CHAPTER 3

An Examination of Egyptian Chronology

The Background to this Dating System
Many believe Egyptian chronology to be based on a King List provided by a third-century BC priest called Manetho. However, in reality, no extant versions of Manetho have come down to us and we must rely upon second-hand quotes from such early Christian era authors as Africanus, Josephus and Eusebius. This chronological construct has remained virtually unaltered since the time of Champollion, the decipherer of hieroglyphics, during the nineteenth-century. Champollion himself identified Pharaoh Shoshonq I - who reigned in Egypt during the so-called Third Intermediate Period - as the Biblical Shishak and this link forms the Biblical/Egyptian correlation (Lods 1932, 8; Oesterley and Robinson 1934, 246) that allows Egyptian chronology to be extended back in time through the process of 'dead reckoning' based on extant monumental and tomb inscriptions tied in to 'historical' Old Testament chronology.

Moreover, it has been claimed that Egyptian chronology is even capable of standing on its own right, without external assistance other than by way of minor refinement through contemporary Near Eastern sources, particularly Mesopotamia, from c. 1400 BC (Kitchen 1996, 1). It has furthermore been suggested that astonomical data can also be employed to support what is believed to be this already established chronology. But as we shall see, many anomalies exist regarding succession, co-regencies and the highest regnal dates of Egyptian Pharaohs to warrant further investigation of this dating system and the implications it may have for Near Eastern chronology.

The Sothic Cycle
It is believed that the star known to the Egyptians as Sopdet was the same as the Greek Sothis and that both of these names equate with the brightest star in the night sky, known to us as Sirius. It is again a widespread belief that the dawn helical rising of this star marked the start of the Egyptian New Year as this event coincided with the annual Nile inundation. However, the fact that the ancient Egyptians failed to add a quarter day to their 365 day year had the effect of their calendar losing a single day every four years (Read 1970, 1). Likewise, any festivals celebrated in relation to the calendar would also move forward through the year at the rate of one day every four years. This problem would lead to obvious difficulties if an event in question was also related to a recurring natural phenomenon such as the inundation of the Nile. But, it is claimed that this inherent problem with the ancient Egyptian calendar can be utilised by modern scholars to provide a useful dating tool for Egyptian chronology.

As the Egyptian calendar lost a single day every four years simple mathematics can be employed to show that after a period of 1460 years any given star will return to its original position in the night sky (i.e. the star will lose a single day every four years, so for an entire 365 day year to be lost - with the star returning to its original position - 365 must be multiplied by four). This is known as the Sothic Year. As particular Sothic dates are believed to be mentioned in ancient Egyptian texts it was thought that it would have been possible to say with precision when that Sothic cycle began. It would furthermore allow the Pharaohs associated with Sothic dates to be placed in historical time.

Censorinus relates, in his De Die Natali, that Sirius arose on the "twelfth day of the Kalends of August" in 139 AD (Rohl 1995, 131) and claims that this allows the possibility of retrocalculting to find that the previous occasion that this occurred on the same day of the year would have been 1321 BC (i.e. an additional year must be added to the calculation to allow for the fact that unlike astronomical calculations, there is no historical Year 0). This information combined with an apparent reference to Sopdet (i.e. Sothis/Sirius) in the Ebers Papyrus stating that the helical rising of Sopdet occurred on the ninth day of the third month in the ninth year of the reign of Amenhotep I, has been used to provide the accession date for this king at 1542 BC althought this date has been subsequently lowered by twenty-five years on the basis that the observations took place at Thebes, were the Ebers Papyrus was found, rather than the previously assumed capital, Memphis.

However, it has already been suggested by Velikovski (1979, 245-254) that there may have been some confusion amongst interpreters of an earlier Egyptian document, the Canopus Decree written in 239 BC, between Sopdet (Sothis/Sirius) and the star of Isis. The relevant portion of this document concerns the attempt by Ptolemy III (238 BC) to introduce the leap-year system to the Egyptian calendar as it is stated that the "popular festivals which ought to be held in the winter [have] come to be celebrated in the summer" (Sharpe 1904, 71). The difficulty with this statement is that, as an astromonically cyclical event similar to an equinox or solstice, the dawn helical rising of Sopdet (Sothis/Sirius) always took place at the same time of the year as the inundation of the Nile and cannot, therefore, have proceeded through the year. Although the date of of this festival would move through the year at a rate of one day every four years it is crucial to note that this is not the same as proceeding through the seasons as the Canopus Decree clearly states. The Nile inundation would always occur in summer and the dawn helical rising of Sopdet would always occur at the same time, although the actual calendrical date of these simultaneous events would alter.

Only a planet can rise and set at different times of the year and the logical implication arising from this is that the author of the Canopus Decree was not refering to Sothis/Sirius when he spoke of Sopdet, but a planet. It is interesting to note that Pliny (Natural History, II, 37) describes Sopdet as the equivalent of the Egyptian goddess Isis and with Isis being the counterpart of the Greek goddess Venus. More recently Muller (1961) has concurred by stating that Sopdet and Isis are different celestial bodies and that they represent Sirius and Venus respectively. He quotes one of the Isis-Aretalogies from Memphis where Isis is suppossed to say "I am she [i.e. Venus] who goes out to the dog-star [i.e. Sirius]". This is probably a reference to the planet Venus progressing through the constelation of Canis Major (i.e. the Great Dog, the brightest star of which is known as the dog-star). These observations cast such an element of doubt on the so-called Sothic dating system that it is rendered unreliable at best and imaginary at worst.

Lunar Dating
The accession date of Tuthmosis III, the fifth Pharaoh of the XVIIIth Dynasty, has been set by Egyptologists at 1479 BC on the basis of certain lunar data associated with the Battle of Megiddo in his Year 23 and another lunar derived date in his Year 24 (Casperson 1986, 139). However, this supposition is not as straightforward as it may initially appear. New moon phases occur in cycles and the data might just as easily support a 1504 BC accession date for Tuthmosis III (Astour 1972). This earlier accession date would serve to dramatically lengthen the timespan of the Egyptian New Kingdom, however this proposal has been categorically dismissed by leading Egyptologists. A similar lunar datum has been employed by Egyptologists to calculate the accession date of Ramesses II. Papyrus Leiden (i. 350, verso) contains a new moon observation mentioned by a barge captain in Year 52 of Ramesses II. This lunar observation has been linked to the Ebers Papyrus statement outlined above dating to the reign of Amenhotep I although the difficulties with accepting this premise have already been pointed out. However, as Egyptologists accepted the Sothic dating system it consequently led to a fairly narrow date range into which the new moon observation of Ramesses II Year 52 could be fitted and still retain the already embraced Sothic cycle (i.e. 1279 BC or 1290 BC are the only likely accession dates for Ramesses II based on the Sothic system with 1279 BC being the favoured choice amongst Egyptologists). Like the lunar data relating to Tuthmosis III this new moon datum of Ramesses II must also follow the same well established astronomical cycle. If the Sothic dating system is disregarded (we do not even know if ancient Egyptian's were aware of the Sothic cycle) from this dubious restraint, the new moon of Ramesses II Year 52 can therefore fall outside a Sothic based date range.

Even if ancient Egyptian priests were more astute astronomers than we have reason to believe, we still have (as yet) no knowledge of where these observations took place. Even without the problems encountered through the Sothic dating system, the only known astronomical data we possess from New Kingdom Egypt are those associated with the moon. However, the frequency of lunar cycles means that we actually have observations that are quite flexible in terms of calendrical dating and through this we are able to obtain possible matches on a cyclical basis to a high degree of accuracy. And, although no New Kingdom astronomical data exist that can be described as precise, astronomical observations from this region can still be used as dating aids if they are taken together and applied en mass to the historical record. Then, if the hypothesis is correct, all cyclically recurring astronomical data should match the historical record to the exact year, indicating which particular lunar cycle is correct.

The acceptance by Egyptologists that ancient Egyptians did indeed know about and use a Sothic dating system has lead to the inclusion of these assumed dates into the traditional chronological construct known to us today. However, in light of the problems connected to this dating system outlined above, the contemporary conception of Egyptian New Kingdom chronology can be seen to rest on a very questionable foundation indeed. Nevertheless, Egyptologist's have produced the conventional chronology presented in Table 1 (after Kitchen 1996) to cover the period of the New Kingdom.

TABLE 1: THE CONVENTIONAL CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIAN NEW KINGDOM

The lunar data associated with Tuthmosis IIIs 23rd and 24th regnal years is critical for determining his accession date and therefore in indicating when exactly the New Kingdom began. As has already been outlined above, new moon data occur in cycles and a number of historical matches can be suggested as correlations for the inception of the New Kingdom. Indeed, Casperson (1986) has previously stated that Tuthmosis III may have came to the throne of Egypt in 1504 BC rather than the conventionally accepted accession date of 1479 BC. This proposal was first forwarded by Casperson after he found inherent difficulties with earlier proposals by Parker (1957), thereby deciding that enough uncertainties existed in the previous textual interpretation of the apparent facts (Faulkner 1942) combined with inaccuracies associated with the astronomical calculations (Neugebauer 1925; Schoch 1927) to warrant a modern computerised examination of the data. According to Casperson (1986, 146) the results of this exercise are "exactly consistent with Thuthmose IIIs accession year having been in 1504 BC".

The implication of a 1504 BC accession date for Tuthmosis III is that th New Kingdom must then commence at least twenty-five years earlier than previously thought. Kitchen rejects this possibility by stating that "we cannot suddenly insert a blank 25 years or so into this Dynasty at any point" (Kitchen 1996, 6). However, what Kitchen fails to grasp is the fact that Egyptian chronology is effectively floating as it does not contain a single fixed date before the mid first millennium BC. The earliest universally accepted fixed date deriving from Egypt is the sack of Thebes by Assurbanipal in 664 BC during the reign of Taharka. This means that according to conventional chronology itself, there are no historically fixed points within the XVIIIth Dynasty, nor indeed in any New Kingdom or Third Intermediate Period Dynasty. So, contrary to Kitchen's understanding, we do not have to insert a blank 25 years into the XVIIIth Dynasty. This period of time may fit anywhere into Egyptian chronology between the accession of Tuthmosis III and the sacking of Thebes in 664 BC, and, of course, does not have to constitute a single 25 year block.

Egyptologists have always claimed that their chronology is not solely based on astronomical data alone but that it also relies upon highest regnal date criteria. This latter consideration has increasingly been emphasised of late as the astronomically derived dates have come under searching and sustained questioning. If the astronomical dates are wrong and the beginning of the New Kingdom should therefore be pushed back in historical time, the highest regnal dates of each New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period Pharaoh obviously do require re-examination to see if they are as accurate as Egyptologists would have us believe.

The Highest Regnal Dates of Egyptian Pharaohs
Even a cursory glance at the writings of historical scholars shows that there is very little chronological agreement amongst them regarding the periods of time they each claim covers certain Dynasties or a particular Pharaohs reign. Africanus and Josephus, for example, both give Merenptah a 19 year reign (although they call him Amenophis; i.e. Amenhotep) whereas Eusebius gives the same king a 40 year reign. On the other hand the highest monumental evidence only credits him with a reign of 10 years. Furthermore, the Ramesside XIXth Dynasty is given as lasting 135 years by Africanus and 178 years by Eusebius while inscriptions from the contemporary monuments do not go beyond 98 years. The highest agreed regnal date for Horemheb amongst Egyptologists is Year 13 based again on the monuments. However, there is a limestone ostracon inscribed with a Year 27 of this king. There is also the Mes inscription, dating to the reign of Ramesses II, which mentions a Year 49 of Horemheb (Jansen-Winkeln 1993; Helk 1994/95). These sources contrast greatly with the 4 Year 1 month reign Josephus ascribes to Horemheb and the 5 year reign accorded to him by Africanus and Eusebius. Regardless of all the confusion already outlined associated with the length of Horemheb's reign, Egyptologists compound this by strangely assigning him a reign of 28 years (Kitchen 1996, 12).

It is clear from the few examples mentioned above that the conventional view of Egyptian chronology, as employed by Egyptologists, is highly suspect and can be legitimately questioned. So many internal inaccuracies and contradictions are surely not a sound basis onto which to hang all ancient chronologies. It would seem wise to go back to basics and review all the New Kingdom evidence anew without any prior bias. One way to proceed would be to totally disregard any statements coming from Eusebius, Africanus and Josephus as these claims do not agree with each other. An obvious starting point would be to investigate the primary sources themselves. That is to say, we should examine the monuments and tomb inscriptions from an independent standpoint to see whether the highest regnal dates of the New Kingdom correlate with conventional Egyptian chronology or, if it is possible that they indicate that the period of the New Kingdom should be extended so that earlier accession dates for Tuthmosis III and Ramesses II (based on lunar dating which has undergone computer analysis; see above) should be favoured.

A Revised Egyptian Chronology
Whenever we re-examine the primary sources for highest regnal date inscriptions it quickly becomes apparent that the suggestion of beginning the New Kingdom (at least) 25 years earlier is not as difficult as Egyptologists maintain. The amount of (easily obtainable) inscriptional evidence indicating an extended timeframe for this period can only testify to the reluctance on the part of Egyptologists to address the problem of these clear discrepancies surrounding their conventional chronology. It is indicative of the complacent nature of Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeology, and the archaeologists themselves, that the main emphasis for the re-examination of the chronology for these regions is coming from evidence provided by scholars, many with a scientific background, not directly involved with these regions.

Tables 2a, 2b and 2c show the differences between the conventionally assigned reign lengths and the highest reign lengths found by this author. Probable co-regencies are after Murnane (1975). N.B. The reign of Hatshepsut has been omitted from these Tables as she firstly co-reigned with her husband/brother Tuthmosis II and then with her nephew Tuthmosis III, therefore never having an independent rule.

TABLE 2a: HIGHEST REGNAL DATES OF THE XVIIITH DYNASTY

TABLE 2b: HIGHEST REGNAL DATES OF THE XIXTH DYNASTY

TABLE 2c: HIGHEST REGNAL DATES OF THE XXTH DYNASTY

An Analysis of the Evidence
A casual glance at the Tables provided above shows that there are ample grounds for questioning the coventional chronology of the Egyptian New Kingdom. It is quite possible to find an additional 43 years combined reign for the Pharaohs of this period. All of the inscriptional claims utilised in the above Tables have been referenced to the actual text, monument or tomb inscription concerned as well as the author who mentions them. It is also worth noting that the highest reign lengths found for Ahmose, Tuthmosis IV, Horemheb, Seti I and Ramesses XI are lower than those ascribed by Egyptologists. It must also be mentioned that Read (1970) claims that he has evidence of a 40 year reign by Ahmose deriving from an Illahum papyrus. There is, however, no other inscriptional evidence for this claim other than that outlined by Read and as he gives no catalogue number for this papyrus his claim cannot be verified by this author and has therefore been disregarded.

As the evidence obtained using the highest regnal date criterion certainly indicates that the start of the New Kingdom must be pushed back (i.e. earlier) in relation to the accepted chronology, there is clearly a major disagreement regarding historical dating during the second half of the second millennium BC. If Egyptologists wish to debate the accuracy, translation or genuineness of these inscriptions in an attempt to maintain conventional chronology they must also consider the scientific evidence outlined in Chapter 2 which also appears to support and earlier Egyptian chronology. After reviewing the inscriptional evidence relating to the thirty-one Pharaohs of the New Kingdom, only twelve appear to have a similar reign length to that traditionally assigned to them, that is less than 40%. It is not to be doubted that some of this inscriptional evidence may be inaccurate, misinterpreted or even fraudulent, but to suggest that this is the case for the other 60% seems to be stretching the bounds of credulity.

There is no argument in respect to the historical placement of the XXIInd and later Egyptian Dynasties as these are tied into an exceedingly accurate Assyrian chronology from 911 BC onwards, based on the Canon of Ptolemy which mentions astronomical data that have since been verified with the assistance of modern computer programmes. Before 911 BC the Assyrian chronology can be very accurately synchronised with the Babylonian and both of these can find correlation through Egypt, especially around the Amarna Period when habiru incursions into Canaan went as far as to "threaten the existing structure of government" (Weiser 1961, 12). These considerations indicate that any additional timespan needing to be added to the New Kingdom must be placed at the start rather than the end of this duration.

It is possible through a combination of the highest regnal dates of each Pharaoh found on monuments and the 59 year timespan mentioned in the Mes inscription, believed to represent the combined period of throneship of all the Amarna Pharaohs, to produce a revised New Kingdom chronology, with the lunar data associated with Tuthmosis III and Ramesses II being utilised to give a greater element of precision. Table 3 shows the results of such a dating.

TABLE 3: THE REVISED CHRONOLOGY OF THE EGYPTIAN NEW KINGDOM

Conventional chronology gives 61 years as covering the reigns of the first four kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty while the monuments indicate 91. The lack of monumental evidence surrounding the reign of Tuthmosis I after his Year 9 is problematic. The jump from Year 9 to the start of work on a Year 30 Jubilee pylon at Karnak can only be explained in one of two ways, either Tuthmosis I himself, or someone else (e.g. Hatshepsut in order to associate herself with his reign), gave the order to begin construction of this huge monument. Whichever of these options is to be prefered, it still remains to explain why it was not finished. The seemingly logical interpretation would therefore be that it was Tuthmosis I himself who gave the order for work to commence as obviously his death would have halted construction. The total reign length of Tuthmosis I can therefore only be estimated. As Year 9 is his highest extant inscription his death must obviously be placed somewhere between this and Year 30. Everything greatly depends on when construction of Pylon IV at Karnak began. This in turn has a lot of bearing of when the New Kingdom began.

Another problem appears to arise at the end of the New Kingdom with the XXth Dynasty seeming to end in 1089 BC with the death of Ramesses XI. This is in disagreement with Kitchen (1996, 3) who places this event nineteen years later in 1070 BC. However, the chronology of the XXIst Dynasty, divided as it is between the kings and the High Priests of Amun, is a very treacherous historical period. It should also be noted that the proposed date of 1089 BC for the end of the New Kingdom is based on highest regnal dates and may therefore possibly err by a few years, thus leading to a slight margin of uncertitude. Nevertheless, because the criterion used was 'highest regnal dates', this must be of universal application throughout the entire New Kingdom and the validity of this process is tested by the accuracy of 1089 BC as the point which effectively ties the New Kingdom to the Third Intermediate Period and the author will not make a 'special plea' in this case but, rather, will make a detailed examination of the chronology of the XXIst Dynasty.

The Chronology of the XXIst Dynasty
The chronology of the XXIst Dynasty is of crucial importance in linking the New Kingdom to the universally accepted synchronism of the campaign against the Judahite king Rehoboam during his Year 5 by the Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq I (i.e. Shishak, II Chronicles xii:2). The Judahite dating is very securely linked to the Ptolemaic Canon through correlations mentioned in both Hebrew and Assyrian sources. As there is evidence that Shoshenq gave orders for the construction of memorials to this campaign in his Year 21 the probable date of the actual expedition is therefore Year 20. Futhermore, evidence from Megiddo, one of the cities actually mentioned in the Karnak Temple inscription, indicates that Shoshenq I was indeed ruling Egypt around the time that the archaeologically termed Megiddo IV A city was overthrown as a fragment of a stela bearing his cartouche was uncovered from this site in an Early Iron Age destruction level.

There are presently two hypotheses that can stand up to scrutiny regarding the historical dating of the XXIst Dynasty. Currently Kitchen's "preferred" dates are universally accepted by Egyptologists and these place the New Kingdom/Third Intermediate Period transition (i.e. from Ramesses XI to Smendes I) in 1070 BC. However, the alternative dates also outlined by Kitchen (1973) fit much better with the revised chronology presented here and, therefore, these dates shall be employed as the same transition mentioned above appears in Kitchen's alternative dating as occuring in 1089 BC rather than 1070 BC. Without going into extreme detail, an attempt will be made here to present Kitchen's alternative dates as the more likely chronology of the XXIst Dynasty. These dates are based upon Manethonic tradition as well as the usual assumptions that always have to be made when attempting to piece together fragmentary and sometimes apparently contradictory accounts from a little known period.

The main item that has allowed the XXIst Dynasty to be extended beyond that traditionally accepted is a loose mummy-bandage found by Daressy at Deir el Bahri which apparently refers to a Year 49 of Amenemope. With this exception, and the effect it has on the reign length of Psusennes I, all other reign lengths during the XXIst Dynasty are generally agreed upon. In essence, if Amenemope did indeed reign for at least 49 years, the chronology of the XXIst Dynasty would therefore be extended by around 20 years. Furthermore, with the certain Shoshenq I/Rehoboam correlation at the start of the XXIInd Dynasty the extra years gained by this must therefore be added to the start of the XXIst Dynasty which in turn serves to close the apparent gap between the end of the New Kingdom and the start of the XXIst Dynasty (see above, Table 3a).

An Analysis of XXIst Dynasty Historical Evidence
It is felt by the author that the best way of presenting the chronology of the XXIst Dynasty is to proceed from the historically agreeable XXIInd Dynasty fixed point between Shoshenq I and Rehoboam in 925 BC and work backwards through the XXIst Dynasty. It is known from Shoshenq IIs inscriptions on a Nile statue (BM No. 8) that his father, Osorkon I the son of Shoshenq I, was married to Maatkare, the daughter of Psusennes II, the last Pharaoh of the XXIst Dynasty. This inscription verifies the order of succession as, Psusennes II, the final king of the XXIst Dynasty and then into the XXIInd Dynasty with Shoshenq I, Osorkon I and Shoshenq II in an unbroken line as well as, by implication, containing the 'fixed point' of Shoshenq Is Year 20 with Rehoboam's Year 5 which, as has been noted above, is historically tied to verifiable Hebrew and Assyrian synchronisms. As there is general agreement regarding the reign length of Shoshenq I as given by Manetho and with the highest regnal date of this king so far found being 21 years (Gebel Silsila stela 100, see Caminos 1952, 46-61) we can place his reign as the first king of the XXIInd Dynasty at 945-924 BC. His predecessor, Psusennes II, is given a 14 year reign by Africanus while contemporary Theban inscriptional sources indicate a reign of at least 13 years. If on this basis we assume a 14 year reign we can place Psusennes II on the Egyptian throne during the period 959-945 BC.

Prior to Psusennes II, graffito found at Abydos as well as the Karnak Priestly Annals (3B) shows that Siamun reigned for at least 17 years whereas he is only credited with a 9 year reign in all the extant versions of Manetho. In this case we can only agree with Young (1963, 108-109) that an iota has dropped out of Manetho during copying therefore appearing to read 9 instead of 19 years for this reign. If this can be accepted we can then establish his reign at 978-959 BC. The reign of Osorkon the Elder only extends to Year 2 in the Priestly Annals when Manetho gives him a 6 year reign. This discrepancy can be explained as a period of co-regency with his predecessor, Amenemope, only if Kitchen's alternative XXIst Dynasty chronology is employed, otherwise we must decide between a 2 year or 6 year reign. The chronology presented in this thesis accepts the 'alternative' XXIst Dynasty chronology as presented by Kitchen.

We must now look at the enigmatic Year 49 bandage of Amenemope in order to disentangle the reigns of Osorkon the Elder, Amenemope and Psusennes I. Manetho states that Psusennes I reigned for 46 years, Amenemope for 9 years and Osorkon the Elder for 6 years (Kitchen 1996, 3). However, if the Year 49 mummy-bandage found by Daressy at Deir el Bahri and attributed to Amenemope is to stand, these regnal dates, by implication, have to be erroneous. It may be possible to amend Manetho's 9 year reign by Amenemope to 49 years but as far as this author is aware, no scholar is presently willing to permit a 46 year reign for Psusennes I and a 49 year reign for Amenemope, the external synchronisms with the High-Priests of Amun simply do not allow this. If Manetho is to be amended in such a way to fit the evidence from Deir el Bahri, and the synchronisms with the High-Priests of Amun are to be retained, the reign of Psusennes I needs to be shortened while a short three or four year co-regency between Osorkon and Amenemope would also have to be granted.

The successors of the High-Priest Menkheperre, Smendes II and Pinudjem II were contemporary with Amenemope, as was Menkheperre himself. If the Year 48 datum mentioned in the inspection stela from Karnak and the Year 49 bandage epigraph from Mummy No. 105 are attributed with the High-Priest Menkheperre to the reign of Amenemope we find that Amenemope must have outlived Menkeperre if he was also a contemporary with Smendes II and Pinudjem II. Smendes II would have then succeeded Menkheperre as High-Priest of Amun during Year 49 of Amenemope and, as no inscriptions belonging to him are extant, we may assume that his reign was brief. This means that Pinudjem would have become High-Priest around Year 50 of Amenemope and this can, in fact, fit with a bandage epigraph (Mummy No. 124) which is presently read as Year [x]+3. This can now be amended to read Year 53 of Amenemope.

Whenever this chronological sequence is added to the dates already attributed to Psusennes II and Siamun (see above) we find that Osorkon reigned between 1033-981 BC and Psusennes I reigned between 1059-1033 BC. This leaves only the reigns of the first two kings of the XXIst Dynasty to account for, Smendes I and Amenemnisu. There is no reason to doubt that Amenemnisu did not reign for the 4 years accorded by Manetho. This would place his reign at 1063-1059 BC. Smendes I, the first of the Tannite kings who ruled Egypt during the XXIst Dynasty, is known from the story of Wenamun's journey to Phoenicia where he appears as a governor of Tanis under the last Pharaoh of the XXth Dynasty, Ramesses XI. Manetho gives this king a 26 year reign, which based on the above evidence can be said to have covered the years 1089-1063.

Confirmation of XXIst Dynasty Synchronisms through the "Renaissance Era"
The contemporary XXIst Dynasty of High-Priests of Amun can be utilised to provide useful synchronisms with the XXIst Dynasty of legitimate Pharaohs. These synchronisms have been employed to supply enough precision during this period to allow us to forward an historical chronology between the succession of Smendes I and Shohonq's foray into Canaan in Year 5 of Rehoboam. There is, however, a rather enigmatic period extending from the reign of Ramesses XI into the start of the XXIst Dynasty known as the 'Renaissance Era' which requires examination in order to precisely link the end of the New Kingdom to the start of the XXIst Dynasty, represented by the death of Ramesses XI and the succession of Smendes I. Although we do not fully understand the exact ramifications of this period, it is enough for the purpose of this thesis that the Renaissance Era existed and perhaps more importantly, that it was used in double dating events associated with the kings of the XXIst Dynasty and the High-Priests of Amun.

The most important piece of information regarding the Renaissance Era comes from Papyrus Abbott which states that Year 1 of this Era corresponds to Year 19 of Ramesses XI. We can furthermore ascertain that Year 5 of the Renaissance Era mentioned by Wenamun (above) and Year 6 appearing on the coffins of Seti I and Ramesses II (marking the time when these coffins were moved to a new location) can only really refer to the time of Herihor, the High-Priest of Amun, as Wenamun's report clearly states that at this time Smendes I was only a regional governor at Tanis and cannot have had the authority to use a system of regnal dates. As the Piankh Oracle is dated to Year 7 of the Renaissance Era we can confirm that Years 5 and 6 must refer to his predecessor, Herihor. From this we can confidently state that Year 6 of Herihor can be equated to Year 24 of Ramesses XI. If Year 1 of the Renaissance Era equates to Year 19 of Ramesses XI, and if we accept that this king reigned for 29 years, Smendes I must therefore have succeeded Ramesses XI as king of Egypt in what would have been Year 11 of the Renaissance Era. Furthermore, we know from the inscriptions on the coffins of Seti I and Ramesses II that Herihor officiated up to Year 6 of this Era while the Piankh Oracle states the Piankh was High-Priest in Year 7 of the same Era and from these correlations we can see that Smendes I Year 1 (i.e. Year 11 of the Renaissance Era) must equate to Year 5 of Piankh.

These important synchronisms allow us to confirm that the chronology of the XXIst Dynasty can be securely correlated to the contemporary High-Priests of Amun while the latter can be related to the XXth Dynasty through the Ramesses XI/Smendes I correlations with the High-Priests Herihor and Piankh. From the informaton outlined above is now possible to provide a table showing the chronology of the legitimate XXIst Dynasty which effectively links the New Kingdom to historical times. This is achieved through the verifiable astronomical synchronisms which occur throughout the Levant from this period onwards which can link Sheshonq I, the first Pharaoh of the XXIInd Dynasty, to Rehoboam, the first Judahite king of the divided monarchy.

TABLE 4: THE XXIst DYNASTY AND THE CONTEMORARY HIGH-PRIESTS OF AMUN

Consequences of a Revised Egyptian Chronology
If the redating of Egyptian chronology as presented in this chapter is thought worth consideration, it then has major implications for the external correlations Egypt has with other historical regions such as Assyria and Babylonian. These regional chronologies must also undergo the same rigorous examination as the traditional Egyptian dating system. However, the most significant point to note here is that there is indeed an element of flexibility regarding the dating of Egyptian history and that certain longstanding assumptions now carry less weight in light of a more thorough and systematic analysis. It is no longer enough simply to allow an a priori acceptance of tradition to form the basis of ancient history. We have seen in this chapter that it is quite possible to push back the start of the New Kingdom to the begining of the sixteenth-century BC while still maintaining the 'fixed point' of Shoshenq I and Rehoboam, king of Judah, at the start of the XXIInd Dynasty. Generally speaking, this in itself is a relatively minor alteration in historical terms (around fifty years), but when we consider the copious amount of precise and accurate historical data available to us during this period we can only wonder how ancient chronology stands in periods and regions less well documented. The object now is to re-examine the chronologies of Assyria and Babylonia to see if the apparent correlations between these regions and Egypt can be maintained which would mean, of course, that these chronologies too would have to be pushed back in historical time to keep in check with the revised Egyptian chronology. If the synchronisms between these major second millennium BC international powers cannot be maintained with relation to the earlier Egyptian chronology presented in this chapter then the latter must be discarded.