Introduction
It is a common belief that the chronological history of the countries surrounding the eastern Mediterranean has been well understood since the days of Napoleon and Champollion with only minor adjustments needed to slightly refine the chronology of the period. The unquestioned belief in biblical statements as practiced by Victorian scholars has had a large bearing on what we now refer to as 'history'. As the discipline of biblical criticism developed throughout the
nineteenth- and into the twentieth-century, the traditional acceptance of 'biblical truths' was increasingly being viewed as naive, unscientific and without validity. Numerous discrepancies in content, obvious scribal and redacting errors, philological, ritualistic and historical anachronisms have proved that, although the Old Testament is an extremely valuable historical document, it does have its limitations, and that moreover, its apparent historicity warrants the same level of critical analysis as any other ancient text.
The Beginning of Modern Biblical Criticism
Modern biblical criticism can trace its roots to Pastor Witter of Hildesheim who published "Jura Israelitarum in Palaestinam" in 1711 and who was the first to point out the alternating names of God (i.e. Yahweh and Elohim) in the Book of Genesis. He was followed in this by Jean Astruc who went further, claiming to be able to distinguish two main and ten fragmentary secondary sources of biblical composition in 1753. As the early biblical scholars acted as apologists the scene was set for the eventual battle of religion versus science. The uncritical acceptance of the biblical narratives was challenged towards the latter part of the eighteenth-century mainly by German critics, who realised that the Old Testament as we receive it today had undergone a number of editorial phases throughout time and was therefore not simply comprised of different traditions being combined at source.
The belief that Moses actually did write the Pentateuch was soon discarded by scholars who now adopted a different approach. Apologists had never adequately explained why Moses should sometimes call his God Yahweh, the one and only god, and at others Elohim (the suffix 'im' in Hebrew signifies plurality), whenever the first term clearly indicates the practice of monotheism and the latter polytheism. Or furthermore, why Isaiah ii, 2-4 should consist of exactly the same verbatim prophecy concerning the last days as Micah iv, 1-3 when they were supposed to have been written by different people. It would surely be incredulous and push the likelyhood of coincidence beyond the limit if they independently just happened to choose the same wording. The obvious implication is that one copied the other or that an older source was in existence and was utilised by both prophets. A further difficulty for those who accept the accuracy and historicity of the Old Testament is the death of Samuel in Samuel xxv in a book that contains fifty-five chapters. Who finished the book? It has been claimed that the completion was carried out by Nathan, the prophet of Gad. But surely this dilutes the historicity of Samuel as an historical figure playing a major role in world history.
There are many other historical and literary difficulties to be found in the pages of the Old Testament which had been pointed out by Eichhorn as early as 1780 in his 'Einleitung in das Alte Testament', and although Eichhorn is regarded by most modern biblical critics, through his literary analysis of the Old Testament, as the man who brought scientific proof that the Pentateuch was a literary composite, many scholars today still prefer to act as apologists, claiming that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God and that every statement contained within its pages must, by faith alone, be accepted to the total disregard of scientific evidence.
Whenever we strip away the details from the biblical narrative and attempt to use this important document as a simple chronological source we encounter many of the problems characteristic of the ancient Near East. That is to say that the primary aim of the scribes concerned was not to leave an accurate historical document for posterity, but rather to produce what in effect we would call today 'political propaganda'. The purpose was often to put a particular king in good light by refering to his conquests (on behalf of his god) over people who followed another god. These claims are often exagerated or simply false. Equally, when we examine the claims of documents such as the Assyrian king lists (henceforth AKL) we see that claims of victory over neighbouring people, for example, do not correlate with the archaeological record in that the supposed territorial extension claimed, for example, is not matched by evidence from recovered boundary stones. The AKL in particular throws up a number of difficulties regarding the chronological sequence of contemporary Babylonian kings as supplied by the Babylonian king lists (henceforth BKL) and other similar historical documents. Both the AKL and BKL cannot therefore be totally synchronised, one of them certainly contains inaccuracies. Perhaps the more likely scenario is that they both embody a certain degree of scribal error picked up during the process of redaction. Nevertheless, if we have at our disposal today enough relavent, contemporary historical documents to prove that there are inconsistancies between the AKL and BKL we should be wary of other similarily ancient documents, such as the Pentateuch, for which we do not have corresponding documentary evidence with which to test their accuracy.
In short, we can be confident in stating that no ancient document deserves an a priori right to be accepted without undergoing the same rigorous scrutiny as any similar source material and only after it stands up to such analysis can it be regarded as being worthy for historical and chronological purposes. Before a text or document can be viewed as a true historical account of actual events it must be independently verifiable. The difficulty is, that although archaeology has provided us with countless ancient texts, tablets and inscriptions, the vast majority of these contain no historical information whatever and are mainly inventories, omen texts, prayers to various gods and other such unhistorical writings.
Regions that can Provide an Element of Historicity
Although we have much valuable archaeological information from the Aegean, no historically useful texts are extant from this region during the Late Bronze Age. The Mycenaean Linear A and the later Minoan Linear B scripts appear to be no more than inventories dealing with items and victims to be used for sacrificial purposes. It is true that Linear A is as yet untranslated but the similarity in form and style to Linear B makes it more than likely that the two are closely related in context. As has already been suggested above, the biblical material has undergone a process of redaction leaving its content very suspect at best and totally unreliable at worst. Textually the region of Hatti is best represented by a series of parity and vassal treaties which provide little more than the names of other kings living contemporaneously with the Hittite monarchs. It should be stated that it is extremely rare for the actual name of an individual king to be mentioned in any of these treaties and therefore many of the so-called correlations based on these documents presently forwarded are little more than conjecture based on current chronological views.
There are, however, three regions around the eastern Mediterranean that are undoubtedly crucial to our understanding of ancient history and its accompanying chronology. The major areas of importance during the second millennium BC from an historical and chronological perspective are Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt. These were three states, ruled by kings, who recognised the importance of keeping accurate historical records. The accuracy and validity of these accounts, however, must be questioned through an analytic examination of their individual statements. The advantage of the Assyrian and Babylonian style of writing is in the fact that a reed was pressed into wet clay which was then baked. This produced the effect of hardening the clay so that it became practically indestructable. Many hundreds of thousands of this type of text have been uncovered in the last two centuries or so. This procedure contrasts the Egyptian practice of using papyrus as a writing medium, which, while this was certainly more sophisticated and technologically superior, it has led to few papyrus texts surviving the ravages of time. Most of our knowledge of Egypt at this time comes from tomb and temple inscriptions and reliefs. The informative biographies found in Egyptian tombs are also very important dating aids. It should be stressed, however, that the Egyptians did like to exagerate and these genealogies equally should not be taken at face value but must also require independent verification.
Useful Historical Texts
The most important and seemingly useful documents to come from Assyria and Babylonia are the Assyrian King List and the Babylonian King List. These should not be thought of as two individual documents but rather they are composites of various fragmentary sources which have been combined to provide these working titles. Nevertheless, the Assyrian document known as the Khorsabad King List does provide the fullest and most comprehensive list of kings reigning in Assyria during the period contemporary with the Egyptian Second Intermediate Period and New Kingdom. There are, however, a few kings whose reign lengths are not given and the accuracy of at least another two kings has been questioned. But if independent documentary sources can resolve these questions satisfactorily we would then have a list of Assyrian kings stretching over the entire period of the second millennium BC. Moreover, we could then utilise information deriving from Babylonia and Egypt to corroborate and supplement this framework which would in turn provide us with an 'international' chronology which itself could be used to test any other historical claims of a chronological nature. If, on the other hand, an undisputed hisorical event occurring at a known time, or between known kings, did not tally with the above suggested framework, then the proposed 'international' chronology would have to be re-examined in the same light and rejected if need be. Only an unbiased analysis is worth the time and effort involved in creating a chronological framework.
The point of achieving an accurate chronology for the second millennium BC is to test this against the environmental record which appears to indicate that a massive volcanic eruption took place somewhere in the northern hemisphere in 1628 BC, just prior to where conventional chronology places the eruption of the island of Thera in the Aegean Sea. If the environmental evidence is indeed picking up the signature of Thera we can confidently state that the 1628 BC date is absolutely precise because it derives from the science of dendrochronology which is accurate to the exact year. On the otherhand, if conventional chronology is correct in placing the Theran eruption around 1520-1500 BC then the environmental record provided by dendrochronology, as well as Greenland ice-cores, must, by implication, be picking up a huge volcanic eruption that has been previously unknown to us, and furthermore, provide no evidence of the catastrophic eruption of Thera which we know was one of the most violent since the last Ice Age. These observations intrinsically make this study neccesary as we have effectively reached the point where we have to choose between a religiously based tradition and science as the two, in this case at least, appear mutually contradictory.
Apparent Scientific Contradictions Concerning Traditional Dating During the Second Millennium BC
As has been hinted at above, one of the most important and contentious dates in archaeology today is that of the eruption of the island of Thera. This eruption is particularly significant because it marks the beginning of the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean (Late Helladic/Late Minoan/Late Cycladic). Until fairly recently it had been accepted that the eruption of Thera took place sometime towards the second half of the sixteenth-century BC (Marinatos 1939; Kitchen 1996). This event was then tied into the conventional Egyptian chronology through the then current ceramic phases of the region. However, modern scientific dating methods have called into question the accuracy of this date range and a possible earlier date for this eruption has been discussed. The difficulty has been best summed up by Betancourt who has stated that "three independent methodologies - radiocarbon, an analysis of frost damaged tree rings, and a determination of acidity layers in polar ice - have argued with varying degrees of conviction for a Theran eruption in the second half of the seventeenth-century BC. If such a date is accepted, it runs against the opinion that places the beginning of the Late Bronze Age at c. 1150 BC or 1600 BC, with the eruption in the second half of the sixteenth-century BC" (Betancourt 1990, 19).
Some, such as Kitchen, have refused to countenance a radical re-dating of this event and thus cling to a belief in the old traditional dating, while a newer generation of scholars (e.g. Baillie 1990; 1996a; 1996b; 1998; Kuniholm 1990; 1996; et. al. 1996; Manning 1990; 1995; 1996; 1998) have advanced the debate by recognising the importance and usefulness of employing modern scientific dating methods. They have each independently suggested that an earlier dating of this event should warrant serious consideration based on evidence emanating from their own particular fields of research.
According to conventional chronology, the Egyptian New Kingdom began around 1540 BC (Kitchen 1996). This date is associated with historically datable Late Minoan (LM) IA pottery unearthed in Egypt and with the eruption of Thera from stratified LM IA pottery and Theran tephra from Crete. It has been used to equate the eruption of Thera to the LM IA ceramic phase and tied to historical time through Egyptian chronology. However, the combined results of the various scientific dating procedures all indicate a very significant late seventeenth- century BC climatic event rather than the late sixteenth-century BC date one would expect if these represented the signature of the huge magnitude Thera eruption. The problem for archaeologists, historians and chronologists, is the two possible dates apparently forwarded for the one event. If these indications are correct, one of these dates is obviously wrong.
The Foundation of Egyptian Chronology
The current Egyptian dating system has been around for quite a while and was originally intended to support, and add an element of historicity to, the biblical narratives. Unfortunately the a priori acceptance of Old Testament data went far beyond logical methodology. One of the most notable examples of this mode of thinking was the association of Ramesses II with the Pharaoh of the Oppression for which not a shred of historical evidence exists. Although the Book of Exodus (i, 11) states that the Hebrews were forced to construct the store city of Pi Ramses on the Nile Delta it does not seem to have occurred to early biblical scholars that this reference might have been anachronistic, inserted by later editors or copyists from what was originally a marginal note, or gloss, to refer to an earlier place that they now knew of as Pi Ramses. The claim that the bible consists of a single corporate entity has been challenged by Davis who, after examination, has been able to state that this view "emerges in the light of historical or sociological reflection, or even plain common sense, as fantastical (Davis 1995, 18). He goes on to make the extremely valid point that the biblical literature is the product of a single class, not the entire community as a whole. He estimates that perhaps only 5% of the population of any ancient society were scribes (Davis 1995, 19) and that their purpose was not to write for the common man but rather for the upper, literate classes.
This paradigm is not only applicable to biblical history but is of the utmost importance when studying any ancient text. In essence, ancient texts were produced by a small group of (probably) men for the benefit of another small but important group; a group that paid the formers wages, in a manner of speaking. This consideration must always be borne in mind. Ancient texts do not necessarily reflect real events, they may have been written long after the event they claim to represent in order to justify, exonerate, or to flatter the actions of a king and ruling classes in the eyes of their descendants. All ancient claims should be independently verified before they are taken to represent accurate accounts of actual events.
Applying Scientific Dating Techniques to Ancient Chronology
The advent and widespread application of modern scientific dating methods to assist in the precise dating of environmental events means that there is no longer a need to base a relative chronology on perceived biblical data. Furthermore, an historically linked environmental record can provide more precise dates than those achievable through archaeological seriation and stratigraphy alone. For example, if a piece of timber found in the archaeological record contains enough growth-rings, preferably no less than one-hundred, extending out to the sap-wood, it could then be matched to a master dendrochronology by counting the rings and measuring the spaces between them to provide the exact historical year the tree died. This process obviously produces a more accurate date than by simply attempting to match stratified ceramic styles between geographic regions and then attempting to correlate these to historical chronologies (i.e. Kinglists).
Moreover, dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating can be mutually supportive. Wood samples that do not contain enough tree-rings to fit onto a master dendrochronology at a single historical point in time, but produce 'mulitple fits' can be radiocarbon dated. The date range associated with this determination will allow the rejection of most 'possible' fits leaving only the dendrochronological matches within this calibrated radiocarbon date range as true possible dates. Furthermore, the precision of denrochronology will allow a radiocarbon dated timber sample with enough growth-rings to be accurately placed in historical time, providing a precise calendrical year rather than a calibrated radiocarbon date range.
Is Correlation Possible?
As so many doubts surround the conventional Egyptian dating system, based as it is on the many unproven assumptions of biblical scholars, many of whom are theologians, it would seem wise to re-examine this chronological construct. As the eruption of Thera forms the lichpin of Bronze Age chronology, and as plausible arguments this event could be appearing in independent environmental records as well as the archaeological record, it would form a naturally suitable event on which to test the conventional chronology. To this end it would be worth examining the possibility of taking the 1628 BC environmental cooling event as the eruption of Thera and, for the sake of discussion, seeing if it is possible to redate ancient history so that the two can be correlated. This is the working hypothesis that this study shall adopt. Before proceeding it will be necessary to outline the basic principles of scientific dating as well as the assumptions and data that underpin ancient chronology during the second millennium BC.