6 [1920], pl. 11), with the Migdol.
Exodus

The Tower Migdol

After the Israelites fled Pharaoh, they took the Wadi Tumilat to leave Egypt but God told them to double back (Exod 14:1).  So they moved northward camping between Pi-Hahiroth, the sea, and Migdol (Exod 14:2). Migdol was one of the fortresses on the Way of Horus.  The Way of Horus was the road that hugged the northern coast of the Sinai peninsula.  Several fortresses on this road controlled the flow of traffic from the Levant. The Egyptian version of this name, mˁktir actually derives from a Semitic loan word מגדל, “tower”.  The location of Migdol is unknown, but the name appears in a couple of extra-biblical sources. Papyrus Anastasis V (20:2-3) implies that the fortress was built by Pharaoh Seti I of the 19th dynasty.  This is the same king who first established the city of Piramesses.  According to a map of the Way of Horus found at Karnak Temple, Migdol (Karnak map, “E”) is east of the Dwelling of the Lion (Karnak map, “D”). The Dwelling of the Lion has been located at Tell el-Borg, near the north coast of the Sinai Peninsula and the estuary of the Ballah Lakes. The Egyptians reconstructed the site multiple times, as evidenced by its multiple phases including a destruction layer. Eliezer Oren excavated a different Migdol, which survived as a fortress into Roman times, but this site has no Ramesside period remains. Thus, if this is “the same” Migdol, then the site migrated over time.
Chronology is like the internal mechanism of a pocket watch.
Chronology

Groundhog: Latest Breakthrough in Chronology

The field of chronology has developed with very little regard to theory or practice.  It used to be that anyone could develop a chronology without having to prove their assertions.  Even today, the field remains awash in untestable and unproven theories.  Recently, my research achieved a breakthrough that solved a serious deficiency in the practice of chronology.

The Problem of Chronology

The fundamental problem was that anyone could develop a chronology without any rigor.  Even conservative theories from otherwise respectable academics often had the same epistemological basis as the lunatic theories.  Theories asserted to be true couldn’t be shown to be true or false.  Prior to 2017 the “sniff  test” of plausibility was the best that scholars thought that they could hope for.

During my PhD studies I was a research assistant under Kenneth A. Kitchen. As I watched Professor Kitchen work, I noticed how mechanical chronology creation could be.  Based upon my observations of how Kitchen constructed chronologies, I began to work on Groundhog: Chronology Test Laboratory in 2014.

At first I tried to create a program that could simply reconstruct Kitchen’s chronological process with a computer.  But the deeper I got into it, I observed several things about chronology that were never before documented in any meaningful way.

My Observations

(1) Theories of chronology are essentially the dates or reign-lengths ascribed to the various kings of the ancient Near East.  This is the subjective data or hypothesis that any particular modern scholar would be trying to prove.   These numbers vary with each tested theory.

(2) Kings in the ancient Near East sent letters and treaties to each other.  These documents created synchronisms.  A synchronism is a relationship between two people that shows that they lived at the same time.

Regardless of the dates assigned to the reigns of the kings, synchronisms are static.  Synchronisms do not change.  The marriage contract between Ramesses II and Hattusili III is a synchronism that will never change regardless of the dates assigned.   Synchronisms are the objective data.

(3) If we have a subjective hypothesis and objective data, designing an experiment to test the hypothesis against the data, provided that the data is sufficient, becomes possible.  In the ancient Near East, about 500 kings and 150 synchronisms are attested well enough for this purpose.  This provides a sufficient basis for testing.

Development of Groundhog

Having the pieces in place, I developed a software platform with the ability to take a chronology and test it for internal consistency.  Using Groundhog, one can reconstruct a chronology and test it against the 150 synchronisms.  This test  produces a result that shows the chronology to be internally consistent or not.  While this test does not show if a chronology is true, it can show if a chronology must be false.

For the first time, a chronology can be tested objectively, rejecting certain theories from further consideration.  This new tool can also assist human operators to eliminate errors from a chronology that are caused by an inability to factor the consequences of extended interdependencies.   And finally, Groundhog introduces to the field a theoretical basis and methodological praxis that has been sorely lacking.

For more information about Groundhog see the project web site at http://www.groundhogchronology.com

A bronze figure of a deity from Alalakh.
Exodus

Baal-Zephon, Lord of the North

After the Israelites camped before Pi-Hahiroth, they wandered in the desert near the fortress Migdol.  They camped between Migdol, Pi-Hahiroth, the Reed Sea, and a looking post nearby known as Baal-Zephon. Unlike the previous Egyptian toponyms, Baal-Zephon has a Semitic etymology.  Baal is common to many Semitic languages and means “lord,” a term often used for a god.  The name, Baal, was used during the Old Babylonian period for a variety of deities including Marduk (bel) but is perhaps best known from the Bible as an epithet for the northwest Semitic storm-god (Hadad/Adad). The biblical text parallels “before Pi-Hahiroth” and “before Baal-Zephon,” implying that the two sites are adjacent (Exod 14:9).  Papyrus Sallier IV mentioned Ball-Zephon in the following:
To Amūn of the temple of the gods; to the Ennead that is in Pi-Ptaḥ; to Baˁalim, to Ḳadesh, and to Anyt; (to) Baˁal Zephon (bˁr-ḏȜpn), to Sopd. Papyrus Sallier IV (vs. 1:6)
The Hyksos who worshipped the storm god associated this god with the Egyptian storm god, Seth.  The Egyptians continued to use this association after the Hyksos left Egypt.  Given that the author of Papyrus Sallier IV wrote the toponym Baˁal-Zephon with the Seth character; Baal in this toponym may be a reference to Seth. The second element of the toponym, the word zephon, means “north” in Semitic languages. However, Zephon by itself also appears as a toponym in Amarna Letter 274, most likely as a name of a Levantine city. Thus, it is unclear whether zephon in Baal-Zephon refers to a direction, yielding “Baal of the North,” or a place, “Baal of (the city) Zephon.”