Adventures With Cassiopaea

Chapter 29

Part of Manning's (and others') arguments have to do with keeping the 18^th dynasty cleanly separated from the time of the Hyksos. No overlapping is being allowed here. We can't have Ahmose experiencing something that has been dated to well before Ahmose was born. Let's have a look at how Gardiner has set up the problem of the dynasties in question.

Some account has already been given of the formidable difficulties here confronting us, but these must now be discussed at length. As usual we start with Manetho. The Thirteenth Dynasty according to him, was Diospolite (Theban) and consisted of sixty kings who reigned for 453 years. The Fourteenth Dynasty counted seventy-six kings from Xois, the modern Sakha in the central Delta, with a total of 184 or, as an alternative reading, 484 years. For Dyns. XV to XVII there is divergence between Africanus and Eusebius, while a much simpler account is preserved by the Jewish historian Josephus in what purports to be a verbatim extract from Manetho's own writing. For our present purpose the data supplied by Africanus must suffice. His Fifteenth Dynasty consists of six foreign so-called 'Sheperd' or Hyksos kings, whose domination lasted 284 years. The Sixteenth Dynasty consisted of Shepherd kings again, thirty-two in number totaling 518 years. Lastly, in the Seventeenth Dynasty Shepherd kings and Theban kings reigned concurrently, forty-three of each line altogether 151 years. Adding these figures, but adopting the lower number of years given for Dyn. XIV, we obtain 217 kings covering a stretch of 1590 years, over seven times the duration to which acceptance of the Sothic date in the El-Lahun papyrus has committed us. To abandon 1786 BC as the year when Dyn. XII ended would be to cast adrift from our only firm anchor, a course that would have serious consequences for the history, not of Egypt alone, but of the entire Middle East. [Gardiner, Sir Alan, Egypt of the Pharaohs]

Poor Gardiner. If he had not been so locked in his Egyptological world-view, he would have been able to think clearly, to gather information and to propose hypotheses that were flexible. In doing good "science," a researcher must be aware of this tendency to be fooled by his own mind - his own wishes. And, a good scientist, because he is aware of this, must scrutinize things he wishes to accept as fact in a more or less "unemotional" state, as far as is possible. Things must be challenged, taken apart, compared, tested for their ability to explain other things of a like nature, and if a flaw is found, no matter how small, if it is firmly established as a flaw, the hypothesis must be killed.

That does not mean, of course, that the next hypothesis we make has to be radically different; it may just need a slight expansion of parameters. As Thomas Edison pointed out, before he invented the lightbulb, he discovered 99 ways how not to make a light bulb. Hypotheses ought to be the same. If the observations or facts don't fit, it's not the end of the world. One just has to be flexible and try to think of ways that the hypothesis can be adjusted. The problem is that Egyptologists do not adjust the hypothesis except by shedding of blood. They prefer to twist the facts so that square pegs are pounded into round holes. In fact, Egyptologists did not start out with a hypothesis; they started with a "convention." This means that they decided what would be firmly accepted and anything that did not fit, had to be either discarded, or forced to fit the convention.

As noted, Manetho, quoted by Eusebius, Africanus, and Josephus, presents a very messy history of the Second Intermediate Period, with impossibly long lengths of reign for Dynasties XIII-XVII, and a confusing picture of which group of kings belonged to which dynasty. I think that it is entirely possible that a misunderstanding of what he wrote led to errors among those who quoted him; i.e. Eusebius, Africanus, and Josephus; all of whom had an axe to grind. And, for all we know, Manetho had an agenda as well.

The problem seems to lie in the fact that, in its original form, Manetho’s Second Intermediate Period consisted of five dynasties, three Theben and two Hyksos which were not sequential, but rather concurrent. Manetho apparently said this, but it has been rejected. It seems that, in order to indicate which dynasties served concurrently, and which dynasties served consecutively, a series of subtotals was used and this practice was misunderstood by those who quoted Manetho. They thought they were looking at a sequential lists of kings interspersed with summaries and subtotals. They thought that the summaries were additional groups of kings. As a result, Africanus, Eusebius, and Josephus committed grave errors in their citations of Manetho. This led to a number of errors, such as Africanus’s mixing together Hyksos and Theben kings into one dynasty, and Africanus and Eusebius disagreeing as to whether a dynasty was Hyksos or Theben, or how many years it reigned.

Getting back to our problem, it seems that what we are dealing with is a rather restricted time frame in which the Middle Bronze age came to a cataclysmic end, the Hyksos were ejected from Egypt, and these events did not occur in the middle of the 15^th century BC, but rather over 200 years earlier. We also find that the curious "cryptographic writing" of the 18^th dynasty fits a model that includes the end of the Middle Bronze Age and extraordinary climatological events.

The archaeological excavations of the Islands of Santorini and Crete demonstrate that the destruction of the Middle Bronze Age civilization occurred in two phases. This coincides with the fact that there were indications of climatological anomalies as early as 1644 BC, leading up to the final disaster of the eruption of Thera in 1628 BC. There was, it seems, initial volcanic activity - earthquakes - followed by rebuilding and habitation for some time before the final, decisive eruption of Thera at least one or two generations later! That there was some warning of the impending eruption is verified by the fact that no bodies were found in the several meters thick layer of pumice that buried the town of Akrotiri. Also, since portable precious items were missing, it seems safe to assume, therefore, that the population abandoned the town in haste.

The Dilmun civilization of Bahrain is said to have existed from 3200 BC until 1600 BC. The Indus Valley civilization is said to have ended around 1700 to 1600 BC. The Great Babylonian Empire ended around 1600 BC. The Middle Kingdom in Egypt ended around 1600 BC. The Xia Dynasty in India ended in 1600 BC. The use of Stonehenge ended around 1600 BC. In nearly every case, the end of the civilization and the mass destruction read in the record unearthed by the spade is ascribed to war and rampaging tribes of barbarians on the march. O. R. Gurney writes:

History begins in Anatolia with the arrival on the plateau of Assyrian traders about 1900 BC. At this time the people of Assur were already familiar with the cuneiform script of Babylonia, and the clay tablets on which these Assyrian merchants inscribed their day-to-day business correspondence with their capital city have been found in large numbers at several site. […] Little enough is learnt from these tablets of the indigenous population and their history. But we hear of local princes and their palaces and it is evident that the country was broken up into small principalities. […] We have been fortunate in recovering three tablets bearing the names of a certain Pitkhana and his son Anitta, for these two are known to us from a remarkable Hittite text, which in its present form at least dates from about 1600 BC. […] It was probably during the reign of Anittas that the commercial activity of the Assyrians in Cappadocia, having flourished for more than a century, came to a sudden end. Whether this was the result of the conquests of Anittas, or of some disaster which befell the city of Assur at this time, is unknown. There is nothing to suggest that the attitude of the indigenous rulers to the Assyrians was anything but friendly. [Gurney, O. R., The Hittites, 1952, Penguin Books, London]

Why do civilizations end? This question has always been at the center of historical research. For a very long time, the focus of historical and archaelogical research has been to attempt to isolate the causes of the collapse of the Greek world at the end of the Bronze Age. Many solutions are offered: earthquake, disease, famine, climate, war, drought, depopulation, plague, attack from outside.

In order to maintain the uniformitarian view, it has been essential to create "anomalies" in the record to avoid having to deal with the fact that everything got very bad everywhere on the planet all at once. In the face of such evidence of cyclical disasters in the scientific record, the determination of archaeologists and historians to cling to their chronologies is rather absurd. To ascribe such cycles to a "galactic core explosion" or a supernova is equally absurd. To ascribe these things to "Galactic Alignment" or precessional cycles is not worth consideration.

Again we say: based on the scientific evidence compared to the observations of the ancients, what we seem to be looking at is a recurring shower of comets or asteroids that cycle through the solar system regularly, on a 3,600 year orbit. What is more, it seems that this body of comets, clustered together resembles a Fiery serpent with a mouthful of devouring teeth in the blackness of space. For this reason, it was given the name spdt, spdw, and spd-ibhw (sharp toothed), in the Pyramid Texts. The Bull of the South that is first seen Southern skies. It undoubtedly is a terrifying spectacle!

Another of the serious problems of sorting out Egyptian chronology is the fact that the individuals in question used many names for many reasons. In fact, it seems as though many of the names were actually titles, such as "Thutmosis", which would be "son of Thoth." There is also Ramesses, which is "son of Ra." It is hardly likely that the chief god would change with each king as often as these titles suggest. It is far more likely that each king was a "Thutmosis" and a "Ramesses" in the same sense that the Queen of England has numerous titles such as "Defender of the Faith," and "Brittanic Majesty," "Head of the Commonwealth," and formerly, "Empress of India," etc. Of course, in a certain sense, that complicates things a bit. But, in another sense, it simplifies them.

Just to give a specific example: in conventional chronology, we find that King Ahmose married his sister, Ahmose-Nefertari, daughter of Sekenenre II and Queen Ahotep. His son, Amenhotep I, co-reigned with Nefertari, though he supposedly married a Queen Senseneb. Their son, Thutmosis I ALSO married Princess Ahmose, daughter of Queen Ahotep, which, of course, means that Queen Ahotep must have also been married to his father, Amenhotep I, who was said to have been the son of Ahmose-Nefertari, making Queen Ahotep his grandmother.

Well, I'm my own grandpa!

At the same time, we have the problem of what, exactly, constituted a "king" during those times. It is beginning to seem likely that many of the kings whose tombs have been found, who memorialized themselves, or were memorialized by their families, were little more than local rulers, or even just glorified puppets of a still higher king.

In reading about all these things, I discovered that the mummy of Amenhotep III was actually "found" in the tomb of Amehotep II. That's pretty strange. What is more interesting is that a proposal to extract samples from different mummies to see what the familial relationships really might have been was halted by the Egyptian government.

Egypt has indefinitely postponed DNA tests designed to throw light on questions that have intrigued archaeologists for years: Who was Tutankhamun's father, and was he of royal blood? The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Gaballah Ali Gaballah, said Tuesday that plans for DNA tests on the mummies of Tutankhamun and his presumed grandfather, Amenhotep III, had been canceled. "There will be no test now and we have to see if there will be one later," Gaballah told The Associated Press. He declined to give a reason. […]

The announcement of the planned tests had sparked a controversy among Egyptian archaeologists. Some said they were an unnecessary risk that might harm the mummies. Others said the results might be used to rewrite Egyptian history. "I have refused in the past to allow foreign teams to carry out such tests on the bones of the Pyramids builders because there are some people who try to tamper with Egyptian history," the chief archaeologist of the Giza pyramids, Zahi Hawas , told the Akhbar Al-Yom weekly. [ The Associated Press Cairo, Egypt, Dec. 13, 2000]

Indeed, Mr. Hawass! There are most certainly wicked people who try to tamper with the lies that are passed off as Egyptian history! There are people attempting to re-write Egyptian history with the truth! You might even try it yourself, sometime. It ought to be a novel experience! It is becoming more and more apparent that the Egyptians of Egypt today, and probably even the Egyptians of the past five or more thousands of years, are NOT the builders of the pyramids and they simply cannot bear to face the fact that the glorious history they have claimed may not, in fact, be their own.

Now, I am not even going to attempt to sort out all the assumed or presumably confirmed family relationships of the Egyptian dynasties. I am only going to deal with a very narrow issue: that of locating a hook upon which certain definite matters can be suspended for further exploration by others. This hook is the period of time surrounding the eruption of Thera, the fall of Avaris and the END of the 18th dynasty.

Continue to page 261

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