I am writing a book about the life of Homer.  In order to place Homer in proper historical context I start with the questions of when Homer lived and when his stories in the Iliad and the Odyssey took place.  Those questions led me into the controversy of ancient chronology.  This post is background for the New Chronology of the Bronze Age.

For several years now I’ve been convinced that the Standard Chronology for the Late Bronze Age (circa 1550 – 1200 BC) is incorrect.  Instead we should move it forward in time by about 300 years to circa 1250 – 900 BC).  My interest in the topic began when I watched a television show in the late 1990’s called “Pharaoh’s and Kings: A Biblical Quest.”  In it David Rohl, the author of a book of the same title, argues that Egyptian chronology and Biblical chronology, which should be very much in sync given the close relationship between ancient Palestine and Egypt, have been placed in an incorrect relation to each other based on the single supposed synchronism that the “Shishak” of the Bible was Pharaoh Shoshenq I.

Early Egyptologists were looking for validation of the Biblical record in archaeology.  They searched for the biblical “Shishak” and found Pharaoh Shoshenq I of the 22^nd Dynasty.  The name was similar to the one in the Bible and archaeologists found a stela at Megiddo in Palestine bearing his name as well as some inscriptions at Karnak in Egypt suggesting he may have done battle in Palestine.  Interestingly, there is no record of Shoshenq I attacking Jerusalem, which is what he is supposed to have done in the Bible.  Nevertheless, based on the assumption that Shishak = Shoshenq I, Egyptologists arranged the rest of the known Egyptian king lists in chronological order.  The Hebrew Bible places Shishak during the reign of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.  Shishak’s invasion of Palestine would have occurred around 925 BC.  Because of its detailed king lists and later synchronisms with other Near Eastern kingdoms, the Biblical timeline is generally accepted by archaeologists, at least back to the period of Saul.  If Shishak/Shoshenq I reigned around 925 B.C, then Ramesses II, the most famous king of the Late Bronze Age 19^th Dynasty, must have reigned during the 13^th century BC.  By many estimates that would make Ramesses II the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

We have very little information about Shoshenq I in the archaeological records but we have a great deal about Ramesses II and the 18^th and 19^th Dynasty pharaohs before him.  There are letters of correspondence between Ramesses II and the Hittite kings.  Also, the El Amarna letters provide a rich correspondence from the 18^th Dynasty pharaohs, like Akhenaton and Tutankhamen, who came before Ramesses II.  The Battle of Kadesh between Ramesses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II is one of the best recorded ancient battles.  We have documentation from both sides of the conflict. 

From about 800 BC forward we have pretty good records of events in Egypt, Assyria and the Aegean to validate the Biblical chronologies of events and to provide other cross-references around the Mediterranean.  There have been finds in Israel to validate the existence of King Ahab and his father Omri as well, further validating the Biblical king lists from about 900 BC.  What we are missing is any evidence from the period of David and Solomon that matches the Biblical descriptions.  The Bible describes Solomon’s temple, his building projects, even his throne in great detail.  But all evidence in the archaeological record from the supposed 10^th century BC suggests a period of rather poor material culture.  Archaeologists dig in Palestine and are generally underwhelmed by what they suppose must be Solomon’s great building projects and achievements.  The New Chronology fixes the problem by placing David and Solomon in the Late Bronze Age.  There is considerable archaeological evidence at Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and other cities for a wealthy Palestinian Late Bronze Age culture with close ties to Egypt.  The first Biblical kings would then be contemporary with the Egyptian 19^th Dynasty and Ramesses II.  The Biblical Exodus moves closer to the end of the Egyptian Hyksos period before the 18^th Dynasty.  That’s where Josephus, writing his Antiquities of the Jews and Against Apion around 94 AD, thought it belonged as well.

Now I’ll go back to Troy.  We have a similar problem of chronology there.  Classical and Hellenistic Greek estimates of the date for the fall of Troy place it around 1200 BC.  But as far as anyone can tell the ancient genealogies of Spartan and Lydian kings (from Herodotus and Pausanias and others) suggest dates in the 10^th century BC or so.  Herodotus suggested a generation length of 40 years to arrive at his Trojan War date of 1250 BC, even though a father to son generation would be unlikely to average longer than 30 years and a king list would be more likely closer to 20 or 25 years.  Based on the literary evidence many scholars would prefer to place the Trojan War and the Mycenaean kingdoms in the 10^th century, but the archaeology doesn’t support it.  In order to put the Trojan War during the Mycenaean Late Bronze Age where everyone agrees it must belong, we have to go with Trojan War dates that are at least as far back as 1200 BC.  In order to reach the level of the Troy VIh excavation, which seems to meet the physical description of Homer’s Troy best, we’d have to extend the already slim genealogies back to around 1300 BC.  So most scholars have accepted something in the neighborhood of Eratosthenes’ 1184 BC date or Herodotus’ 1250 BC date for the Trojan War and placed it in the archaeological level of Troy VII, a much less impressive city with a poorer material culture than that suggested by Homer.  The New Chronology allows for a more realistic date of a 10^th or 11^th century BC Trojan War while still placing it firmly in the Late Bronze Age with the more impressive Troy VI and the height of the Mycenaean kingdoms.

I had known for years about the difficulties of dating both the Bible and the Trojan War when I saw David Rohl and his television show.  But I didn’t know there was a controversy about it in the archaeological community.  I found David Rohl’s book, which is mostly concerned with Egypt and Palestine, and read it with great interest.  Later, I found another book, Centuries of Darkness by Peter James, et al., that gave a better picture of the whole set of problems in Near Eastern and Aegean archaeology caused ultimately by the single equation of Biblical Shishak with Egyptian Pharaoh Shoshenq I.  Centuries of Darkness refers to a series of “dark ages” that have to be inserted into the timelines of various civilizations.  For many Mediterranean peoples it is the 300 year period from 1200 BC to 900 BC when apparently very little happened and whole regions were depopulated only to be inhabited again at the end of the period.  Egypt’s “dark age” falls into the Third Intermediate Period during which Shoshenq I was king.  In Anatolia, the Old Hittites of the Bronze Age become the Neo Hittites of the Iron Age after a 300 year gap in time but with a remarkable degree of continuity between the two groups.  Once I was aware of the controversy I began to see it in the write-ups from my archaeology magazines and books.  Very often there is a long gap in the record of a site.  The people mysteriously disappeared for hundreds of years and then came back.  The New Chronology solves most of these problems.

But what about carbon dating?  I am not qualified to go very deep there but suffice to say that carbon dating appears not to work for the period from the about 900 BC to about 1400 BC.  The results seem to flat-line rather than making a nice slope.  Maybe that’s because there really isn’t a time difference or maybe there is some other reason.  Another dating method used to help “calibrate” carbon dating is dendrochronolgy or tree-ring analysis.  That method has some problems as well.  Tree ring analysis of an unknown piece of wood is always based on statistical analysis to place it within the correct time period.  There are some continuous samples from long-lived trees, but any wood found at an archaeological site is tough to place against the samples.  In addition, some regions don’t have a broad enough sample to make a proper analysis.  Unless the find is from a tree still living at the time of destruction any wood found on a site could have been old to start with.  And finally, very often scholars have certain assumptions about the time-frame of their finds.  If you assume that an obviously Bronze Age site should have dates between 1600 and 1200 BC, then you add those parameters to the statistical analysis program to find the best match within that timeframe.  There may be a better match at 920 BC but you didn’t put that into the analyzer because you know perfectly well that the Bronze Age was over by then. 

The same goes for astronomical calculations.  I have an article that purports to date the events described in the Odyssey based on some astronomical references in the text.  There is a supposed reference to a solar eclipse as well as a new moon, references to Venus and the Pleiades, and a conjecture that Hermes trip to Ogygia is really a reference to motion of the planet Mercury.  Putting all of these things together the authors come up with a date of 1178 BC for the events of the Odyssey.  Now, it may be true that the text refers to these astronomical events that could be used to date the text.  However, the authors of the article assumed the Classical dates for the Odyssey were mostly correct and narrowed their search for a match to the supposed astronomical data in the text to the period from 1250 – 1115 BC.  They found a match at 1178 BC, but what would they have found if they had broadened their search dates?  They found a date that matches nicely with Eratosthenes’s 1184 BC date for the fall of Troy but they didn’t allow for the possibility that the classical estimates might be wrong.  A look at the Spartan genealogies in Herodotus and Pausanias should make anyone think twice about accepting Eratosthenes’s date for Troy, but I’ll get to that in another post.

I can’t prove either the Standard Chronology or the New Chronology with the data I have.  I believe that the New Chronology is more plausible and useful than the Standard Chronology.  I have some hope that at some time the scholars who’ve built their careers explaining dark ages will be replaced by new scholars who can take a fresh look at Mediterranean and Near Eastern history. 

For my own fiction writing I assume the New Chronology that places the Biblical kings Saul, David, and Solomon as well as the Trojan War in the late Bronze Age along with the 18^th and 19^th Dynasty Egyptian Pharaohs and the New Kingdom Hittite rulers.

Next up:  When was the Trojan War?