Note: By late 1999: For major new work in Egyptian and Hebrew chronology, history and mythology, especially on Akhenaten, see Charles Pope's work at:
http://www.domainofman.com/
And matters related also on Akhenaten at:
http://members.aol.com/ankhemmaat/moses.htm/
Also: http://members.aol.com/ankhemmaat/exodus.htm/

Ramesses had city Tanis in east Nile delta, and a reed sea or papyrus marsh is there, the reed sea could not be an extension of the red Sea, over bitter waters of Marah so maybe Exodus from city of Ramesses to Succoth, to Etham on the edge of the wilderness, then back to Migdol near the Red Sea, from Tanis to Wadi Tumilat, to go into Sinai wilderness by Beersheba, but thrown back by warfare and the Egyptian system of fortifications, at Etham?, possible stop also at Daphne (Tell Defneh) where there was a temple to Baal, then from Mt Sinai to Kadesh. but there is still a problem with Moses in Hatshepsut's time. re Moses seeking from the Edomites permission to go through whilst not moving off the king's highway, and can the conquest of Canaan be placed in this revised, early date for the Exodus? Hatshepsut having been 1473BC-1458BC) (Ian Wilson on Exodus). Tuthmosis III's incursions into Canaan probably keeping the Israelites on the move, Ian Wilson on Exodus Kadesh here from and re water at Kadesh Barnea, Wilson sees it between the Wilderness of Zin and the Wilderness of Paran, on the frontier of Edom, and he favours Ain-el-Qudeirat, set in the Wadi-el-Ain, or Valley of the Spring, possibly the best source of water in the whole north Sinai, but nothing of archaeological worth has been found there. (See: Ian Wilson, on Exodus; The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible. New York, Abingdon Press, 1962.)

1200BC: The Sea People destroy Ugarit an ancient Syrian city hear the coast dating back to Third Millennium.

1200BC: The Phrygians, a tribe from Thrace or Macedonia, moved into Anatolia with the Sea People, first appeared historically about 750BC; good metalworkers and their writing resembled Greek. Time of King Midas.

South Mesopotamian history obscure from 1200BC onwards. [The Sea People?]

1200BC: In north Mesopotamia, rulers at Assur are downing the Hurrian state of Mitanni. Then the Assyrians declined, reviving 1000BC to 612BC, when the Assyrian Empire dominated the Near East. In 612BC, a coalition of Chaldean Kings from Babylon and Medes from Iran brought the fall of Nineveh, a Neo-Babylonian dynasty ruled Mesopotamia until 539BC, when Babylon fell to Cyrus II, the Achaemenid king. Later, foreign rulers dominated Mesopotamia.

1200BC: Iron being used in China, in meteorite form. Treated as a semi-precious stone. Cast iron used from about 650BC, and there was no cast iron in Europe until 1000 years later. (As iron needs a kiln about 1835 degrees C)

1200BC: Dar Tichitt, earliest evidence for farming on southern fringes of Sahara Desert, Neolithic sites here. Southern Muritania. Fishing, cattle, goats, hunting, wild grasses gathered. Pottery in use, stone axes. From about 1000BC, decrease in rain dried the lakes, so fishing became impossible. More climatic deterioration in 700BC.

1200BC: in South Germany and Bohemia had surfaced the Celts, Urnfield people, who buried their cremated dead in urns, the first to use lead in bronze casting, used lost-wax method, made large metal vessels and defensive armour. Influenced the Estruscans in north Italy. System displaced by the Iron Age from 8th CBC

1200BC: In China: Advent of the chariot, while in Europe, nd, chariot came with the Iron Age, introduced by the Indo-European Hurrians. Examples eg at Ur. Use of the chariot in war required the building of imposing earthworks around a city.

Iron Age: In general, the Iron Age, displacing the earlier Bronze Age, ushered in the rise of Dorians in Greece, replacing the Ionians. Syro-Hittite states in Cilicia and Syria. Phoenician and Aramaean kingdoms in the Northern Levant. The Neo-Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia, and the slow decline of Egypt. The rural population in the hills of Canaan rose and began to identify itself as "Israelite" by way of sharpening religious distinctions, prohibiting intermarriages, emphasising family history and religion, and notably, prohibiting eating of pork. (Drawn from The Architects of the Neolithic Revolution and Bronze Age by Larry West (Texas USA) treating views on the people-movements of the Bronze Age with reference to Blacks out-of-Africa in areas of Europe north of Africa.)

1200BC to 1100BC, An-Yang, site in China of last capital of the Shang Dynasty. palaces, mudbricks, workshops, immense tombs. Oracle bones and ritual vessels. Jade objects.

By 1200BC: A general move east into Anatolia by the tribes known as Sea People, who brought downfall of the Hittites. There was a succeeding Dark Ages, see histories of Anatolia. However, at this time, no dark ages in Europe, more a cultural quickening.

By 1200BC: Jaynes has Shang Chinese royal tombs with slaughtered retinues and animals as in Mesopotamia. Tuchman dates the fall of Priam's Troy as dated near the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC. Greece at this time had mercantile and maritime ambitions. By 1200, these were Mycenaean times in Greece, when Agamemnon, son of Atreus, was King of Mycenae in the citadel with the Lion gate, just south of Corinth. Tuchman says some violent cause at about the time of the fall of Troy but probably over a longer period, ended the primacy of Mycenae and the literate politics of Knossus at Crete, with which it was linked, and there followed a 200-year shadowy void called "the Greek Dark Ages", when written language seems to have vanished completely, although the oral tradition kept the stories of the heroes alive; some recovery of civilisation when the Dorians (Caucasians) arrived, the Iliad had 16,000 lines and the Odyssey had 12,000 lines. By 1200 BC, Jaynes has fragments of the later Epic of Gilgamesh on some Hittite and Hurrian fragments, although a more usual date for these fragments is about 1700 BC; Jaynes notes the de-bicameralised changes as including the injection of subjectivity, questions arise: of what is in the human heart?

1200BC: Series of destructions of undetermined origin, Mycenaean culture in decline.

About 1200BC: Destruction of Troy VIh. The Sea People invasions were about 1210Bc to 1180 BC.

By 1200BC: Jaynes has bicameralism society, in Chavin, in Mexico. Jaynes has 1115-1077 BC the most powerful king of Middle Assyria as Tiglath-Pileser 1, a king who no longer joins the name of his god to his own name, has a policy of cruel frightfulness, with incredibly bloody punishments unnecessary for maintenance of control in bicameral days. In Greece were the Dorian invasions, breaking down bicameralism, cruelties had been unnecessary as a means of social control until this breakdown.

1200AD: Bronze Age: The Labyrinth as Entertainment: Appearance in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia, the labyrinth as entertainment, or, relaxation, or, an aid to contemplation. The labyrinth differs from its relative, the maze, as its winding paths lead back to the centre and out again. Labyrinths were popular in Roman times, and reached their peak in medieval times, when 11-circuit models were placed on church floors (as in Chartres Cathedral, c.1200). The first-appearing labyrinth seems to be the one in which the bull-headed Minotaur lived, on Crete. (Legend of Theseus and Ariadne). In Britain, editor of a British journal of mazes and labyrinths, Caerdoia, is Jeff Saward.
See also, Virginia Westbury, Labyrinths: Ancient Paths of Wisdom and Peace. Lansdowne Publishing, 2001. Check online at: http://www.labyrinthsociety.org

1203BC-1195: In Egypt, Queen Tenosret rules.

1203BC-1197BC: In Egypt, King Siptah rules following Merneptah.

1203BC-1195BC: In Egypt, King Siptah rules.

1220BC, Pharaoh Merneptah set up a stele with mention of a triumphant raid on Palestine, captured Ashkelon, Gezer, etc, in non-Israelite areas.

1205BC: Approx: Map leads to Egyptian goldmine?: A Perth, Australia, geologist, who grew up in Egypt, Siami El-Raghy, feels he may have found a map that will lead to the gold mines used at the time of King Seti I, in the 19th Dynasty, 1350BC-1205BC. Question: did the gold of Tutankhamun's day come from these mines? The geologist seven years ago noticed a copy of a map in a Cairo government office, "the oldest known geological map in the world". (Reported in Australia, 19 October 1999)

Egypt: The Book of the Dead is collected during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt.

1205BC: Israelites in their south are oppressed by Cushan-rishathaim. In 1198, Othniel drives them out. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

Circa 1210BC: Egyptians and Pharaoh Merneptah record a major attack by Sea People. And again in 1180BC. M. Wood, one attack in the Libyan area. One attack by about 20,000 on Egypt, including some Sea Peoples, up to 25 per cent. In the Libyan battle, over 12,000 attacked Egypt. One view is that Merneptah had war between Egyptians and Canaanites, re burials at Hebron, or perhaps Ramesses III with this battle.

1212BC: Merneptah 1212BC to 1202BC, son of Ramesses II, ruthless raids on Palestine, desolated Israel, perhaps the pharaoh of exodus, making Ramesses II the pharaoh of oppression? 580BCVELIKOVSKY date, Ramesses II marries a daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, (570BC as a VELIKOVSKY date, Nebuchadnezzar visits Ramesses II.)

1215BC: The Exodus took place "shortly after Ramses II's demise in 1215BC. "His rule was too secure to have allowed a mass escape of slaves." (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded) "Exodus 13 recounts that some 600,000 'Children of Israel' left from the region of Ramses in the northern Nile delta, after spending 430 years in Egypt. Both these figures are... suspect." However, they took with them, great (plunder?) wealth/treasure. Feather feels the 430 years in Egypt was more like 140-150 years. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)
On Ramesses II of Egypt. When his stomach contents were analysed in 1979 by French botanists, chopped tobacco leaves were found with other vegetable matter such as plantain, stinging nettles, flax, black pepper seeds, and camomile, wheat. It does not appear that the Egyptians smoked tobacco. How did the Egyptians know of tobacco?

1220BC: If we assume that Joseph went into Egypt in about 1850BC-1800BC by Bimson's dating (see Ian Wilson on Exodus), or 1650BC and Jews enslaved for 430 years after that, then enslavement ceased about 1420BC-1395BC or 1220BC?

1234BC: Israelites led by Joshua invade Canaan. Jericho is taken successfully. Between 1234-1228BC: much Canaanite territory still remains under Canaanite control. In 1233, Joseph's remains are returned to Shechem and buried. In 1228, Joshua divides the land of Canaan among the tribes. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1235BC: Sea Peoples: (Britannica): In reign of Merneptah, (1236BC-1223BC) a 13th son of Ramesses II. Sea Peoples invaded in Merneptah's 5th regnal year, about 1231BC, he was first invaded by Libyans and Sea Peoples from Anatolia who had gone to Libya in search of homes. Britannica suggests Ramesses II is the pharaoh of oppression and Merneptah of the Exodus. Merneptah was cruel at times to enemies but when Hittites had a famine he sent them grain from Ugarit.

1235BC: Likely date for the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, almost certainly in time of Ramesses II. (Mellersh).

Abu Simbel, Egypt: A high-tech show is being planned to present the glories of the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II (reigned 1298BC-1235). Computer equipment will simulate the presence of four giant, rock-cut statues, 20m-tall collossi, at Abu Simbel, 1225km south of Cairo. A similar show will also be staged at a nearby temple of Queen Nefertiti. About 7000-9000 tourists are expected to visit the show daily. (Reported early in 2000)

1235 BC: about the time of writing of the Book of Joshua. (Packer)

1235BC: Moses leads the Israelites to near Jericho on the Jordan River, despite objections of Edomites, Ammonites and Moabites, in 1235, Balaam, a prophet of Mesopotamia, tries to prophesy against Israel, but God causes him to bless Israel. In 1235, Moses allots the land east of Jordan to the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh. later Moses ascends Mt Nebo and views the land of Canaan, he dies at the age of 120 and is buried by God. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1235BC: Likely date for the Exodus of Israelites from Egypt, almost certainly in time of Ramesses II. (Mellersh)

1224BC-1214BC: Egypt reign of Merneptah, often the Pharaoh of the Exodus, no specific Egyptian tradition re who it was, composed in his fifth year a stele associating Israel people with the people of Canaan. this gives no time for 40 years wandering on the desert.

1224BC-1184BC: Jews time of Deborah. (Packer.) 1224BC-1214BC, in Egypt, King Merneptah.

1250BC: The population of Egypt is 2.6 million in 1250BC: (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1250BC: One date given for Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

1250BC-1550BC: Suggestions that Ramesses II as Pharaoh of Oppression or Exodus. (Bacon, Atlas). Josephus the Jewish historian (died about 100AD), dated the Egyptian revolt against Hyksos at 1550BC, with the Exodus at this date, but this book deems Josephus' view unlikely. (Bacon, Atlas).

1250BC: Approx: Hittites in danger of being swept away by the Sea People. Philistines, one of the Sea People invading Palestine at beginning of ???12C BC, gave it their name, settled on the coast and then spread inland. Had iron weapons and new pottery. Adopted culture of Canaanites. Sea People.

1250BC: poste Philistines settled at Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, in one small strip. (Bacon, Atlas).

1250BC-1240BC: Trojan War date. (Mellersh).

1250BC: Mercea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion. Macmillan, NY, 1987, suggests Moses lives in C13thBC, date uncertain, any quest for the historical Moses is futile. Moses, a sort of nickname from an Egyptian name.

1250BC Mercea Eliade, The Encyclopedia of Religion. New York, Macmillan, 1987. suggests Moses in C13thBC, date uncertain, notes that quest for the historical Moses is futile. Moses a sort of nickname from an Egyptian name, This book has no date for Joshua either.

1250BC: Large scale grain cargoes going from Ugarit to Hittite country, due to the famine.

1250BC: Encyclopedia Britannica says early date of Exodus based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon building his temple, which would make Exodus about 1440BC time of Tuthmosis III eg petty kingdoms Moab and Edom were not yet settled and the destruction of the cities the Jews claimed to have captured occurred about 1250BC, not 1400BC.

1250BC: Troy has some wealth based on horses, and wild horses still roam Lesbos. The sack of Laomedon's Troy was possibly due to a dispute over horses. (M. Wood.) The Trojan destruction by the Greeks but one of its many destructions. The last sacking was terrible violence, city stormed and burned, citizens killed, some left dead in the streets. Founders of Troy VI had come to Hisarlik about 1900BC. Towards 1100BC, Troy ceased to exist. Some Trojans had retreated to the higher ground over the Scamander River, at Bunarbashi, and kept making their typical pottery down to 800BC, the Grey Minyan pottery. Then they may have returned to Troy. By 190BC, Troy in a very decrepit state.

1250BC: Greeks seek commercial advantage at entrance of the Black Sea, Troy. (Mellersh).

1250BC?: (From M. Wood), 3600BC, Troy established by Neolithic settlers from Kum Tepe by the Dardenelles. Destined to be sacked at least nine times. in 2500BC, Troy settled on a sea-girt promontory. By 2200BC, Troy a royal citadel, by 2190, sack of Troy II to get "Priam's Treasure"; (article, The Age, 15 July 1991, the long-lost gold of Troy poste Heinrich Schliemann's excavations, women's jewellery, eg., a gold diadem or head dress made of 16,353 intricately worked pieces, necklaces, dozens of bracelets and thousands of rings, was flown from Berlin to Moscow by the Red Army in June and July 1945, ending in the hands in 1991 of two Soviet art experts, Grigory Kozlov and Konstantin Akinsha), and it may have been that this sack was a punishment as Laomedon, whose father was Ilus, had built the great walls of Troy noted by about 1300BC, but Laomedon cheated Apollo and Poseidon after they had helped him in this; he would not give up some immortal snow white horses to Hercules, who had helped Laomedon by destroyed a sea monster sent by Poseidon. (Note: Iman Wilkens, Where Troy Once Stood. London, Rider, 1990.) M. Wood on Troy - conveys that Agamemnon had married Clytemnestra, daughter of Tyndareus of Sparta and sister to Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. Helen went to Agamemnon's brother, Menelaos, later king of Lakonia. Athena is goddess of wisdom. Mythology of the day ranges around idea of strife. (See M. Wood, p. 21.)
Paris of Troy visits Sparta and is feasted by Menelaos. Paris then has to go to Crete to see King Idomeneus of Knossos, and Helen happens to elope with him. Then they sailed for Troy. Much depends on whether Helen left voluntarily, left voluntarily with treasure, or was captured by force. In any case, Menelaos was in Crete when he heard the news Helen was gone and so he hurried to Mycenae to ask Agamemnon to help to lead an army to Troy to take revenge. Agamemnon sends messengers to Troy to demand Helen's restitution, with compensation. Envoys came back empty-handed, Menelaos and his old ally, King Nestor of Pylos, went to Greece to ask independent kings of Greece to help with the expedition. Armies gathered, with Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses) of Ithaca, Ajax of Lockris, smaller kingdoms, larger kingdoms were Pylos, Sparta, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Crete-Knossos. Some 164 places sent troops, according to Homer's list. An army seer said the business would take ten years.
The Greeks set sail and in error attacked Teuthrania in Mysia, opposite Lesbos on Asia Minor, and devastated it. Telephus the king of Mysia beat them back and they retreated shamefully to Greece. Some time elapsed before they regrouped. When the Greeks had reassembled at Aulis, they were windbound and unable to sail, hungry and waiting. Army prophet revealed that Agamemnon had offended Artemis and would not sail until he had sacrificed his most beautiful daughter to appease the goddess and change the wind. Early sources agree that his daughter Iphigenia was sacrificed.

1250BC: Approx: (Woods on Troy). Finally the Greeks sailed and went to Lesbos, then Tenedos, which was visible from Troy and ruled by some linked to Troy, so the Greeks sacked Tenedos. Then they berthed at Troy and built fortifications. Trojans had allies from Asia Minor and Thrace, both sides used chariots, Troy not the only objective, Achilles led a great foray southwards, sacking some mainland cities and islands Lesbos, Skyros and Tenedos. Ajax plundered in Teuthrania, and after some time, the Greeks concentrated fully on Troy. At some time in Troy, Ajax allegedly fouled the temple of Athena. (10th year of the war?) Trojans reinforced by allies from south west Anatolia. Achilles' friend Patroclus been killed, so Achilles in reprisal killed 12 noble captured Trojans over Hector's funeral pyre. Hector of Troy fell in single combat with Achilles. A Trojan ally was Memnon, killed in battle, and then Paris killed Achilles by arrowing his heel, and later Achilles was cremated. Ajax maddened by Achilles death and committed suicide with a sword given him by Hector, and his tomb is about 5 miles/km from Troy. Priam's son Paris, cause of all this, was killed by Philoktetes, but the Trojans refused to give up Helen, as she had been married by Deiphobos of Troy. Then the plan hatched to build a wooden horse to hide armed men, and Menelaos and Odysseus hid inside. Horse allegedly an offering to Athena, Greeks burn their camp and put out to see as if they'd given up. They waited off Tenedos for a signal fire to return. At dawn, Trojans pulled the horse inside their city, then celebrated, then the Greek fleet returned and at midnight, the soldiers came out of the horse, killed sentries and opened the gates of Troy. Much sacking. King old Priam was killed by Neoptolemus, Priam who had seen Hercules sack Troy, who had seen all his own sons killed, eg Deiphobos, whom Helen had married after Paris" death. Old King Priam cut down and murdered. Menelaos had determined to kill Helen, but seeing her with her bared breasts in the midst of night and impressed by her beauty still he cast away his sword. All male children of Troy killed. Women enslaved and taken to Greece. Idea that Ajax of Lockris has fouled the altar of Athena. Agamemnon's army plundered and burned Troy, razed its walls, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles. House of Priam now extinct. and myths have the unbelievable story that some of the Greek victors took ten years to find their way home - which is totally unbelievable. Agamemnon was murdered by his wife and a rival. Within 80 years the world of all this was disintegrated, Greeks of this saga went into colonies and the Dorians (Caucasians) came into Greece and Sparta proper.

1250BC: Exodus route given as Goshen, Wilderness of Etham, about north of West Arabia, Maka'h, south to Elim, Wilderness of Sin, to Mt Sinai, through Wilderness of Sinai, to Land of Midian top of that gulf, to Wilderness of Paran, Wilderness of Zin, to Kadesh Barnea, south back to the land of Midian, north up to the land of Moab by the Dead Sea, and the Jews could not have had 60,000 Hebrews of fighting age as suggested by Bible. (Bacon, Atlas). Merneptah (reigned 1224BC-1214BC) boasted "Israel lies desolate, its seed is no more.... All the lands in their entirety are at peace, Everyone who was a nomad has been curbed by King Merneptah". (Bacon, Atlas).

1250BC: Troy has some wealth based on horses, and wild horses still roam Lesbos. and the sack of Laomedon's Troy was due to a dispute over horses. (M. Wood). The Trojan destruction by the Greeks but one of its many destructions. The last sacking was terrible violence, city stormed and burned, citizens killed, some left dead in the streets. Founders of Troy VI had come to Hisarlik about 1900BC. Towards 1100BC, Troy ceased to exist. Some Trojans had retreated to the higher ground over the Scamander River, at Bunarbashi, and kept making their typical pottery down to 800BC, the Grey Minyan pottery. Then they may have returned to Troy. By 190BC, Troy in a very decrepit state.

1250BC: Greeks seek commercial advantage at entrance of the Black Sea, Troy. (Mellersh).

1250BC: Encyclopedia Britannica says early date of Exodus based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon building his temple, which would make Exodus about 1440BC time of Tuthmosis III eg petty kingdoms Moab and Edom were not yet settled and the destruction of the cities the Jews claimed to have captured occurred about 1250BC, not 1400BC.

1250BC: Greeks seek commercial advantage at entrance of the Black Sea, Troy. (Mellersh).

1250BC? - (From M. Wood), 3600BC, Troy had been established by Neolithic settlers, the great walls of Troy are braced, as noted by about 1300BC, but Laomedon cheated Apollo and Poseited by Menelaos. Paris then has to go to Crete to see King Idomeneus of Knossos, and Helen happens to elope with him. Then they sailed for Troy. Much depends on whether Helen left voluntarily, left voluntarily with treasure, or was captured by force. In any case, Menelaos was in Crete when he heard the news Helen was gone and so he hurried to Mycenae to ask Agamemnon to help to lead an army to Troy to take revenge. Agamemnon sends messengers to Troy to demand Helen's restitution, with compensation. Envoys came back empty-handed, Menelaos and his old ally, King Nestor of Pylos, went to Greece to ask independent kings of Greece to help with the expedition. Armies gathered, with Achilles, Odysseus (Ulysses) of Ithaca, Ajax of Lockris, smaller kingdoms, larger kingdoms were Pylos, Sparta, Tiryns, Mycenae, and Crete-Knossos. Some 164 places sent troops, according to Homer's list. An army seer said the business would take ten years. The Greeks set sail and in error attacked Teuthrania in Mysia, opposite Lesbos on Asia Minor, and devastated it. Telephus the king of Mysia beat them back and they retreated shamefully to Greece. Some time elapsed before they regrouped. When the Greeks had reassembled at Aulis, they were windbound and unable to sail, hungry and waiting. Army prophet revealed that Agamemnon had offended Artemis and would not sail until he had sacrificed his most beautiful daughter to appease the goddess and change the wind. early sources agree that his daughter Iphigenia was sacrificed.

1250BC: Approx, Woods on Troy - Finally the Greeks sailed and went to Lesbos,, then Tenedos, which was visible from Troy and ruled by some linked to Troy, so the Greeks sacked Tenedos. Then they berthed at Troy and built fortifications. Trojans had allies from Asia Minor and Thrace, both sides used chariots, Troy not the only objective, Achilles led a great foray southwards, sacking some mainland cities and islands Lesbos, Skyros and Tenedos. Ajax plundered in Teuthrania, and after some time, the Greeks concentrated fully on Troy. At some time in Troy, Ajax allegedly fouled the temple of Athena. (10th year of the war?) Trojans reinforced by allies from south west Anatolia. Achilles' friend Patroclus been killed, so Achilles in reprisal killed 12 noble captured Trojans over Hector's funeral pyre. Hector of Troy fell in single combat with Achilles. A Trojan ally was Memnon, killed in battle, and then Paris killed Achilles by arrowing his heel, and later Achilles was cremated. Ajax maddened by Achilles death and committed suicide with a sword given him by Hector, and his tomb is about 5 miles/km from Troy. Priam's son Paris, cause of all this, was killed by Philoktetes, but the Trojans refused to give up Helen, as she had been married by Deiphobos of Troy. Then the plan hatched to build a wooden horse to hide armed men, and Menelaos and Odysseus hid inside. Horse allegedly an offering to Athena, Greeks burn their camp and put out to see as if they'd given up. They waited off Tenedos for a signal fire to return. At dawn, Trojans pulled the horse inside their city, then celebrated, then the Greek fleet returned and at midnight, the soldiers came out of the horse, killed sentries and opened the gates of Troy. Much sacking. King old Priam was killed by Neoptolemus, Priam who had seen Hercules sack Troy, who had seen all his own sons killed, eg Deiphobos, whom Helen had married after Paris" death. Old King Priam cut down and murdered. Menelaos had determined to kill Helen, but seeing her with her bared breasts in the midst of night and impressed by her beauty still he cast away his sword. All male children of Troy killed. Women enslaved and taken to Greece. Idea that Ajax of Lockris has fouled the altar of Athena. Agamemnon's army plundered and burned Troy, razed its walls, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles. House of Priam now extinct. and myths have the unbelievable story that some of the Greek victors took ten years to find their way home - which is totally unbelievable. Agamemnon murdered by his wife and a rival. Within 80 years the world of all this was disintegrated, Greeks of this saga went into colonies and the Dorians came into Greece and Sparta proper.

1250BC, Approx, Hittites in danger of being swept away by the Sea People. Philistines, one of the Sea People invading Palestine at beginning of ???12C BC, gave it their name, settled on the coast and then spread inland. Had iron weapons and new pottery. Adopted culture of Canaanites. Sea People.

1250BC, (M. Wood on Troy cites Seneca writing, "Ask me for a true image of human existence and I will show you the sack of a great city".) Troy on hill of Hisarlik, on edge of a plateau. Greeks may have regarded Troy as dug out by the mattock of Zeus, consumed by a whirlwind of doom, a city ground to dust. (Someone once compared Achilles to Hitler, trying to demolish an old civilization.)

From 1250BC to 1000BC... Argument that Homer's scenes etc took place in Western Europe, outlines mysteries of Gnostic religion, and via transposition of place names finds Troy in England and Mycenae in France. Helen was a symbol of wisdom. Says that the horse-drawn chariot is from Hyksos in 1700BC. That Poseidon is equivalent to Neptune, (all a Celtic battle), Hercules then went off to Peloponnese, got six ships, came back and sacked Troy. Only survivor by Hercules attack was L's son, Podarces, who had always said Hercules ought to be rewarded, and he was renamed Priam and set loose. Over three generations, Priam restored Troy's greatness, he had fifty sons and 12 daughters, and his eldest son was the Trojan warrior Hector, then Paris/Alexander, In Priam's old age, Greek most powerful king was Agamemnon, whose family came from Lydians in Western Turkey, who had married into the Perseid dynasty of Mycenae; (Midea was the site for the cult of Hippodamia, mother of Atreus and grandmother of Agamemnon, and Midea the third great fortress of the Argolid). Agamemnon's family controlled the Argolid with its fortresses at Tiryns and Midea.

1250BC?: Re Troy: (M. Wood), Famous women of Troy - young Iphigenia was sacrificed at Aulis as prelude to expedition against Troy, and there was human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism in the Bronze Age, as with at Knossos the remains of two children eight and eleven, the age of Iphigenia, who seem to have been ritually killed and partially eaten prior to some catastrophe. This Knossos find could be related to tales of cannibalism of children of Agamemnon's uncle, Thyestes, as well as tale re Iphigenia. M. Wood, Herodotus said that after the Trojan war, Crete was so devastated by plague and pestilence is became uninhabitable. Climate change, etc, re the movements of the Sea Peoples?

1250BC: M. Wood feels that the wooden horse is a horse-shaped wooden siege ram in which men could hide, or, Poseidon, earth God, worshipped in form of horse, or a master of horses, but also an originator of earthquakes. Troy earlier sacked by Herackles, and so perhaps the wooden horse a tribute from Greeks to Poseidon for an earthquake which weakened the defences of Troy? Troy was the "last fling" of the Myceneaen world.

1250BC, Sea People, many different origins on the move around 1250BC, due to unclear economic and social pressures. So that Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians moved into Greece and the Aegean Islands, probably destroyed the Mycenaeans, and drove them east, see Trojan War. Thraco-Phrygians were driven into Anatolia, later to bring down the Hittites. Some homeless peoples (Sea Peoples?) swept south to the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria, burning and looting as they went. only stopped by Ramesses III in 1174 BC on borders of Egypt. At this time, the Philistines settled in Palestine. Ramesses III defeated Sea Peoples.

About 1250BC, An actual earthquake at Troy. M. Wood.

By 1250BC: In a rock relief, the god (Mesopotamian area) Sharruma holds his steward-king, Tudhaliys in his embrace; relief also has ideograms. Jaynes has the Trojan War in actuality about 1230 BC, and by now, the disaster of the eruption destroying Atlantis has destroyed the civilizations supported by bicameralism. Neighbour has to invade neighbour. Migrations go into Ionia and further south. Coastal lands of the Levant are invaded by land and sea from Eastern Europe, of whom the Old Testament Philistines are a part. Cruel Assyrians take over - and do not have the bicameral system. Jaynes in 1230 BC has Tukulti-Ninurta I, tyrant of Assyria, had a stone altar dramatically different, for he kneels in supplication before his god - who is represented by an empty throne. The god has gone, the bicameral tradition has broken down; Tukulti is Nimrod in the old testament and King Ninos in Greek Myths. Nimrod had contact with some of the descendants of Noah's sons and in the bible, Nimrod or Nimrod's father was the first mighty man after the great flood. Modern scholars feel the Iliad was transmitted in the oral tradition by Greek bards by about 1230 BC, when contemporary Hittite tablets allow inferences to be made about cross-correspondences; references about human reactivity in the oral-written down Iliad include thumos, which is strength of the raw vital forces of the body, more so the raw, adrenalin-pumped reaction to an emergency, later becoming soul or conscious mind; psyche is life substances, later emotional soul; phrenos is gut feeling, stomach and intestines; noos, nous, based on the word, "to see", a latecomer, meaning conscious mind; phrenes are lungs (containers); Kardie, later kardia, the cardiac system; etor is gastro-intestinal system, further refined from thumos and phrenes.

For major new work in Egyptian and Hebrew chronology, history and mythology, see Charles Pope's work at: http://www.dnafoundation.com/cpope/
And matters related also on Akhenaten at:
http://http://members.aol.com/ankhemmaat/moses.htm/
Also: http://members.aol.com/ankhemmaat/exodus.htm/

1250BC, circa, possible Route of Exodus, cross bitter lakes, near present day Suez Canal, parallel the eastern coast of gulf of Suez, to the turquoise mines at Serabit-el-Khadem, inland to Mt Sinai, at Gebel Musa, Jebel Musa is where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments, but one of up to five possible sites for Mt Sinai, and so Exodus routes have to wend around one's choice of a Mt Sinai, (Ian Wilson on Exodus) But this route has some problems re the wanderings. Manna from heaven is a honey-like deposit from the tamarisk shrub, an adult could gather four pounds in a single morning. (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1250BC-1550BC, Suggestions that Ramesses II as Pharaoh of oppression or Exodus. (Bacon, Atlas). Josephus the Jewish historian died about 100AD, dated the Egyptian revolt against Hyksos at 1550BC, with the Exodus at this date, but this book deems Josephus' view unlikely. (Bacon, Atlas).

1250BC poste Philistines settled at Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, in one small strip. (Bacon, Atlas).

1250BC-1240BC: Trojan War date. (Mellersh)

1260BC and earlier: The mother of Moses is Jochebed, which Feather says is an Egyptian name. Feather calls Aaron the "biblical brother" of Moses, not a blood or half-blood brother. Moses in Feather's view became heavily influenced by Akhenaten's monotheistic views. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1260BC: M. Wood tends to date the fall of Troy about 1260BC, which fits with some Hittite letters chronology, and in reign of Hattusilis III, when Hittite relations with kingdom of Ahhiyawa (Greeks) were becoming hostile. Idea that beacon fires were lit to send news of the fall of Troy all across the Aegean to Mycenae. Some Greeks were being predatory in the north-east Aegean, and Homer said Agamemnon attacked Lemnos. and perhaps Achilles was campaigning south of the Troad of Troy. The Troy the Greeks of Homer took was Troy VI of a phase of life 1375BC to 1250BC. Island of Lesbos is close. Lesbos was sacked around 1250BC, Homer suggests by Achilles. Lesbos god figure was Bronze-Age god, Smintheus, a powerful inflictor and averter of plague: the Greeks at Troy had prayed to him for relief. [Later, Alexander the Great wanted to see Troy, and carried a copy of Homer with him and kept it under his pillow... ). We don't seem to know what happened to Helen! Why not? Because she is a symbol only and is not important as an individual. Roman anti-Christian emperor Julian went to Troy when Christians were there and found offerings still made at the temple to Athena. and the tomb of Achilles was intact. The Christian bishop was permitting this! Legends arose that the fugitives from Troy went to Gaul, or France, some Goths claimed descent from a Trojan who went to Italy, a Welsh tale re founder of Britain a fugitive from Troy. London is allegedly founded as a new Troy.

1275BC is the "late date" for Exodus, and this makes the conquest of Canaan about 1235BC. Evidence here re destruction of Canaanite cities, but the Pharaohs of Egypt in Ramesses time used the names of the Hyksos kings of Egypt, 1730BC to 1570BC. Re late date for Exodus, in Egypt's 19th Dynasty, which began in 1318BC, times of Ramesses II, which was 1304BC to 1238BC, Hebrew slaves built his store cities of Pithom and Ramesses. Ramesses II mentions slave labour of the Apiru. manna from heaven is a honey-like deposit from the tamarisk shrub, an adult could gather four pounds in a single morning, (Ian Wilson on Exodus, Packer); one exodus route is right down the east coast of West Arabia, across desert looping around Kadesh and Zin, through Moab, Edom and Moab were petty kingdoms that forced Moses to circle east of them, and they were not settled by 1440BC, Britannica plus, the destruction of the cities the Hebrews claimed to have captured occurred about 1250BC, not 1440BC. Britannica and then Hebrews to Jericho past Mt Nebo. Exodus route is south to Jabel Musa, Mt Sinai, (Horeb), a granite range at the southern tip of Sinai Peninsula. There is a trade route from top of Gulf of Suez west to Ezion etc at north of gulf of Aqaba, to the north of which is the wilderness of Parsan. The Egyptians had a portable god-house (an ark), carried with an army. (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1276-1275BC: God orders Moses and his brother Aaron to lead the Israelites out of slavery. The two brothers confront Pharaoh in 1275BC, but he does not relent until ten plagues have afflicted Egypt: The Red-Reed Sea parts in 1275BC for the Exodus. By Robinson's dates, the escaping Hebrews are at Mr Sinai three months after their escape, and he notes that views differ on how long the Hebrews were in Egypt, for 430 years, 215 years, 120-180 years? In 1275 is made the Golden Calf, the Tabernacle, the Ark of Covenant which holds the Ten Commandments. In 1274BC the Israelites leave the Mt Sinai area, in 1274 Aaron and Miriam challenge Moses' authority, in 1273 the Hebrews came to Kadesh-barnea, south of Canaan. in 1272 the Israelites make a futile attack on Canaan without Moses and lose. In 1270, Korah revolts against Moses' leadership but is beaten. In 1265 Aaron is confirmed as chief priest. In 1255-1240BC the people move to south of the Dead Sea area, but in 1240 return to Kadesh-barnea region. In 1240 dies Moses' sister, Miriam, prophetess, aged about 128. In 1235 dies Aaron aged 123 and his son Eleazar becomes chief priest. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1279BC: Ramesses II, 1279BC to 1212BC, son of Seti I (Seti I) and in 1274BC beat the Assyrians at Kadesh in Syria. Some writers consider him the Pharaoh of Exodus.

1280BC: McNeill dates Egypt's problems with the Sea Peoples from 1280BC. They are "militant wanderers of mixed origins", from north and west with iron weapons. (From McNeill, p. 134.)

Ramesses II, 1289BC and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell)

1280BC, The Encyclopaedia of Judaism (same editor as the Encyclopaedia Judaica), gives Merneptah as 1224BC-1204BC as Pharaoh of Exodus. Israelites had been slaves for 430 years. Plumbs for Exodus as 1280BC.

Ramesses II, 1289BC and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell).

1304BC-1237BC: Another date for reign of Ramesses II. Formidable bowmen and war chariots used by Ramesses II at famous battle of Kadesh of about 1285BC when Ramesses II defeated the Hittites. Ramesses II became king as a teenager and reigned for 67 years; in his fifth regnal year, about 1299BC, he walked into the trap or ambush at Kadesh on the Orontes River, in Hittite country, and it is probable that only a few years later Moses confronted Ramesses II with his demand, "Let my people go". Plagues in a year of very high flooding of the Nile, unusually heavy rains in the southern Nile, the Nile filled with blood-red algae, and later the plagues of frogs, gnats, etc.

1280BC: Hittites, north and central Syria, incl Lebanon, were vassals of Hittites, treaty between Ramesses II and Hattusilis III in 1280BC, treaty ended strife but Hittites retained control, only to be later blasted by the Sea Peoples.

1285BC: Packer's date for the battle of Kadesh on the Orontes.

Ramesses II 1289BC: and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell).

1289BC: Egypt: Ramesses II 1289BC and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell; Bacon, Atlas).

Ramesses II: 1289BC:and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell).

1289BC: Ramesses II, 1289BC and Merneptah in 1224BC. (Tapsell).

1290BC: Ramesses II becomes Pharaoh, and builds Pi-Ramesses. (Mellersh).

1290BC: The late date for Exodus. Ramesses I is 1293BC to 1291BC, army general who defeated the Hittites, conquered cities in Palestine. Pharaoh of the oppression possibly Seti I, in 1291-1279BC, or Ramesses II.

1290BC-1224BC: Ramesses II rules in Egypt.

1290BC: Ramesses II becomes Pharaoh, and builds Pi-Ramesses - (Mellersh). Britannica feels Exodus about 1290BC, but this conflicts with archaeological evidence.
If we assume that Joseph went into Egypt in about 1850BC-1800BC by Bimson's dating. (Ian Wilson on Exodus), or 1650BC and Jews enslaved for 430 years after that, then enslavement ceased about 1420BC, 1395BC or 1220BC?

1290BC: Moses (a late date for Exodus), about 1290BC in reign of Ramesses II so the oppression began in 1350BC and the invasion of Canaan about 1230BC. Britannica - Moses went to Midian, in northern part of Hijaz.
Kadesh on the Orontes battle, Ramesses II led an army of 18,000 against the Hittites, 4 week march to fortified town of Kadesh on the Orontes River, now Tel Neby Mend, today the River Asi, north of Beirut and 400 miles from Egyptian border. a key position on north/south routes. The Hittites king was Muwatallish, who retreated to Aleppo in fear, So Ramesses camped at Kadesh minus two of his divisions, still on the way, the Hittites struck and knocked out two divisions Ramesses personally led with his chariot, till his other two divisions appeared, against the hosts of the Khatti and some troops from Ugarit, and Kadesh, and Muwatallish mysteriously failed to use 8000 spearmen he had, severed hands of the slain presented to Ramesses, who did not take Kadesh but returned home. on the 28 Nov of the 21 year of Ramesses II reign, Hittite envoys came to make a treaty, first known case of an international agreement. Cyril Aldred writes that in Tuthmosis III's time a dangerous confederation of Asiatic princes under king of Kadesh on the Orontes was initiated by the Mitanni, to throw off Egypt and invade her. Battle of Megiddo, or, Armageddon, on field of Esdraelon (in Palestine). Asiatics were cooped up for several months and then routed. Tuthmosis III captured 1000 towns of the northern federation. Ten years later Tuthmosis transported prefabricated boats on ox-wagons to Euphrates, crossed, and fought the Mitanni.

1290BC: (This would be a late date for the Exodus period): Sherden Sea People are bothering Egypt and Ramesses II in the Nile delta, situation not safe until 1278BC when warriors of the great green sea been vanquished. (M. Wood)... and in 1274BC, Ramesses employed Sherden auxiliaries when he fought the Hittites at Kadesh in 1274. Hittites had diplomacy with the Myceneaens; Sea People included the Lukka, traditional pirates from the Anatolian coast opposite Rhodes, who went to Cyprus, then to Phoenicia, then to North Africa. Sea here meant the east Mediterranean. Probably the Aegean Sea peoples. Tursha might have been Lydians who later went to Italy.
Encyclopedia Britannica feels Exodus was about 1290BC, which would make the oppressive Pharaoh as Seti I, (1318-1304BC) and of the Exodus, Ramesses II, (1304-1237BC)

1290BC-1224BC: (Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible), re Ramesses II, dates for his reign, Asiatic lands lost by Akhenaten, Ramesses II founded the delta royal residence city Per-Ramses, the biblical store city of Ramses, the traditional pharaoh of the oppression, worked on the temple at Karnak, Hittites had dominated north Syria, the Sea Peoples were moving, into the East Mediterranean, Greeks, Roman forebears, plus the Sardinians and the Philistines, et al, joined the Hittites against Egypt, then later overran the Hittites, Ramesses II in his fifth year marched north to fight the Hittites plus Anatolians plus Sea people allies in Syria, walked into an ambush at Kadesh on the Orontes, later he campaigned in Palestine at Ashkelon, Eltekeh and at Pithom. Ramesses II succeeded by his son, Merneptah, and in 1200BC a brief interlude when an Asiatic usurper ruled Egypt. The Sea Peoples (probably Philistines) cleaned out the Egyptians and Hittites and permitted Israel to become a nation after they settled in Canaan. and an article mentions the siege of Troy. Egypt had no iron, though has copper mines on Sinai peninsula, so Egypt lost influence when the Bronze Age ended.

1300BC, Perhaps an independent invention of writing in China. (?)

1300BC: to 460BC. Appearance of the Greek Dark Ages. Rise of Dorians in Greece (who were they in racial terms? Presumably, Caucasians.) Then followed by the Ionians. (The Ionians were genetic and cultural descendants of AfroAsiatic Minoans and kept social ideals and rational inquiry alive in the Eastern Aegean.) Also the rise of peoples known as Estruscans, Phoenicians, and in this period the Hebrews take Canaan. Greeks and Phoenicians colonize the Mediterranean and Black Sea. (Drawn from The Architects of the Neolithic Revolution and Bronze Age by Larry West (Texas USA) treating views on the people-movements of the Bronze Age with reference to Blacks out-of-Africa in areas of Europe north of Africa.)

Circa 1300BC: In the capital city of Thebes, Egyptians begin cultivation of opium thebaicum, grown in their famous poppy fields. The opium trade flourishes during the reign of Thutmose IV, Akhenaten and King Tutankhamun. The trade route included the Phoenicians and Minoans who move the profitable item across the Mediterranean Sea into Greece, Carthage, and Europe.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

By 1300BC: Cursive writing is used often in Palestine and Syria. McNeill p. 162 feels the Semitic alphabet developed in Palestine/Syria during Hyksos period, 17309-1580BC.

1300BC: Chariots and horses used in China for human transport.

1300BC: People of Taiwan move to Fiji in the Pacific. Earlier, South-East Asians have gone to Madagascar off the East African coast and to Central and South America. (Levathes, When China Rules The Seas)

1300BC: First name for Urartians, on highland plains around Lake Van, where Euphrates begins. Urartians seem to be descendants of Hurrians in the Nairi lands. Urartians existed by 1000BC, influence extended into Soviet Armenia. Urartians had a cuneiform script. Disappeared by 590BC due to Cimmerians, Scythians and Phrygians.

1300BC, Choga Zambil, near Susa, in Iran, remnants of Elamite city of Dur-Untash, founded 13thC BC. Vast scale but never completed. Several palaces and a ziggurat. Use of glass and glazes.

1300BC, Karasuk culture in South Siberia, change from settled communities to seasonal transhumance. Small curved knives like those in China at An-Yang.

1300BC: Beth Shan, where Saul's body was exposed, in 1300BC an Egyptian fortress.

1300BC: Linear B common in Crete/Greece, a pictographic script.

1300BC: Beth Shan, where Saul's body was exposed, in 1300BC an Egyptian fortress.

About 1300BC: Hittite Sphinx Gate at Alac Huyuk in Anatolia, carved from monoliths, elaborate burials.

About 1300BC: Hittite tablets clearly refer to the Achaeans and their King, Agamemnon; the pattern of Greek places that send ships to Troy corresponds closely to the settled areas discovered by archaeology.

From about 1300BC: Arises during the last century of Hittite rule, notion of the pankush, which Jaynes feels is the whole community of the gods, or, the pantheon, and the choice-decisions indicated by those gods as a pantheon.

About 1300BC or, what if 1250BC? Israelites, Semitic desert nomads, probably moved into the Israel area about 1300BC, but the relevant level at Jericho appears removed. Settled mainly in hills and Canaanites kept to the coast, which they later had to share with the Philistines. Few events in Old Testament can be tied to archaeological discoveries. eg, Nothing arises for the time of David, 1010-955BC.

1300BC: Pharaoh Meneptha of Egypt after a battle cut off the penises of his enemies, bringing home a total of 13,240. (Miles).

1300BC: (Edwards): Egyptians are finding the sea raiders bothersome to well-organised kingdoms, eg, from the records of Pylos, maybe 1000 men on 30 ships. Homer has a character coming to Pylos, and seeing on the sea beach, sacrificing jet-black bulls to the lord of the earth, Poseidon. Palace of King Nestor on Pylos. When Pylos was finally overrun, the King ordered sacrifices, perhaps human, to Zeus and Hera, for Zeus, a man, for Hera, a woman. Palace is burned down though no human remains there, so perhaps no fight for the palace (?). King's treasures probably looted and women and children enslaved. No one ever lived at Pylos again.

1300BC: Rebuilding of Pylos, and the Menelaion between 1300BC and 1250BC, the first destruction of Thebes (Greece or Egypt?), and the greatest period of Mycenaean building 1300-1250BC, a period of great confidence or great defensiveness... Much fortification of many Greek centres. Greek palaces were places of blood, ruled by violent men, prey to internecine struggle, in constant warfare, a militarist and aggressive world. All is built on might and soldier feeling, and money, to feel those soldiers; disintegration if those two pillars fail. Lost was treasure, raw materials, precious metals, women and cattle, as Agamemnon might have sought; greatest praise was to be a "sacker of cities". Agamemnon's society in constant need of slaves, since the top layers of society were so expensive.

Soon after 1300BC, (M. Wood), Mycenaean society under stress, the Mediterranean soon began to see widespread raiding and instability later to engulf it. eg overpopulation, crop failures, drought and famine. In the generation before the Trojan War, the Argive sack of Thebes. Possibly at the time the Hittites took Miletus, one of the greater towns on the Aegean, possibly Greek interests were forced out of western Anatolia. forcing them to look more northward in that area to their interests, for slaves and materials, to Troy. So Agamemnon et al forced to take measures of raiding, A fresco on Thera shows a Mycenaean naval raiding expedition to the Libyan coast. The tradition of Homer suggests Troy as one of many incidents, re into Teuthrania, Mysia, Lemnos, Lesbos, Pedassos, eg, the attack of Thermi on Lesbos fits with tales of Achilles' sack of Lesbos. Troy was the best built and the best defended, and also well-known to the Greeks.

It may be that as with Knossos, Troy was besieged after being damaged by an earthquake, but M. Wood feels Troy is destroyed after a bitter siege, women carried back to Mycenae and Pylos. (M. Wood, p. 243), Re people such as the women flax dressers of Pylon, and idea that Troy was one of many such centres destroyed in that period. Legend has it that on returning from Troy, Agamemnon was killed by a rival kinsman, and other kings faced rebellion or deposition, end of the days of the wanax. Mycenaean hero cults remained at Lakonia and Argolid, offerings were left at tombs, some offerings for Helen and Menelaos; and in Sparta was a cult of Agamemnon. Say Homer composed about 730BC, M. Wood has it that from before 700BC, the people of Lockrians sent their maidens to serve Trojan Athena. Troy had existed about 4000 years. Arose thus as in M. Wood: A lesser hero, Ajax of Lockris, is said to have defiled Athena's altar at Troy during the sack, and to have incurred her lasting enmity. From about 700BC the people of Lockris each year sent some maidens to Athena's temple at Troy, to work and suffer indignities, to expiate the sin of their ancestor. They had shorn hair and bare feet. and as late as the 4th Century BC the Trojans had the right to kill any of these maidens caught being taken by Lockrian guides to Athena's sanctuary. This custom kept up until 100AD - a remarkable statement of belief.

1304BC-1224BC: Jews delivered by Ehud. (Packer). And in 1380BC, Knossos was destroyed for the last time. (Friedrich).

1304-1237BC: Ramesses II rules in Egypt, and fights a long war with Hittites. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

Conflicting dates: In 1352-1348, Pharaoh is Aya, an elderly official. In 1348-1320, the last Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty is Horemheb. a general. In 1320-1200 is the 19th Dynasty of Egypt. In 1320-1318: Ramesses I, a general, succeeds Horemheb. In 131801304BC, Seti I expands Egypt's power to the north to Palestine and areas of Hittite domination. and (Dates from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1306BC-1295BC: Ramesses I, and or Seti I reign in Egypt. 1308BC-1216BC, Ramesses, these Pharaohs permitted appeals to the royal court by slaves, so may have heard Moses' grievances. 1304BC-1238BC, Ramesses II perhaps the Pharaoh of the Exodus, but the Exodus Pharaoh perhaps the one before him, Amenhotep, who ruled from 1410BC to 1377BC? The Princes of Canaan appealed to Amenhotep for help in fighting off invaders called the Habiru. (Packer). But re Ramesses and Pithom the store or garrison cities, these were (re)built by Ramesses II, 1290BC-1224BC as the best dating, Ramesses II and his father Seti I moved capitol from Thebes to the Nile delta, to Pi-Ramesses, Ramesses I reigned for only one year. (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1315BC: Moses kills an Egyptian taskmaster and flees into the Sinai Desert. In 1312 he marries Zipporah, daughter of a priest of Midian who is named Jethro or Reuel. In 1302, Moses and Zipporah have child Gershom. Moses sees burning bush (The Lord) about 1276BC. (Dates from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1321BC: Joshua is born in 1321. By 1320 the Hebrews work on rebuilding fortified cities such as Avaris. (which is sometimes called Ramses). (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1315BC: One book by Egyptologist Aldred has that in Akhenaten's time, king of Kadesh was Etakkama; military crisis at Gezer threatens Egypt in Central Palestine but is dispelled. But the Amurru had passed into Hittite vassalage, and they later raided Amqa in the Beqa valley area of Lebanon, in a violation of treaty, so Egypt captured Kadesh on the Orontes, and fomented a revolt against Hittites in the Nukhash lands further south, but the next year the Hittites drove the Egyptians out of Kadesh and recovered lost territory by siege of Carchemish. Queen of Egypt here is Ankhesenamun, and 50 years later, Ramesses II. This all in the time of King Tutankhamun. Then in 1307BC-1196BC during the Ramessid period, the place known as pi-Ramesses a three-sq-mile purpose-built town, Was the Pharaoh caught in the Red Sea Merneptah (1224-1212BC), the son of Ramesses II, it seems not, Exodus must be before Merneptah? (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1320BC, Cretan/Mycenaean outpost is Miletus, south of Troy on the Turkish coast, large theatre, river Maeander; damaged by a large earthquake.

1322BC-1304BC, Jews delivered by Moab, 18 years. (Packer.)

1321BC: Joshua is born in 1321. By 1320 the Hebrews work on rebuilding fortified cities such as Avaris. (which is sometimes called Ramesses). (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1325AD, In Mexico, Tenochtitlan becomes the capital of the Aztecs. (Date from Hancock/Faiia).

1326BC-1299BC, Reigns in Egypt, Haremhab, with Queen Mutnodjme. Aldred has the eight Ramessides ruling from 1299BC to 1185BC.

1327BC - 1367BC-1327BC: Jews delivered by Othniel. (Packer)

1327BC-1322BC: Five years of Jews apostasy. (Packer)

1330BC: Date for Exodus of Moses from Egypt. (Gardner's date in Genesis of the Grail Kings).

1332BC: Death date for Akhenaten, at about age 30, who is succeeded by Akhenaten's younger brother, Smenkhkara (murdered); who is succeeded by Tutankhamun (an Atenist), who had a child-bride, a daughter of Akhenaten, Ankhesenpaten. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)
There is strong evidence that Tutankhamun was murdered by Ay. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

Tutankhamun's faithful servant a serial killer?: Professor Bob Brier, from Long Island University, New York, who has been researching an old x-ray of Tutankhamun's skull, now thinks that a murderer, perhaps Tutankhamun's leading adviser, Aye, a commoner who had risen to government rank, or someone else of the royal household killed the 20-year-old pharaoh. The murderer also killed Tutankhamun's wife, another royal who seemed destined to succeed Tutankahmen. Aye had conspired, Brier thinks, to marry Ankhesenamen. When Aye died, his wife was Tiy, who did become a queen of Egypt. After the death of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamen took the unusual step of asking the King of the Hittites to send him one of his sons as a husband. The king did so, but the son and his party were ambushed and killed. Meanwhile, a ring found in Cairo in 1931 indicates that Aye and Ankhesenamen had married. She was not heard of again, according to Brier. If Aye had her killed, then he became a serial killer, Brier finds. Reported 21 March 1997.

Who killed Tutankhamun?. His tomb is robbed and desecrated not long after his burial, to be resealed by his treasurer, Maya, who destroys evidence of the location to protect T's afterlife. T's body has been glued into a coffin made for someone else (three coffins nested inside each other). There are also in T's tomb, some 130 walking sticks and two female foetuses, one stillborn (suffered spina bifida and scoliosis - a lateral curvature of the spine), one four months premature. An autopsy is made on T's body in 1925 by Douglas Derry, Professor of Anatomy at Cairo University; Derry cannot establish the cause of death due to damage earlier done due to efforts to extract the body from its coffins, decapitation and removal of limbs from torso. In 1969, the mummy of Tutankhamun is X-rayed by Professor R. G. Harrison of Liverpool University; who finds the sternum and several ribs missing. Harrison notices evidence of a blood clot at base of the skull, plus a small piece of loose bone inside the skull. Had there been a blow to the head? By 2002, much information on Tutankhamun's death has been subject of new investigation by US police researchers, Mike King and Greg Cooper, who suspect that T might have been murdered by any of four suspects who were snatching power; Egyptian army commander Horemheb (has many motives at a time when the Hittites threaten Egypt, is later Pharaoh, is probably guilty), vizier/prime minister Ay (Pharaoh following T, and married T's widow, reinstates the old gods after Akhenaten's monotheistic revolution), treasurer Maya (probably not guilty), or even T's half-sister and his wife, Ankhesenamun (daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti and probably not guilty).
It is also possible (evidence from the tomb of T's police chief?) that T was killed by a conspiracy of priests who were themselves later arrested and tortured. When Harrison's X-rays are re-examined by Dr. Richard Boyer, a pediatric radiologist from the medical examiner's office, Salt Lake City, he finds that T was physically handicapped, his cervical vertebrae were fused together, so he had to turn his entire upper body to turn his head. He also had scoliosis. After T's death, his widow Ankhesenamun had pleaded with the Hittite king to provide her a husband, as she had no one to turn to for help in Egypt, and Ay was pursuing her. A son of the Hittite king is sent to her, but he is intercepted and killed on a border. (In 1931, a ring turns up in Egyptian antique shop bearing the name of Ay and Ankhesenamun.) Later, Ay dies, is buried in T's proper tomb, and is succeeded by Horemheb.
From an article in The Weekend Australian Magazine, 1-2 February, 2003, by Richard Girling.

1331BC-1326: (Aldred), Reigns in Egypt, Pharaoh Ay, priest/soldier, with Queen Tey. Then, 1344BC-1306-1295BC, in Egypt, general Horemheb, untainted by the Aten, precedes the period of Ramesses.

1340BC-1331: (Aldred): Reign in Egypt of Tutankhamun, with Queen Ankhesenamun, defusing the heresies of Akhenaten. Aldred said (his dates seem wrong and he suggests about 1315BC, that when Tutankhamun suddenly and unexpectedly died), Ankhesenamun had no royal blood to marry with, and took the extraordinary step of writing complainingly, even fearfully, to the Hittite Suppilulimas to marry one of his sons and make him next Pharaoh; the suspicious Hittites sent envoys to check on this amazing request, and later when Prince Zennanza was duly sent, he was murdered on his way to Egypt; whereupon Suppilulimas attacked Amqa, drove the Egyptians from it, and brought back prisoners who with the plagues they suffered afflicted the Hittites for many years afterwards.

1342BC-1340BC: (Aldred): Reign in Egypt of Smenkhkare with Queen Meritaten, and Egyptians move war on the African theatre south of the Second Cataract, and under the later Ay, the cult of Amun is reinstated.

Egypt's chief of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, has expressed unhappiness over recent claims that a not-unknown mummy in Egypt is that of the renowned beauty, Queen Nefertiti , wife of Akhenaten and co-ruler with him. Hawass feels the mummy in question is of a man. The new claims have come from a mummification specialist from the UK's University of York, Joann Fletcher. Hawass is general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. The mummy in question is from a well-known tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings at Luxor. Confusion exists over the gender of the mummy, which reveals no evidence of male genitalia, but Hawass says he is sure the mummy is not a woman. He adds, the fact that the ears of the mummy are double-pierced does not mean the body was a woman, and another male mummy beside the disputed mummy also has pierced ears. Mr Hawass says the disputed mummy's hips are also too slim to be those of a woman, whereas Nefertiti had six children. However, the mummy will be x-rayed to see if the person had given birth. Mr Hawass also said Nefertiti died at age 35, but a UK team had reported the disputed mummy to be of a person aged 18-30. (Reported 1 September 2003)

1344BC: About 1344BC (by Aldred's dates), Akhenaten had increased the authority of the Pharaoh at the expense of the priests' rule, and as a result, lawlessness in administration has set in, more so in the army, so corruption, fraudulent taxation collection, arbitrary exactions, requisitions in the name of the king. All this to be reformed later by Tut and Ay. Akhenaten has seen die his wife Nefertiti, his consort, Kiya, Meketaten, and perhaps Meritaten, his daughters, and Tiye. Due to plague in the land. Akhenaten then proceeded with fury to attack the prestige and objects of the god Amun. Akhenaten died in circumstances completely obscure, to be known as "that criminal". His sarcophagus was smashed, his original grave desecrated, but he was reburied in Kiya's coffin, with altered inscriptions, and modifications that made it barely refer to a king, in Tomb No. 55. Originally buried at Amarna?, but finally buried at Thebes.

1347BC-1337BC: Tutankhamun in Egypt. (Tapsell). 1348BC, in Egypt on Tutankhamun's death, priest Ay reigns.

Tomb found of Tutankhamun's wet nurse?

TUTANKHAMUN had a wet nurse, Maya, and French archaeologists think they have found her tomb.

With any luck, further research may help identify Tutankhamun's mother? His father is widely thought to have been Pharaoh Akhenaten. It had not been thought that Tutankhamun had had a wet nurse, but information gleaned from Maya's tomb makes it apparently so.

It is unusual for an Egyptian tomb to be devoted to one woman, but Maya's tomb, which is multi-chambered, dates to 1330BC and was found at Saqqara, an old necropolis for courtiers, officials and royal staff about 20km south of Cairo, used between 1400BC and 1100BC.

A researcher mentioned in reports is: Mr Alain Zivie, research director, National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris.(
Reported 10 December 1997)

Dates 1349BC-1319BC: Dates for usurper Pharaoh Horemheb, a professional soldier beforehand. Post-Akhenaten. (From McNeill)

1349BC: Amenhotep IV comes to power in Egypt. He rebuts the growing power of the traditional priests by making a formerly "secret monotheism" more overt. (Amenhotep IV, son of Amenhotep III and a Mitanni princess, Gilukhepa.) Amenhotep IV, a destroyer of idols, viewed his monotheistic god as "un-imaginable", that is, abstract. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1350BC: First known outbreak of smallpox which Hittite warriors catch from Egyptian prisoners. Biblical story of Fall of Jericho, perhaps due to an earthquake.

About 1350BC: Cape Gelidoniya, between Rhodes and Cyprus, a shipwreck with bronze ingots, tools.

1350BC approx: Followers of Zoroaster?: An area thought to be a homeland for Zoroastrianism is being examined by archaeologists from Sydney University, who were working by 11 September 2001. Followers of Zoroaster were monotheists who venerated fire. The researchers think they have found a fire temple about 2400 years ago, the oldest one to be associated with Zoroastrianism. It is also possible they have found a mausoleum where kings and queens of Chorasmia, south of the Aral Sea, were buried. Another temple may be as old as 1350BC and if so might predate Zoroastrianism. The dates for "suitable first mentions" of Zoroaster are still uncertain, set as early as 1400BC or as late as 700BC-600BC. His teachings were not written down, though his hymns were passed down as oral history. Chorasmia was on the fertile delta of the ancient River Oxus, and was part of the Persian Empire. It was an independent state from about 40BC to 100AD, before invasions and later disappearance. It was mentioned in ancient Greek, Persian and Chinese texts, and rediscovered in the early 1930s by Soviet archaeologist, S. P. Tolstov. A heavily fortified city had been called Kazakl'i-Yatkan. Today the area is part of Uzbekistan. Work has been done in the area since 1995. One researcher involved is Dr. Svend Helms. (Reported Sydney Morning Herald 4 May 2002. See also: www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/archaeology/)

1350BC: Approx: Likely date for Joseph and the descent of Jacob and the Hebrews into Egypt, as the monotheist/Atenist Akhenaten is on the throne. Feather has it that Jacob arrives in Egypt 1380BC-1350BC. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1350BC: Mosaic Law was revealed in about 1350BC (an early date? and this conflicts with history of the Sea People) (Bacon, Atlas). Kadesh-Barnea, in Gen 14:7, or Meribath-Kadesh, waters of strife or spring of Judgement, in Wadi Qudeirat, in the wilderness of Zin/Paran, an ancient sanctuary in Canaan, has a west extremity to the River of Egypt, Wadi el-Arish, three springs, flowing all year is spring Ain el-Qudeirat, old name for Kadesh is En-mishpat, not far from El-Paran, Abraham probably watered here, leaving Kadesh, the Israelites with Moses tried to force their way into the hill country, of the Amorites, beaten back with great slaughter, uncertain how long they remained at Kadesh, and were at Kadesh again just before the death of Aaron, Ezekiel made Kadesh part of the southern border of his Israel. Packer et al have it that at Kadesh, the Jews sent spies into Palestine spies reported the land was fertile but populated with giants, only Caleb and Joshua believed an invasion was worth the risk, so the people turned from Palestine and God wrathful so condemned them to wander for 40 years... they ended their wandering on the plains of Moab, when Moses gave leadership to Joshua. Wilson likes idea that Jericho had been enlarged before Joshua invaded, possibly to accommodate the earlier outflow of Hyksos from Egypt, as many Canaanite towns had been refortified with huge artificial mounds, and presumably once the Hyksos had been thrown out, the Egyptians kept harassing the Canaan area to discipline them and the Mittani and Hittites to north and north east. (Ian Wilson on Exodus). Jericho a relative backwater for anyone invading Canaan from the south, but absolutely necessary from the east, going west. and one could ford the Jordan River there. (Ian Wilson on Exodus) before Joshua's invading action there was some epidemic, a plague, and Armana was also later told of a plague in Canaan, and Aldred notes that Akhenaten's family was afflicted by plague. Twenty years later this same plague reached the Hittites, says Wilson.

At Jericho when Joshua arrived, a plague multiple burials in the Jericho area, but little decomposition, so perhaps some earthquake movements released odd gases that killed bacteria etc and prevented decomposition, (Ian Wilson on Exodus) some quake as also with the damming of the Jordan, collapse of the town walls, and before they left the Israelites burned Jericho, which wasn't very large, 52 metres by 22 metres, (Ian Wilson on Exodus) and otherwise (it has been suggested by G. E. Mendenhall) that the invasion of Canaan was assisted by a "peasants' revolt" against rulers loyal to Egypt. (Egypt had regularly been milking Canaan.) Joshua legendarily had the bones of Joseph, and Joshua buried them at the spot Abraham had bought; it still being the nomadic custom to bury family members in caves. The place, Shechem, was noted to Amarna as friendly to these Habiru. (Ian Wilson on Exodus). In the post-Joshua time, parts of Canaan area were considerably de-urbanised, lack of city walls, and in the hills, cave burials continued, and all this gives 150 years for the period of Judges, not the usual 350 years before the Philistines arrived, (Ian Wilson on Exodus) - so perhaps exodus began at Pithon or Ramesses, cities built perhaps by Ramesses II on east Nile delta, The Theban Kings (Thutmoses, early date) did little building on the Nile delta, so this book goes for the early Exodus date, while enslaved the Hebrews might have worked on building the store cities Pithom and Ramesses were built on the delta near Goshen, the district in which the Hebrews lived. But re Ramesses and Pithom the store or garrison cities, these were (re)built by Ramesses II, 1290BC-1224BC as the best dating, Ramesses II and his father Seti I moved capitol from Thebes to the Nile delta, to Pi-Ramesses, Ramesses I reigned for only one year. (Ian Wilson on Exodus). Moses crossed at the Sea of Reeds many later episodes in wilderness near Kadesh-barnea, an oasis s/w of the Dead Sea. An early date for exodus say 1290-1224 with Ramesses II might assume the six "Leah tribes" were not involved in the Exodus and were later accepted/recruited into Israel in Moses view of Israel. (Salibi). Mt Sinai roughly on border of Asir and Yemen. (Now follows from Charles, Pseudepigrapha), Moses is with God on Mt Sinai, a cloud overshadowed the mount for six days. Moses there 40 days and 40 nights, God tells Moses many things, some of the original angels of creation appear to be the forces of nature, eg seasons, cold and heat, see Genesis as usual. El means "God", El Shaddai means God of the Mountain, or, Almighty God, and the Phoenicians had a god, El Shaddai, the thunderer; a supreme God would be Elohim, or the Almighty, a title containing a plural, Jehovah means The Lord, Yahweh means He Who Creates (... Brings Into Being).

1350BC: Mosaic Law was revealed in about 1350BC (an early date? and this conflicts with history of the Sea People). (Bacon, Atlas).

1351BC-1348BC: In Egypt, Smenkhare. (Tapsell).

1355BC: It is possible Akhenaten puts his wife Nefertiti away in disgrace (?). (Mellersh)

1356BC: Pharaoh orders death of all Hebrew male children. In 1355 is born Moses to Amram and Jochobed of tribe of Levi. He is first protected by his own sister Miriam and later by a an Egyptian princess who adopts him. Some think that this princess was the later Hatshepsut. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1357BC-1346BC: Egypt King Tutankhamun, (pleasant is the life of the Amun); he is aged between 10-18 and undoes the damage done by the "heretic criminal", Akhenaten who had tried to simplify the polytheism of the Egyptians.

1358BC-1340BC: (Aldred): Amenophis IV, later Akhenaten, reigns in Egypt, the heretic king, Queen Nefertiti. Akhenaten co-ruled for 12 years with Amenophis III. ie, Amenophis dies about 1346BC. Two years later, Nefertiti died, in 1344BC. and then, how did the newly arriving Israelites continue to avoid the armies of Tuthmosis III and his son, Amenhopis II, who also was warlike, and it happens that the Israelites prevailed while the unwarlike Akhenaten (1353BC-1335BC) was preoccupied with heresies, and Armarna. (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1360BC-1357: Reign in Egypt of Smenkare, related to Akhenaten. Amenhotep IV in Egypt became Akhenaten the heretic hated by the priests, who died in 1366 BC. See King Tutankhamun who reinstalled the old religion.

1360BC: Approx: Time of Akhenaten, or Amenhotep IV; at Ugarit the king is Niqmad II, who shifted loyalty from Egypt to Hittite king, Shuppiluliuma, Niqmad was 1336Bc to 1265BC, and he sided with Hittites at Battle of Kadesh in 1285BC. stalemate and then a treaty with that battle. (Packer.) Site is Kadesh on the Orontes, a town south of the lake of Hums, another date is 1288BC, modern Tell Nebi Mend. When Hittites defeated Ramesses I, at Kadesh in 1286 BC, the greatest chariot battle of antiquity, the Hittites had 17,000 foot soldiers and 3500 chariots. (Edwards).

1362BCE: Egypt: End of Akhenaten's 17-year reign (conventional dating).

1362BC-1349BC: McNeill's dates for reign of Tutankhamun.

1363BC: Amenhopis IV changes his name to Akhenaten, in 1360BC he neglects his empire and refuses to help his governors in Syria and Palestine. (Mellersh).

1366BC to 1357BC: Pharaoh Tutankhamun.

1367BC-1327BC: Jews delivered by Othniel. (Packer).

1368BC: Birth of Miriam, older sister of Moses and in 1358 is born Aaron, older brother of Moses. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1374BC-1358BC: Reign of Akhenaten/Amenhopis IV, married to Nefertiti. Liaison also with a secondary (diplomatic?) queen, Kiya. Akhenaten established a new seat of government for upper Egypt, city called Akhetaten, etc., at Amarna on virgin ground, in his fifth regnal year, which by Aldred's dating would be 1353BC.

1375BC to 1367BC: Jews oppressed in Egypt. (Packer)

1375BC: Sigmund Freud was mistaken when he dated Moses at about 1375BC. Robert Feather dates Moses at about 1200BC. Both Feather and Freud agree that Moses however did encounter the monotheistic views of Akhenaten. (See Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism. Hogarth Press, 1951. Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1379BC: In Egypt, 1379BC to 1362BC, reign of the heretic Akhenaten sun's disk the Aten, as chief god. Moved from Thebes (modern Luxor - and there were temples to Amun at Karnak and Luxor) to new city, Amun; his half-brother was Tutankhamun, who returned to Thebes and restored Amun as chief God. Amun an obscure god originally, by the 11 Dynasty had become established at Thebes and rose as chief of Egyptian pantheon. Only challenged once, by Akhenaten. Thebes, Mother of Tut was Queen Tiye, her parents were Yuya and Thuya, their intact burial; Tutankhamun's tomb, he a boy king of Egypt, possibly half-brother of Akhenaten, his half-brother, Smenkhare, and Tut had to leave the new capital of Ahketaten and return to Thebes, where he allowed the worship of Amun-Re reinstated. He was a pawn for the Pharaonic priesthood. Tut's wife was Ankhesenamun. In about this time, the temple at Karnak had 60 acres, 81,000 slaves, 420,000 head of cattle, 690 acres, 83 ships, 46 temples and 65 cities and towns. secular power of the priests.

About 1380BC: The native kings of Assyria throw off the overlordship of the Mittani and destroy the Mittani empire by about 1270BC. Thus the Assyrians came to rival the Hittites and the Egyptians. (From McNeill).

1380BC: Official Egyptian diplomacy to Mycenae. Re links with "great Kings". (From M. Wood)

1380BC-1375BC: Five years of Jews apostasy. (Packer)

1380BC-1290BC: Pharaoh Seti I apparently mentioned a system of fortifications from Zilu/Qantaral to Raphia in south of Palestine. He regained provinces lost in Palestine, eg Tyre, Phoenician coast, part of Lebanon.

1384BC-1346BC: (Aldred): Amenophis III reigns in Egypt, Queen Tiye.

1385BC: One date given for - Akhenaten attempts to establish monotheism in Egypt with the worship of Anton, the sun disc.

1386BC: Tuthmosis IV's reign ends, from 1419BC to 1386BC, son of Amenhotep II, sealed matters with the Syrian kingdom of Mittani by marrying a Mittani woman.

1394BC-1384BC: (Aldred): Tuthmosis IV reigns in Egypt, Queen Mutemwiya. Tuthmosis IV made efforts to uncover the giant image of the god Re-Herakhte, the god of Lower Egypt, from the sands that engulfed his great Sphinx at Giza. Re the first king to rule Egypt, had wearied of dealing with humans and left his son the Pharaoh to rule on earth in his place.

Jerusalem circa 1400BC

From Science News
Oldest Written Document Ever Found in Jerusalem Discovered
From Science Daily (12 July, 2010 via GeneaNet Newsletter some days later)
A tiny clay fragment -- dating from the 14th century B.C.E. -- that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem's Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say.

The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower dating from the period of King Solomon in the Ophel area, located between the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem and the City of David to its south. Details of the discovery appear in the current issue of the Israel Exploration Journal.

Excavations in the Ophel have been conducted by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Funding for the project has been provided by Daniel Mintz and Meredith Berkman of New York, who also have provided funds for completion of the excavations and opening of the site to the public by the Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Company for the Development of East Jerusalem. The sifting work was led by Dr.Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Zweig at the Emek Zurim wet-sieving facility site.

The fragment that has been found is 2x2.8 centimeters in size and one centimeter thick. Dated to the 14th century B.C.E., it appears to have been part of a tablet and contains cuneiform symbols in ancient Akkadian (the lingua franca of that era). The words the symbols form are not significant in themselves, but what is significant is that the script is of a very high level, testifying to the fact that it was written by a highly skilled scribe that in all likelihood prepared tablets for the royal household of the time, said Prof. Wayne Horowitz , a scholar of Assyriology at the Hebrew University Institute of Archaeology. Horowitz deciphered the script along with his former graduate student Dr. Takayoshi Oshima, now of the University of Leipzig, Germany.

Tablets with diplomatic messages were routinely exchanged between kings in the ancient Near East, Horowitz said, and there is a great likelihood, because of its fine script and the fact it was discovered adjacent to in the acropolis area of the ancient city, that the fragment was part of such a "royal missive." Horowitz has interpreted the symbols on the fragment to include the words "you," "you were," "later," "to do" and "them."

The most ancient known written record previously found in Jerusalem was the tablet found in the Shiloah water tunnel in the City of David area during the 8th century B.C.E. reign of King Hezekiah. That tablet, celebrating the completion of the tunnel, is in a museum in Istanbul. This latest find predates the Hezekiah tablet by about 600 years.

The fragment found at the Ophel is believed to be contemporary with the some 380 tablets discovered in the 19th century at Amarna in Egypt in the archives of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who lived in the 14th century B.C.E. The archives include tablets sent to Akhenaten by the kings who were subservient to him in Canaan and Syria and include details about the complex relationships between them, covering many facets of governance and society. Among these tablets are six that are addressed from Abdi-Heba, the Canaanite ruler of Jerusalem. The tablet fragment in Jerusalem is most likely part of a message that would have been sent from the king of Jerusalem, possibly Abdi-Heba, back to Egypt, said Mazar.

Examination of the material of the fragment by Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, shows that it is from the soil of the Jerusalem area and not similar to materials from other areas, further testifying to the likelihood that it was part of a tablet from a royal archive in Jerusalem containing copies of tablets sent by the king of Jerusalem to Pharaoh Akhenaten in Egypt.

Mazar says this new discovery, providing solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age (the second half of the second century B.C.E.), acts as a counterpoint to some who have used the lack of substantial archeological findings from that period until now to argue that Jerusalem was not a major center during that period. It also lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E., she said.

1400BCm, Destruction of palaces on Crete, and Mycaeneans appear to take over Crete.

1400BC: Control is kept in Aegean by fleet of the Cretans, but this power waned from 1400BC.

From about 1400BC: Ways of smelting iron ores known in northeastern Anatolia, but the arts "remained secret and local" for a period. (From McNeill).

1400BC: Encyclopedia Britannica says early date of Exodus based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon building his temple, which would make Exodus about 1440BC in the time of Tuthmosis III eg when petty kingdoms Moab and Edom are not yet settled and the destruction of the cities the Jews claimed to have captured occurred about 1250BC, not 1400BC.

1400BC: More destruction on Crete by a further eruption on Thera, possible local earthquake. (Mellersh). Crete and Thera are only 75 miles apart. Possible revolt also against Mycenaean rule. There is however much debate on dates given for the explosion on Thera. C20th thinkers accepted a date of about 1500BC, But new date has suggested dates of 1627BC or 1600BC might be more appropriate. Greenland ice cores have identified a major volcanic expolosiion, somewhere, about 1644BC; maybe not Thera but somewhere in Alaska. Tree-ring dating has suggested a Theran date for 1627-1628BC. Radiocarbon dating tends to suggest 1600BC. Scholars still argue about the synchronicity of dates for relevant phenomena found anywhere from Greenland to China (1618BC?) to Egypt to mainland Greece to Thera/Santorini itself.

1400BC: The Cambridge History of The Bible. Tell-el-Amarna letters: about 200 letters from Canaanite scribes to Egypt, dated about 1400BC.

1400BC, More destruction on Crete by a further eruption on Thera, possible local earthquake. (Mellersh). Crete and Thera only 75 miles apart. (Mellersh). Possible revolt also against Mycenaean rule.

1400BC: One date for Joshua conquering Canaan. Joshua dies in 1380BC. (Packer). But, how did the newly-arriving Israelites continue to avoid the armies of Tuthmosis III and his son, Amenhopis II, who also was warlike? And it happens that the Israelites prevailed while the unwarlike Akhenaten (1353BC-1335BC) was preoccupied with heresies, and Armarna. Ian Wilson on Exodus then Akhenaten (1353BC-1335BC) or 1350BC, Ian Wilson on Exodus after Akhenaten, oppression of Jews about 1280BC, Conquest about Merneptah's time as Pharaoh. using date re Solomon's temple gives us Exodus at about 1450BC, time of Tuthmosis III, of 1479BC-1425BC.

1400BC: Trade on Cyprus, settled millennia before, much better by contact with the Myceneaens. Suffered sorely from Greek Dark Ages.

1400BC: About now, Crete is destroyed and the palace civilisation destroyed. possibly by an earthquake or tidal wave from the eruption of Thera. But Crete remains an important trading centre. Thera, Cycladic Island, volcanic island, Bronze Age town destroyed by volcanic action which also caused the destruction of Minoan sites in Crete about 1400BC. (Another competing date supported by scientific evidence is 1627BC.)

1400BC: Water clock: Found in 1905. Is in use in Egypt at Temple of Karnak. Used to tell the time at night. The water clock (clepsydra), was probably invented by 1500BC by an Egyptian court official, Amenemhet. Water clocks were used in China by 600BC. In Athens by 350BC.

1400BC: Glass in Mesopotamia, eg glass imitations of lapis lazuli. Glass used in Egypt, where it passes to Bronze Age Crete.

1400BC: Egypt uses mercenary troops in Canaan to enforce taxation - the result is extortion and bribery. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1400BC: Approx: Crete is first inhabited by Greek speakers. Crete is 200 miles from African coast, 160 miles long, has The White Mountains up to 8000 fee high, part of a chain running east through Karpathos and Rhodes to s/w Anatolia. Mount Dicti is supposed to be home of Zeus, also the cult of Dionysius had some ritual sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. King Minos a noted lawgiver, recalled in Hades, said to be the first person to establish a navy, with his own sons as governors of colonies. Legend of Minos and the Minotaur, and the labyrinth where Theseus with the aid of Ariadne's thread survived. Symbol tied with the Minotaur, of the double axe, and double axe on coins. Labyrinth means "double axe", not a series of caves. Idea that the myths of Homer were recollections of a non-Greek Minoan-Mycenaean culture, but anyway, Greeks came to Crete about 1400BC. (M. Wood.)

1402BC-1364BC: In Egypt, reign of Amenhopis III.

1402BC: Amenhotep III in 1402BC. Amenhotep IV or Akhenaten was 1364BC-1347BC. (Tapsell).

1406BC: Jews conquer Canaan, by about now, or ready to enter there. (Packer).

1410BC to 1377BC: Possibly the Pharaoh of the Exodus, Amenhotep, who ruled from 1410BC to 1377BC? The Princes of Canaan appealed to Amenhotep for help in fighting off invaders called the Habiru. (Packer).

Tuthmosis IV in 1412BC. (Tapsell).

1412BC: In Egypt, Tuthmosis IV. Tuthmosis IV permitted some attention to the Aten as a god.

1412BC: Amenhotep II, 1412BC to 1375BC in Egypt.

1413BC: Prince Tuthmosis is promised he will be king (as Tuthmosis IV) if he frees sand from the Great Sphinx at Giza. (Mellersh).

1417BC: Amenophis III, king of Egypt, 1417-1379BC, Egypt is at her most powerful and wealthy. The father of Akhenaten. Queen Tiye is mother of Akhenaten.

1420BC: Dr John Bimson has dated Joseph's time in Egypt about the time of Sesostris III, 1878BC-1841BC, who had erratic flooding of the Nile, possibly Joseph was an administrator at Avaris/Pi-Ramesses, and so then the Israelites would have been on the delta for 430 years, so that (Exodus 12:40) would be about to 1420BC. (Ian Wilson on Exodus).

1420BC: The Myceneaens overrun the Minoans at Crete, and occupy Knossos, and Minoan trade replaced in the Cyclades by the Myceneaen, Greek not Minoan settlers now on Rhodes.

1427BC-1393BC: (Aldred): Amenophis II reigns in Egypt, Queen Tia.

1433BC-1393BC: Exodus of Moses from Egypt. (Date in Alford, Gods of the New Millennium, p. 363).

1436BC: Amenhopis II becomes ruler of Egypt. (Mellersh).

About 1452BC, Tuthmosis III appoints his 18-year-old son Amenhotep II (1450BC-1425BC) as co-regent. About 1450BC, Amenhotep goes to Kadesh in Syria where the Mitanni threaten Egypt's interests, in about 1441BC, Ugarit rebels against Egypt so Amenhotep cleans it out - including Kadesh (again?). Takes a vast number of prisoners, (Britannica) some say 89,600 but Britannica thinks this is a census figure, not a deportation. (But what if about 70,000 Israelites as departing slaves had to be replaced?)

1438BC: Amenhotep II reigned 1438BC-1412BC. (Tapsell).

1436BC: Amenhopis II becomes ruler of Egypt. (Mellersh).

1438BC: Amenhopis II in Egypt. Amenhotep II was 1438BC-1412BC. (Tapsell).

1433BC-1393BC: Approx: Date for the Exodus of Moses from Egypt. (Alford, Gods of the New Millennium, p. 363).

1440BC: Britannica says early date of Exodus is based on 480 years elapsing from Exodus to Solomon building his temple, which would make Exodus about 1440BC time of Tuthmosis III eg petty kingdoms Moab and Edom were not yet settled and the destruction of the cities the Jews claimed to have captured occurred about 1250BC, not 1400BC.

1446BC: An early date would make Moses at age 80 confronting Pharaoh in 1446BC. 1446BC (the "early date" - Exodus of Jews begins from Egypt. (Packer). ie, in time of Tuthmosis III. Joseph in Egypt about 1876BC plus 430 years of slavery gives us about for Moses being 80 in 1446 at the time of the Exodus. so the problem of the dating of Moses begins with Joseph. Packer et al, Christian fundamentalists, date Moses from 1526BC to 1406BC, with date of the Exodus at 1446BC or in time of Tuthmosis III, plus Hatshepsut?

The following on Hatshepsut arrives in March 2001 from Lee Trudick in the US:
With regard to the Exodus date, Edgar Cayce mentions in a reading that Hatshepsut was the princess who raised Moses as her son. During the latter part of her reign Moses had to escape because he killed an Egyptian who had "raped Moses' sister", a daughter of Hatshepsut.. This brought disruption and a new pharaoh, according to Cayce.
But if a pharaoh was really drowned in the Red Sea, he couldn't have been Thutmosis III, since this pharaoh reigned for some time after Hatshepsut disappeared. I would suspect she was killed by the priests.
According to Cayce, Egypt was divided in two because of the murder. If the Amalekites, who Moses et al passed on the way out of Egypt, really moved into northern Egypt, then Thutmosis must have reigned over only part of Egypt, the south; he apparently eventually recaptured the delta area from the Amalekites. It could have been then that the statues etc. of Hatshepsut were obliterated.
Probably the eruption of Thera helped the Exodus, and probably helped the Amalekites take over the Delta. There apparently was devastation everywhere.
See: Edgar Cayce's Story of the Old Testament - Robert W. Krajenke
It would be interesting to get further feed-back from someone regarding Hatshepsut. Cayce said her daughter, Sidiptu, was promised to "one of the leaders of the house of Israel, in the house of Levi", before the rape. With regard to Hatshepsut, was the man who was responsible for the beautiful buildings erected by Hatshepsut (Was his name Senemut?) also a Hebrew and also Hatshepsut's lover?
Cayce says, "During the reign of the mother, the entity (Sidiptu) was associated with those people (Hebrews) later despised on account of the love (Physical) that the mother found in association with a peoples (Hebrews)". Cayce also says the murder brought "a new pharaoh to the ruling of the peoples; this one coming then from the mountain or southern land of an almost divided land over this incident..."
The Amalekites had a nasty reputation. Not only did they treat the Egyptians badly but they worshipped Set. So I can see why Thutmosis may have seen Hatshepsut as a traitor and may have blamed all of Egypt's misfortunes on her, thus the obliteration of her statues later in his reign when he had finally defeated the Amalekites. But this is only speculation.
According to Cayce, Hatshepsut was a very wise lady. If Thutmosis was busy on one of his campaigns, he may have sent someone else to act as pharaoh; again speculation. (I see I have a date in the margin of my copy of the Krajenke book for the Exodus, 1482BC.
Geologically speaking, the eruption of Thera would have caused problems for quite a while; years, in fact. It's easy to see how written history could have come to a stand-still for a long time.
Lee Trudick

Exodus file: David Rohl in his book A Test of Time (Century, 1995) postulates wild divergences in the conventionally-accepted dates of Egyptian dynasties from the Second Millennium BC onwards. He suggests that some dates are up to 200-300 years out of phase. Historians give his views little support. Rohl gives a date of about 1450BC for the Exodus. (Cited in Robert Feather, Copper Scroll Decoded)

1450BC: Approx, Byblos destroyed prior to entry of Hyksos into Egypt. Also, catastrophe at Crete. (Alford, Gods of the New Millennium, pp. 359-360).

About 1450BC: Erection in Egypt of what later in London (by 1877) becomes Cleopatra's Needle, as a timekeeping device.

1450BC: Thera blows up. (Mellersh). But the second collapse of the Minoan palaces is in 1450BC, and only Knossos on Crete survived that catastrophe. (Friedrich.) Mainland Greeks came to Knossos about 1450BC, (Friedrich).

1450BC: Approx: Amenhotep II, son of Thutmose III, approx. 1450BC to 1419BC.

1450BC: Scenes in Hatshepsut's funerary temple depict much shipping and trade over Mediterranean. Hatshepsut "greedy for gold". (Mellersh). An early date here would make Moses at age 80 confronting Pharaoh in 1446BC.

1450BC-1250BC: One possible Exodus route given as Goshen, Wilderness of Etham, about north of West Arabia, Maka'h, south to Elim, Wilderness of Sin, to Mt Sinai, through Wilderness of Sinai, to Land of Midian top of that gulf, to Wilderness of Paran, Wilderness of Zin, to Kadesh Barnea, south back to the land of Midian, north up to the land of Moab by the Dead Sea, and the Jews could not have had 60,000 Hebrews of fighting age as suggested by Bible. (Bacon, Atlas). Merneptah (reigned 1224BC-1214BC) boasted "Israel lies desolate, its seed is no more.... All the lands in their entirety are at peace, Everyone who was a nomad has been curbed by King Merneptah". (Bacon, Atlas).

1465BC: McNeill, (p. 150) has it that in Egypt the first cities appeared as palace or temple communities, 1465BC-1165BC. Greatest city is Memphis.

1468BC: Tuthmosis III goes to defeat the petty Palestine princes under the Prince of Kadesh (but this is not either of the biblical battles of Megiddo). (Mellersh).

1469BC: Hatshepsut dies, Tuthmosis III comes into his own, and reigns till 1436BC. (Mellersh).
(Hatshepsut, as the product of an incestuous union between a brother and sister, is regarded by some Egyptologists as suffering from birth defects.)

About 1470BC to 1170, dates uncertain, Atlantis is destroyed [Note: suspicion that "Atlantis" is a legend invented in the AD1900s??) Atlantis with Crete made up the Minoan Empire, but a volcano on the island of Thera, or Santorini, 62 miles north of Crete, explodes, huge tidal wave, or tsunami, and the resulting environmental disaster is the shock - perhaps a series of volcanic eruptions - which shakes peoples loose from the bicameralism. (Is it possible? ... for the Chaldeans the god Bel was angered by the crimes of men, so sent a flood of one week, and Noah landed on a mountain top in Armenia. Xisuthros later founded Babylon, and built the tower of Babel, if seeing smoke from various volcanic eruptions might not have been what prompted Noah to hear the voice of a god telling him to build a boat, as a flood would arise - real situation being that too much smoke in the atmosphere would create a climatic variation and heavy, extended rains [after a tidal wave/tsunami], and of course the only animals that Noah took into the ark would have been his own domesticated animals, not various species). Legend has it this shock of the disaster of Atlantis sinking, and the tidal wave, gave rise to the flood legend as the whole of the Mediterranean, including Cyprus, the Nile Delta, the coast of Israel, suffered universal calamity of great magnitude, also dated at between 1180 and 1170 BC.

1450BC-1250BC: Exodus route given as Goshen, Wilderness of Etham, about north of West Arabia, Maka'h, south to Elim, Wilderness of Sin, to Mt Sinai, through Wilderness of Sinai, to Land of Midian top of that gulf, to Wilderness of Paran, Wilderness of Zin, to Kadesh Barnea, south back to the land of Midian, north up to the land of Moab by the Dead Sea, and the Jews could not have had 60,000 Hebrews of fighting age as suggested by Bible. (Bacon, Atlas). Merneptah (reigned 1224BC-1214BC) boasted "Israel lies desolate, its seed is no more.... All the lands in their entirety are at peace, Everyone who was a nomad has been curbed by King Merneptah". (Bacon, Atlas).

1450BC: The Hebrews begin to be forcibly conscripted into hard labour gangs in Egypt (18th Dynasty). (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

Hatshepsut back in the news: From 1453BC: Excited archaeologists in Egypt have re-identified the remains of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, in a find said to rival that of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922. The news of the find was released by Egyptian Culture Minister Farouq Hosni and "antiquities chief" of Egypt, Dr. Zahi Hawass. Dr. Hawass secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, led the search for Hatshepsut, whose remains might - it was not sure - have anyway been kept in the form of a mummy at Cairo Museum. The particular mumy, however, might also have been the remains of Hatshepsut's wet-nurse, Sitre-In. The mummy was originally found in 1903 by British archaeologist Howard Carter (discoverer of Tutankhamun's tomb) in an obscure and undecorated tomb (Tomb 60) in the Valley of the Kings, and has been much overlooked. The identification of the mummy as that of Hatshepsut was made possible with sophisticated new DNA research and 3D modelling techniques. A wooden box known to be associated with Hatshepsut had contained a tooth, which fitted exactly the jaw of the mummy in question. Hatshepsut was about 50 when she died about 1453BC, overweight, with bad teeth, suffering diabetes and bone cancer, after a rule of about 21 years. She is thought to have "stolen" the throne from her stepson, Thutmose III. He took his revenge by obliterating references to her reign, one reason she has remained both fascinating and little-known. The study identifying Hatshepsut was funded by the US Discovery Channel. (The Australian, 28 June 2007)

1480BC: Queen Hatshepsut has scenes painted in her temple funerary giving her a divine origin. (Mellersh)

1480BC: Queen Hatshepsut builds her magnificent temple funerary. (Mellersh).

1469BC: Hatshepsut dies. (Mellersh).

1400BC, More destruction on Crete by a further eruption on Thera, possible local earthquake. (Mellersh) Crete and Thera are only 75 miles apart. Possible revolt also against Mycenaean rule.

About 1480BC: One date for building of The Great Pyramid. Egypt.
Note: Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, is about 146 metres tall, height of a 45-storey skyscraper, with 2.3 million stones on a base of 5.3 hectares, about 230 metres long. Each stone is about 1 cubic metre in volume. A workforce of probably 10,000 worked on the monument. The infrastructure of the site catered for a population of about 20,000. See a 1996 article by Stuart Kirland Weir in Cambridge Archaeological Journal. (According to Dr. Karl S. Kruszelnicki). But as a friend of our says: how come the Egyptians couldn't build a decent bridge?

1480BC: Thutmose III rebuilds Great Temple of Amen-Ra. Egypt.

1488BC: Hatshepsut establishes herself as a Pharaoh. (Mellersh).

1488BC-1469BC, Hatshepsut decides on internal progress, not foreign adventures. Her favourite is Senenmut. (Mellersh).

1469BC: Hatshepsut dies (Mellersh) 1469BC. Then Tuthmosis III comes into his own, and reigns till 1436BC. (Mellersh).

1490BC: Tuthmosis II dies, Tuthmosis III his son is under the thumb of his step-mother, Hatshepsut. (Mellersh)

1500BC: A noted Bronze Age culture is that of the Colchians (1500BC-800BC). Their origin is uknown but they may have had links with Aegeans. Colchis was at the eastern end of the Black Sea, the edge of the known world for Greeks. They differed greatly with their Indo-European neighbours. West thinks the Colchians were tail-enders from earlier out-of-Africa migrations. (Drawn from The Architects of the Neolithic Revolution and Bronze Age by Larry West (Texas USA) treating views on the people-movements of the Bronze Age with reference to Blacks out-of-Africa in areas of Europe north of Africa.)

1500BC: Light-skinned Berber tribesmen occupy Tunisia.

1500BC, Rise of Mayan empire in Central America. In Australia, introduction of the Dog (the dingo), from Indonesia as part of Austronesian Expansion.

1500BC approx: "Old Venice" revealed: Rome: Archaeologists have uncovered an "extraordinary" find, a "Bronze Age Venice" in southern Italy full of canals and huts built on stilts, a settlement wiped out by a flood 3500 years ago. (Reported 23 March 2002)

Circa 1500BC: Greeks colonise Cyprus.

Alphabets, 1500BC: In 1906 Sir William Flinders Petrie discovers an unknown script in the Sinai Desert, "Proto-Sinaitic texts, a possible missing link between the Semitic alphabet of the Levantine people, and Egyptian hieroglyphics. But Semitic efforts go back to 1700BC. The 1500BC specimen was an Egyptianized version from a Sinai copper mine. (James/Thorpe) The maritime Phoenicians using the phonemic principle broke language down into 29 characters, as an accounting device as well as a sound recorder for vowels and consonants. (In Prof Cyrus Gordon's theory) and this all based on the lunar year, of 30-day months. Based then on an ancient lunar calendar. (James/Thorpe). The Gordon theory was followed up by Orientalist Hugh Moran, using a Chinese lunar zodiac, with 28 constellations, devoted to agriculture. This zodiac had been invented by Sumerians and was used in India and Burma, various parts of Asia.

1500BC: Use in China of sound-pictures as a form of writing in China.

1500BC: Inland China gives rise to the Shang, the first historic "Chinese" kingdom, of the Central Yellow River Valley. (Levathes, When China Rules The Seas)

1500BC: 1902: Discovery of a bog at Trundholm, Denmark, an elaborate sculpture of a wagon-of-the-sun, circa 1500BC, decorated with gold-leaf. It is made of all-imported metals, image of a disc of the sun being pulled across the sky, with obvious knowledge of practical use of the wheel.
See Reader's Digest, History of Man: The Last Two Million Years. Sydney, The Reader's Digest Association, 1973-1974.

By about 1500BC: Use of chariots introduced into Greece for war, influences from Syrian prototypes. (From McNeill)

1500BC: Possibly, the first civilization to have compulsory schooling for all classes of boys are the Aztecs. Girls could also be encouraged to go to school. (James/Thorpe)

1500BC: In Mesoamerica, practise of Quetzalcoatal cult of rebirth and spiritual renewal.

1500BC: Earliest known use of metal made horse bits.

1500BC: Approx: Alleged rescue of Olmecs from Easter Island. ?? First arrival of Maya in Mesoamerica. (Alford, Gods of the New Millennium, p. 358).

About 1500BC: Egypt, Use of new technology, the Ramesside star clock, replacing diagonal star clocks.

1500BC: And earlier, The Olmecs flourish along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. (Date from Hancock/Faiia).

1500BC: Approx, Greece?, Thessalian Flood of Deucalion, and Pyrrha. (Oppenheimer, Eden In The East)

1510BC: Tuthmosis II puts down a revolt in Nubia and has wife Hatshepsut, who is formidable. (Mellersh)

1517BC-1496BC: Abraham and Sarah reside in Egypt. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1520BC-1500BC: Abram/Abraham and his beautiful wife Sarai/Sarah move to Egypt, where the Pharaoh Abraham encounters is Amenhotep I. It is a time of drought. Feather writes that some parts of the Old Testament associate Abraham with the Babylonian period of 190BC, or with the Hurrian period of 1500BC, or with the Armana-Akhenaten period of 1400BC. Feather, pp. 76-77. (The Bible refers to the non-Semitic Hurrians as "Horites".) (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1525BC: Cosmetics: Egypt: In the Ebers Papyrus, recipes are given for gentlemen's lotions which prevent body odors.

By about 1525BC: Most of Mesopotamia has loose hegemony of the barbarian Kassites, who had harried the rule of Hammurabi. A note from pp. 120 of McNeill suggests that about India, commerce helped by sea traffic was less subject to interference from barbarian invasion. Maritime trade areas are more peaceful in general? (From McNeill).

1538BC: The invader-rulers of Egypt the Hyksos (from the north-east) are driven out of Egypt by Pharaoh Ahmose, who is succeeded by Amenhotep I (died 1496BC), who was followed by three Pharaohs with name Tutmoses, and a Queen, Hatshepsut, an aunt of Tutmoses III. (Feather). Tutmoses III was succeeded by Amenhotep II, who was succeeded by Amenhotep III (reigning from 1387BC for 38 years.) Tutmoses III reigned from 1476BC-1422BC.) Ahmose had re-established Egyptian rule by 1520BC. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1550BC: Egypt: Use of acacia gum which contains lactic acid, as a natural spermicide, for contraceptive purposes.

1550BC-1575BC: When the Kushites almost conquered Egypt?: The Egyptians were prone to covering-up their reverses, and a new case of this involving Kush (the Sudanese) has just been discovered. The source of new information is the richly-decorated rock-cut tomb of Sobeknakht, a governor of Elkab, "an important provincial capital city" during the latter part of Egypt's 17th Dynasty. (Near Thebes, in Upper Egypt). Sobeknakht was an hereditary prince and his tomb, long ago looted, revealed 22 lines of hieroglyphics painted in red and appearing as tomb grime was removed.
The researcher-spokesman is Vivian Davies, an Egyptologist with British Museum. The tomb was discovered February last and now Davies is quoted as saying, "This is the discovery of a lifetime, one that changes the textbooks". The tomb's hieroglyphics report a battle that was unprecedented "since the time of the god", or, the beginning of time, as the Kushites, who were a superpower, which Egypt was not at the time, swept to invade the entire region, pillaging and taking precious objects as symbolic and real loot.
It had been known that Egyptian treasures including statues, stelae and an elegant alabaster vessel had been found in a royal Kushite tomb at Kerma - unexplained. These were war trophies. Evidently, Davies has said, "Each of the four main kings of Kush brought back treasures looted from Egypt." Their purpose was to harrass and dominate, not to occupy Egypt. The alabaster vessel taken to Kerma had been inscribed for Sobeknaht's spirit, he being governor and hereditary prince of Nkeheb, and was looted from his tomb, where the inscription indicates that his area suffered a "ferocious invasion" by Kush armies and their allies from the Land of Punt (southern coast of the Red Sea), plus a few tribal peoples. Sobeknahkt organised a counter-attack, later writing, "Kush came ... aroused along his length... he having stirred up the tribes of Wawat... the land of Punt and the Medjaw..." A decisive role was played for Egypt by "the might of the great one, Nekhbet", the vulture-goddess of Elkab, "strong of heart against the Nubians, who were burned through fire"... the chief of the nomads fell.
Meanwhile, the new tomb-site is "enormous" and possibly has other secrets to reveal. This was one defeat and time of trouble the Egyptians hushed-up, and indications are that Kush was less barbaric and weak than historians have thought. Kush in fact had a complex society, "with vast resources of gold", and it dominated trade routes into the heart of Africa. Kush also eventually conquered Egypt in the 8th Century, BC. (Reported in Australia 4 August 2003)
Possibly related to the above? An Australian traveller, David Adams in Sudan in a TV documentary, finds that there had been African Pharaohs, Negroes, not Egyptians, in the Sudan region, to Khartoum, in desert regions upriver of the Nile. Their temples/pyramids have lasted perhaps 5000 years. There are relics, "about 1000 miles of monuments". There was for example, a 25th Nubian Dynasty (province of Kush?) which stretched perhaps from Khartoum to Alexandria. Amenhotep III had built a temple in Sudan as an Imperial outpost. In one sacred mountain is a labyrinth. There are "more forgotten pyramids in Sudan than in Egypt", up to 2400 years old, not seen till the Nineteenth Century. Evidence (from tombs) exists of 19 kings and 53 queens. When a Nubian pharaoh died, his entire entourage was buried alive with him. Karina was a city which once ruled Sudan and Egypt, a sacred mountain about 3000 years ago was launch site for an Imperial exercise. A noted deity was Amun-Ra, as also noted in Egypt. The belief prevailed that gods and kings linked heaven and earth.

New notes on The Hyksos

On 3-4-2015, for 1550BC: New notes on The Hyksos in Egypt, from various sources online. The Hyksos seem to have been Semitic, but some of their number included Hurrians, who answer to Indo-Europeans. It is not impossible that the Hyksos sometimes worked as mercenaries, as there are some linguistic mentions of "reward". They seem to have been of mixed backgrounds, possibly answering to the sacredness of a mountain area, Asiatic peoples from Western Asia who took over the Nile Delta area (about when the eastern Nile Delta had been occupied by Canaanites) and became the 15th Dynasty of Egypt (eg., Sakir-Har, one of three of the earliest 15th Dynasty kings, possibly had a Canaanite or West Semitic origin?), following the collapse of the 13th-14 dynasties, although later, the 17th Dynasty took control of Thebes, co-ruled with the Hyksos for a time and finally ejected them. The term "Hyksos" was first coined by the Egyptian lister of dynasties, Manetho, to denote the rulers of the 15th Dynasty of Avaris only, and the 14th Dynasty rulers had not called themselves "Hyksos". It is still unclear if the Hyksos arrived in the Nile delta area as a warlike horse or by creeping, migratory infiltration, as nomads or semi-nomads. However, it does seem as though the 14th Dynasty arrived peacefully, the 15th Dynasty arrived by war. Technically the Hyksos had brought to Egypt, new musical instruments, foreign loan-words, new ways of bronze-working, pottery-making, new animal breeds, new crops, the horse-and-chariot for warfare plus the composite bow, better-design battle axes, improved ways of fortifying settlements. One meaning of "Hyksos" is "rulers of foreign lands", which seems somewhat unhelpful as to their supposedly multi-ethnic composition. One theory is that the Hyksos were probably Semitic people from the Levant region. The chief deity of the Hyksos was their native storm god, who became associated with the Egyptian storm and desert god, Seth. A wikipedia page says the Hyksos practiced horse burials (but has any archaeology yet found any evidence of this?). Various Hyksos kings appeared in the order, Sakir-Har, Khyan about 1620BC, Apophis about (1595BC to 1555BC), and Khamudi (1555BC to 1545BC). One Hyksos king was Apophis, evidently a chieftain from Canaan. The last Hyksos king was Khamudi, who was expelled from Egypt by Egyptian notables such as Sequenre Tao, Kamose (last king of the Theban 17th Dynasty) and Ahmose. The Hyksos period coincided with the Second Intermediate Period for the usual native Egyptian pharaohs of the 16th and 17th dynasties, and it was the last pharoah of the 18th Dynasty Ahmose I, who finally expelled the last Hyksos from their last holdout in Gaza. after which the Egyptians erased all evidence of the Hyksos presence as they had found them so disgusting.
As well as Seth, the Hyksos revered Astarte, the Phoenician mother-goddess, and Reshep, a Phoenician storm-god. Yet the senior Hyksos may have been of Hurrian/Hittite origin, and they were not the first “Asiatics” to arrive in Egypt.
The 17th Dynasty regime had begun wars against the Hyksos that Ahmose I finished. (Before that, the 15 Dynasty Hyksos kings had begun to adopt Egyptian art forms, becoming Egyptianized, but not quickly enough, it seems.)
At some point, the Hyksos peoples in the delta area had granted the Egyptians to their south, some transit rights through territory, some rights to pastures, and not stolen Egyptian cattle, and as to business arrangements, it sometimes seems as though the Hyksos had relied on the rise of a military-backed Red Sea trade to back them in their delta position. By around 1800BC, Egypt suffered famine and plague, and became too weak to fend off newcomers. By around 1700BC, Egypt proper was fragmenting and small local kingdoms arose in the north delta area, one based at Avaris (where no evidence arises of chariot use), and they moved south to take advantage of a weakening Egypt. The Avaris rulers, some say, ruled over a motley crew of Semitic'Asiatic people driven west from Western Asia to the delta area by famine and instability. // The Hyksos ruler Khyan (some say) was in power at the same time as Sobekhotep IV of Egypt (a mid-13th Dynasty ruler).
The Egyptian campaign against the Hyksos began with 17th Dynasty king Seqenenre Tao, who took on Apophis, a HYksos ruler, possibly due to a dispute over the Hyksos deity, Seth, whom the Egyptians regarded as an evil, and Sequenenre was probably killed by the Hyksos. His son, Khamose, continued the fight, sailing down the Nile to show his forces near Avaris. Feeling threatened, Apophis had appealed urgently for support to the king of Kush (Sudan), as Egypt also had had designs on Kush. The Egyptians prevailed, although Khamose may have died of battle wounds. The next Egyptian pharaoh, Ahmose I (who did use a chariot), continued the war on the Hyksos, and assailed Avaris, then chased the Hyksos from Sinai into South Canaan, where the Hyksos took refuge in a holdout in the Negev Desert. And with recent scholarship, we still find the identity of the Hyksos nebulous, though it is clear the Egyptians despised and feared them.

The Hyksos city Avaris in Egypt

Ancient Egyptian city located in Nile Delta by radar - BBC Headlines of 21 June 2010

1570BC: 1800BC-1570BC: 1570BC: End of the Hyksos period of rule in Egypt, which began in 1800BC. (Source: McNeill, p. 96.)

1575BC, Egypt: Amosis becomes Pharaoh and founds 18th Dynasty, drives the last Hyksos from Avaris, pursues them into Syria. (Mellersh)

1580BC: Egypt: Theban King Karmose ousts the Hyksos from Egypt. (Mellersh)

Circa 1600BC: Hebrews migrate from Canaan to Egypt during a famine but by 1550BC are captives of the Pharaoh.

1600BC: With 22 characters, use of a script called North Semitic, the ancestor of the alphabet today used in the English-speaking world, as appears in Middle East. This produced Canaanite and Aramaic systems, the Phoenicians used the Canaanite method. The Greeks used the Phoenicians' system and added vowels.

1600BC: Appearance in Melanesia and Polynesia of lapita pottery, with tooth-like markings. Possible evidence for Austronesian/Neolithic migrations via ships, long-distance voyages and trading. (Oppenheimer, Eden In The East)

1600BC: Re first Chinese Empire: The Yi and Yue people of East and Southern China develop independently of Neolithic tribes centred on the Yellow River Valley of North China. The Yi are inclined to maritime activity. (Levathes, When China Rules The Seas)

1600BC: 1600-1400BC: The kings of Mittani make a loose but centralized state over Northern Mesopotamia, Syria, perhaps Anatolia also. The Mittani weaken by 1380BC-1270BC. (McNeill)

1600BC: Cretan civilization/ways are influencing mainland/Mycenaean Greece.

1600BC: Possible first Chinese records on use of Acupuncture.

1600BC, Austronesian Expansions reach New Guinea.

1600BC: Mother Earth Goddess figure on Crete is Potnia (The Lady), and the bull may symbolise the power of the earthquake. (Mellersh)

1600-1450BC: The Israeli people prosper in Egypt. By 1550BC cities and farms revive in Canaan, and Hazor grows rich from caravan trade. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1627BC: Regarding a TV documentary, part of a series on Ancient Apocalypse screened on 3 March 2002, on SBS TV (Australia). Consideration is given to the volcanic explosion of the Island of Thera (sometimes called Santorini, once called Kalliste = "beautiful island"). This documentary provided good scientific evidence for a date for this major volcanic explosion of Thera, which due to fall-out provided nuclear-winter-type scenario. This left tree-ring evidence in Ireland; and evidence of sulphuric acid rain plus volcanic ash-type evidence on Greenland. Various evidence indicates a decade-long nuclear winter situation. Research on the matter has included suitable computer modelling, and examination of various archaeological and or geological evidence on Thera itself, plus on Minoan Crete, which was merely "a tidal wave's distance" from Thera. (Researchers included fix)
The date provided here for the explosion of Thera is 1628BC-1627BC - with climatic effects for the next ten years. This date conforms very badly with other dates given for the Theran explosion gained from a variety of books. Most other dates given indicate Thera exploded about 1500BC-1480BC, to 1450BC, even to 1400BC. So the question arises, since Minoan culture fell victim to Greek mainlanders in the 50 years following the volcanic explosion, if this date for the ruination of the Minoans is really firm, what happens to other historical dates in nearby lands/cultures? Particularly, for Egypt? (Many writers do suggest that the Egyptian delta coast suffered a tsunami after the explosion of Thera, and it is easy to imagine such a tsunami bothering Egypt - not to speak of any bad climatic effects on crops in the region generally.) -Ed

1628BC, One date for eruption of Island of Thera, (Santorini). This disaster may have led to loss of the printing technology represented by the Phaistos Disk. Resulting tsunami also means demise of Minoan culture on Crete. Possible time of the plagues of Egypt?

1624BC: One date for the eruption of Thera/Santorini in the Mediterranean, about 300 years before the time of Moses, who has dates say 1360BC-1330BC, about the time Ramesses I dies, then is reign of Seti I. (Gardner, Genesis, p. 197)
Circa 1628BC: Further notes from TV documentary series titled Ancient Apocalypse, episode screened on SBS TV (Australia) 3 March 2002.
On the fall of the Minoan Empire and probably child sacrifice at the same time, on Crete, within the Minoan Empire, their world crumbles. They had the first paved roads and first running water, what eclipsed them? There is evidence of sheer savagery.
Such as skeletons, the skulls of five murdered children at the time of the Minoan collapse. Slice marks on the bones of these children indicate meat was sliced off, and in some urns, bones are found, similar, with remains also of a large edible snail; is it possible that the snails and child-flesh were cooked at same time. Ritual cannibalism?
Volcanoes? Thera explodes? A discussion of Thera and volcanic activity arises from a researcher from Hawaii. A cliff face reveals by its layers, how an eruption proceeded; the lowest layer of ash is light pumice, which rose initially in a plume 36km high, and later ten metres thick on the island of Thera. Sea-water enters vents and becomes ultra-explosive, venting horizontally, so that ash smothers an entire island, and blasts an island to bits. Eruption-clouds provoke thunderstorms. Sludge develops and moves away, but larger rocks stay. There might be four days of violence in all, then calm. Such was the explosion 3600 years ago on Thera, coinciding with the decline of the Minoans. The town on Thera was buried completely.

In the 1960s, Greek archaeologists find what is hidden on Thera. A layer of pumice ten metres thick hides a town, beautifully preserved. What of the people? Frescoes etc. Population had been about 2000-3000 - but no bodies have ever been found. Did they all leave at the first stirrings of a volcano? Ash is found over the entire island. Did they leave the town but not the island itself? Where did they go? Did boats come to save them? Were crowds of people cornered near their harbour and then smothered by ash? (See remains at Herculaneum re explosion of Vesuvius, where people waited for saving boats that never came.) Or, were people killed by poison gases.
The Minoans on Crete were hit by three waves from the violence of nature - including tsunami. The researcher had seen his own home town on Hawaii hit by waves 54 feet high. (See re Karakatoa, 36,000 people killed, mostly by tsunami, from an explosion less than half the intensity of Thera.) Can evidence of tsunami be found on Crete?
Tiny shells, with known living habits/habitats, and it can be shown in which depth of water they lived. Core samples are taken, which indicate waves 100km moved from Thera to Crete's northern coast.
Computer modelling of any waves hitting from Thera. Effect of wave is magnified by waves trapped in certain coastal shapes, bays, intensifying in effect. Water rises some three metres high, which in a small harbour would have been devastating. Tsunamis usually destroy boats on a coastal area, and/or flood rivers, plus lay salt in soils, which destroys agriculture. Stored food is spoiled or destroyed. Waves may be up to 12 metres high.
A researcher examines a fresco from a Theran town/city, a depiction of yet another city before Thera erupted, but vaporized by an eruption. That is, there was a lost city on Thera.
How important had Thera been to the Minoans' legendary wealth? For example, in one area is found 400 large pots, presumably produced on an industrial scale, lead weights and measures, indicating trade as a thriving activity, a "Hong Kong" of the prehistorical Aegean, an important regional market-place, wiped out.
The Minoans suffered a series of blows and havoc on the coast of Crete. The Theran marketplace was wiped out, and the volcano had yet another legacy. On Thera, a British geologist, Steve Sparks, has spent decades studying Thera, but can't explain certain fozzilised algae found on slopes; this is not hillside algae. Was it put there from an explosion? A shallow sea might have once been inside the new crater area, with an older volcanic island inside it. Was the Theran explosion even bigger than previously thought, the original shallow sea simply being filled up by ash? If so, the real size of the eruption doubles (see mention of Krakatoa above). This was perhaps the second-largest eruption on earth in the past 10,000 years, providing more volcanic ash in the sky, plus sulphurous gas and sulphur dioxides, which can help alter climate. (Tambora in 1815 in Indonesia, the biggest explosion of the past 10,00 years, changed global climate for some years; crops could not grow, there was mass starvation in New England and England.

Consideration of the work of Mike Rampino a climate modeller: sulphur dioxide shields life from the sun, as with a "nuclear winter". If Steve Sparks' extra-large figures are run on a computer, giving an affect on earth's climate, there is seen a cooling of 1-2 degrees Celsius in Europe and Asia. Summer becomes cool-wet, there are years of ruined harvests. Some proof arises from the bogs of Ireland with tree slices, showing tree-ring evidence for the past 7000 years. Researcher Mike Bailey measures tree rings and notices Irish oak trees grow well to 1628BC-1627BC - there no summer growth for 1627-1617BC - a tree's worst growth times. Was this extra wetness-coldness due to the eruption of Thera?
Other evidence arises from the ice sheets of Greenland, of sulphuric acid, and snow some 700 metres deep. Researchers find a layer of sulphuric acid with shards of volcanic ash - from Thera, it is believed.
There were environmental consequences of the eruption of Thera. Floyd is now convinced, and harvests failed. One last problem re Minoans is their clay tablets, as many were written decades after the eruption, so Minoan culture evidently survived. Some 50 years after the eruption, a new script appeared, the language of the Greek conquerors of Minoans. So the Minoans did survive, to 50 years later. A final piece of the puzzle seems to be found near the bones of five murdered children near a royal palace, where a burned destruction-layer is found. Also found are ritual vases, decorated with sea-creature imagery, so there is a unity of religious and maritime imagery. This marine style began after the tsunamis, representing a new awareness of power of the sea, and efforts made to try to ward off other threats from the sea. The Minoans reinterpreted their natural world, and they did have priest-kings who were deemed to be able to control nature itself. This view however changed after the eruption. A religious statue is found, distant from the priest-king's palace, at a shrine, indicating that Minoan society fell apart, with less belief in the priest-king. Minoan society became a vacuum into which mainland Greeks arrived.
The explosion of Thera had a prolonged, three-pronged effect. Nature had betrayed the Minoans, so they turned away from their kings, took religion into their own hands, and does this explain ritual cannibalism - to win back the favour of the gods?

1628BC: 1627BC? One date given for Thera exploding in the eastern Mediterranean. (This date is provided by analysis of one olive tree which found itself preserved in pumice and ashes on Thera/Santorini- According to a website chronology 2002 by Andis Kaulins, online, Moses at this time would have been aged 80 and lived to be 83. The Pharaoh of Egypt was Ahmose (Joshua) who rules 57 years to 1570BC - Ed) One pro-Jewish website we encounter (www.torahtimes/org) finds that this date for the Theran explosion would synchronise with a date (redated) for the destruction of Jericho about 1580BC-1583BC, with the Exodus of Moses redated to about 1632BC.

1634BC: Joseph dies in Egypt at age of 110. His body is mummified but does not leave Egypt until the Exodus of Moses. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1640BC-1538BC: The invaders Hyksos rule Egypt having come from the East. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1650BC?: Legend that Balaam the Magician was an adviser to Pharaoh in Moses' time, and Jethro one of the king's advisers was driven from the Royal Court when he tried to help the Jews. (Encyc. Judaica)

1650BC: The wheeled vehicle appears in Egypt, and by 1650BC, new Minoan palaces are built. (Mellersh).

1650BC-1600BC: Hyksos of Avaris are at odds with Egyptian kings at Thebes. (Mellersh).

1688BC: Jacob dies in Egypt at the age of 147. His body is mummified and carried to Canaan for a burial. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

A rare moment for fiction - The African movie Genesis

Editorial - In the interests of factuality, this website mostly refrains from providing views of history etc gained from works of fiction, interesting as they often can be about relevant issues. We here make an exception due to watching a surprisingly arresting movie from Africa on the Old Testament story given in Genesis on Jacob, and amongst other things, how and why Jacob was renamed "Israel" after he had contended with God. (It's based on Genesis Ch: 23-37.)
This visually-stunning movie from Mali is Genesis. Directed by Cheick Oumar Sissko. 1999 by Kora Films - Balanzan - CNPC. Shot in Mali, 102 minutes. Dialogue in the Bambara language of Mali. Screenplay by Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux. Cinematography by Lionel Cousin. Music by Decore Senore. Starring Salif Keita, Sotigui Kouate, Balla Moussa Keita. Kino Video/DVD release New York 2003. On sale via amazon.com/ See www.kino.com/

Genesis is jarring, more than confronting or "challenging". Jarring since it deals with an often-told Old Testament story. The narrative (on a second viewing) departs less than I thought from the traditional story. The script involves a good deal of what can only be called, psychodrama. What's jarring is that the people (Jacob/Israel, Esau, Joseph, some of the women), are not the "Hebrews" we usually envisage. They are quite traditional-looking Africans from a semi-desert environment. It's as though they are still living the same life the old Hebrews (the Shepherd Kings) did before they went to Egypt and became enslaved, say about 1600BC.

That is, when the tribal elders oblige themselves to have conferences to sort out their problems, most of their people sit about silently, watching, while the elders blather (usually ineffectively) about solutions. All the watchers are film extras, and it's as though they've done this all their real lives, sitting about silent while the elders get it wrong, or worrying that some mob of disgruntled relatives from over the hill is planning another revenge attack while the conference comes to another bad decision.

Basically, the pagan Canaanites and the monotheists (Jacob's people), descendants of either Noah, or Abraham, are having a power struggle for clan dominance, using religion as a pretext, and Jacob is very much on the back foot. Worse, Jacob's randomly-appearing nemesis is his soul-rotted brother, Esau, who still wants righteous revenge for past wrongs. We have here groups of rather down-market desert fringe-dwellers who fancy themselves "shepherd princes". (They do not see themselves as desert hunters at all, those are different sorts of people again.)

The role of women is a strong element of the plot, and is problematical as follows if you follow the family history in detail. An old man with no sons left (Jacob's situation by now) is quite helpless, and he certainly can't fight a war. Especially not a war of defence. So he's unprotected. (And sons of princes are not allowed to marry peasant women, it is decided, so group numbers won't increase by that avenue.) But if sons come from women, then women, a little paradoxically, are the ultimate sources of protection, no? But in order to keep the sons disciplined, the women obviously have to be disciplined too, otherwise the sons will get the wrong ideas about religion or life that come from the mother's clan, who might well be disreputable people, such as Canaanites. These ideas are further rounded out in terms of scenarios where one of Jacob's junior daughters, Dinah, is abducted and raped by an impetuous young Canaanite prince, who then decides to fall genuinely in love with her.

Dinah - so much in need of psychodrama she sows it all around her - is pretty much a pathologically attention-seeking, vicious and confused little hysteric with no insight into the deeps of the social system she lives in. Dinah brings great shame on her mother, and unlike her father Jacob, who laments his lack of power due to his present lack of sons, Dinah irrationally thinks her brothers will solve all the problems she causes. So she stupidly and mischievously provokes a Canaanite prince, who rapes her, then wants to keep her as a proper wife. Then, various elders have to sit around and sort out the resulting social chaos. Nothing is made better by the old enmity between Jacob and Esau (who was tricked into selling his birthright). Esau's situation is not at all clear in the plot and he seems to have no visible means of support - suffice to say, Esau's doings are the wild card in the plot.

Everything tragic culminates when Jacob ends up so distressed, in doubt about everything, he has a bad night when God sends him a confusing mob of angels/demons/ voices-in-the-night to further increase his doubts. Evidently, and luckily, the people around Jacob realise what is going on, it seems that Jacob has been contending with God, so he is renamed Israel and remains respectable, instead of being assessed as having been driven quite crazy by all this chaos.

How could any of this possibly end well? Throughout the movie, it's never clear what has happened to Jacob's favourite son, Joseph, who time before fell out badly with his brothers, who are not a trustworthy lot. Maybe, the brothers left Joseph in the desert for the beasts? (The beasts got Joseph, Jacob is first told.) Or did Joseph's brothers sell him to the desert hunters? It seems to the end of the movie that Jacob, having been renamed Israel, is driven to making a dangerous political bet, a bet that means his sons didn't kill their brother Joseph, they sold him. (Which just possibly is known to Esau, who tends to wander about lost in the desert, muttering about his fate and plotting revenge on Jacob.)

So Jacob decides that finally, Joseph, if he survived, went to Egypt. Jacob will take his people into Egypt in the hope that Joseph survived, did well there and can now be a help.

Meaning that in the given political setting, the Canaanites win, and stay in Canaan, and Jacob's people leave. Despite their paganism, the Canaanites are far more cohesive than Jacob's people, who are rent asunder by conflict between sons. (Hamar, the old prince of the Canaanites, tolerantly and shrewdly didn't punish his son who abducted Dinah, but instead tried to smooth things over between clans, which Jacob's people can't abide since the Canaanites are pagans.)

So out of a sad story of the political ill effects in semi-desert tribal society of sibling rivalry (or Jacob's mismanagement of parenthood, really), Jacob loses, but is renamed Israel, and then takes a dangerous bet that his lost son did well in Egypt, so he takes his people into Egypt. Meaning, Jacob still has to live with severe doubt to the end of his days. The rest is Bible history of the Jewish/Christan variety. Jacob ends a sad and chastened loser, turned by posterity into a spiritual hero! Just maybe, it's Jacob's personal predisposition to doubt/indecision that helped cause all these problems with his children in the first place? (Meaning, is religion an antidote to doubt? No.)

There are some influences from Islam on the scriptwriting, though a non-North African would be hard put to say where or how. We are dealing with well-known descendants of Noah and Abraham, but this reading of their story is unfamiliar to a Westerner with a Judaeo-Christian background, and not just because it is from an African perspective. This reading of Jacob's story is fantastically different to the reading, for example, that the English Puritans took to America from the 1620s. We have particular reference to tales of Jacob, Joseph and Esau, etc, with a dash of paganism (or shall we say, non-Monotheism) thrown in by one clan in the plot, just for the extra mischief.

It's shot in near-desert North Africa, and all the animals shown are domesticated, not wild. The movie's intention is to present a non-sanitised, non-Hollywood take on the storylines, with a strongly African perspective. The locations used are often desert-bleak, flat, agriculturally non-productive (is this marginal land for marginalized people??), with an occasional impressive mountain. Some of the locations are quite spectacular, and visually it's an excellent movie. Colour is rich and full, very African

But the actual story is almost shockingly confusing. On first viewing, I kept losing track. What we do notice though is that the elders of three or so disputing clans have to be having various important conferences to sort out problems arising. There is a bit of talk about God here and there, mostly as a lord of creation, but not a lot, and some characters who have serious personal problems (especially with dealing with being shamed by circumstances) badly need to be told to accept the Will of God, and are told so in no uncertain terms. At one or two conferences, there are elders appearing from as many as ten or so major families, and all we gather is that they are all somehow related. Could it be 12 tribes here, finally, to be counted?

Many of the problems the people experience have a lot to do with ineffective customs of marriage and child-rearing, plus tribalism, etc, vendettas and feuds, and a few of the main characters possess insufficient virtue and end up sowing discord and enmity. There is a bit of blame-of-women resorted to, but we rather get the impression that this is recognised as an insufficient explanation too, more so by women. So what to think next?

So yet another conference has to be held, apparently, and some extra rules drawn up. We find, in this tribalised context, that the people wish to give greater respect to whoever has words that are both reliable, and the most unchanging. It seems that this turns out be God, not anyone you'll ever meet personally. This seems not a bad idea, in the sense that to make God quite abstract creates a way out of problems - the ultimate problem-solving person can't be personally identified, blamed, or, more to the point, punished. A good way out of anyone's being absolutely bound by tribalized response patterns inherited from who else but ancestors (Who in this case are Noah and Abraham.)

It seems to this reviewer, we are here watching people who are profoundly confused about how to live, and about what constitutes a useful or a decent life, whether or not one is a pagan or a monotheist. They are desert nobodies living on the edge of nowhere, with misbegotten ideas on class consciousness, subject to a random night raid of revenge by any disgruntled group in the region. They suffer drought. They squabble incessantly amongst themselves about issues between men and women, basically. And the issue of male circumcision of Canaanites gets quite a run, but it isn't clear why, it could be due to some kind of religious declaration as it seems, or is it merely a political declaration about clan solidarity, or is it a product of political trickery with religion cruelly used as a rationalization?.

There's a circular argument going on here ... mere interpersonal differences between a man and wife, or brother and brother, symbolically can be interpreted as offences rendered between one clan and another - and often are interpreted this way. This sort of misconstruction of interpersonal relationships pans out to foment constant and irreconcilable strife in the wider community, or intra-clan, there is no let up. There never will be any let-up while these people continue to misunderstand family dynamics in these kinds of ways.

Jacob apparently, has a seriously weird night, noisily visited by apparent demons who encourage his doubts about the social system he lives in. It seems he is contending with God, and so he is renamed Israel (whatever that means, it means he "is strong against God").

This is odd. This is not a man bothering God, this is God bothering a man by sending angels of ill omens to test his faith. (Which God also later tries if we can believe The Old Testament's Book of Job.)

Hmm, is this possibly a reference to any observation - Jacob's problem?- that the ideologies of tribalism work against the development of real piety in the individual in their relationship with the deity? I wonder. We feel that since Israel finds himself with the task of sorting out Abraham's descendants and their problems, he's certainly going to have difficulties! His own record is not the best.

Jacob's people are very unsophisticated folk who finally decide to move from Canaan to Egypt (probably). One suspects the Egyptians will very quickly run out of patience with them. Enough said about claims the Egyptians ever enslaved Hebrews. What we can be sure about is that whatever these people are concerned about, the issues giving them problems are very important for human beings everywhere to solve, philosophically, psychologically, and practically. Otherwise, nothing useful can be achieved.

Descendants of Abraham and Noah? As economic masochists in the Middle East, they seem to have very few uses for horses or camels, certainly not for day-to-day purposes. There's little they actually make or produce that can't be carried by a small group of people, not even worked-on timber. Just what is it that they misunderstand most about life and how to live it? Marital harmony? Child-raising practices? They are also not particularly successful with their agriculture. Coping with drought only increases their tendencies to apathy and morbid introspection. With all their squabbling, well ... the rest might just be Old Testament rhetoric, really. It's said that the Prophet Mohammed began with dealing with similarly fractious, misguided, unsophisticated people. -Ed

1700BC, Appearance on Crete of Phaistos Disk, a printing device apparently using movable type which makes impressions on clay, not paper. Possibly predates all other inventions of forms of printing. Query, were the people of Crete the people also known as Hittites?

1700BC: Italy: Findings of Terremare villages.

Circa 1700BCE-1600BCE: Aryans invade Indus Valley, there is later development of Hinduism. See re origins of Rig-Veda. (Karen Armstrong, A History of God, p. 37)

Checking out the great Indian Aryan Debate by 12-10-2014. Great scepticism reigns. Did Aryans invade n/w India, or migrate slowly and fairly regularly to India, or migrate in several sudden waves and then stop? Circa, 1900BC, 1700BC, maybe 1500BC? Recently I did some extra reading on this topic, which greatly exercises Hindu activists of today and looks like it will never be solved for lack of directly relevant evidence versus the competing information available from religious texts. There seem to be clear reasons the issues will never be resolved, but this is not how the argumentative ones see it. Some of the clearer reasons for non-resolution of the issues are: inability to establish the ethnic origins of the Harappan Civilisation of nw/w India (modern Pakistan, the Indus Valley). Inability to be clear about or to decipher Indus scripts/seals, language of the Harappans, or their religion. Inability to prove that the Harappans were Dravidians or of any other ethnic origin or mixes of ethnicities. Inability to be clear about (a) what set the incoming Aryans to moving/migrating and whether they ever had a traditional homeland. (b)Which pathway(s) the Aryans took (for lack of archaeological evidence) when they did travel into India? (c) The relationship of the Aryans once they were in India to Aryans north of India (eg, Afghanistan or Iran, are useful names available for their tribes or places of usual residence? (d) Why the Aryans in India fought amongst themselves (see Rig Veda) and also against alliances of Aryans and non-Aryans from the Indus Valley or neighbouring areas. (e) Languages in general, especially the role of the use of Sanskrit in pre-literate times and is it a sister and not a mother language? (f) The competing theory of home grown or indigenous Aryans in India (who presumably emigrated from India to various other regions) cannot be clear about their origins or religion. Plus a competing theory that these Aryans arose in Western Anatolia is not convincing about either India or Western Anatolia. (g) As to religious texts, what needs to be said about similarities/differences between the Indian Rig Veda and the Avesta in Iran? (h) To what extent were the Aryans civilized or not, and were they pastoralists only or did they include some city-dwellers/sedentarists? (i) what needs to be said about Aryans and use of the horse and chariot in north-west India? (j) If the Harappans had engaged in international trade, why did the incoming Aryans, who rose to govern society in North India, not engage in international trade? Also, why do Indian historians ignore the history of port cities in India 2000BC and later, eg, about Kerala, and what about ancient port histories on the Indian eastern coasts? (k) Debates on the use of loan-words between one language or another seem inconclusive, and nor in a long-term context do translations from Sanskrit seem convincing, they are often contradictory. (l) Reports on the religious use of Soma in India and Iran are impossible to follow-up for lack of evidence and it seems ludicrous that soma users “forgot” which plant was used, so much for the career of a “sacred plant”. (m) Why did the BMAC culture north of India in Afghanistan and elsewhere fail about 1700BC, about when Aryans arrived to India and are any trends evident connected or not? (n) Should the Aryans be considered as intruders in India at all? Related, should the pre-Aryan area of n/w India (Harappa) be better regarded for research purposes as a region south of the BMAC cultural zone rather than north of “India”. - Ed

1700BC: About now the Hyksos overrun Egypt. About the same time, the Hittites, Mittani and Kassites conquer Babylon. (Use of horse-aided chariot warfare.) The Hittites (iron-makers) settled in Anatolia, capital at Hatttusas, about 90 miles east of modern Ankara. (Gerrit P. Judd)

From 1700BC: The Hyksos: A wave of barbarian invasions from south or from northern hill country, along with development of chariot warfare. Mixed origins, so the origins of the Hyksos still remain unknown. (From McNeill).

1700BC: Date for earliest-known cookbook, from Mesopotamia during the reign of Hammurabi. Food for meat stews can include: kid boiled with garlic, onion, fat, sour milk and blood. (James/Thorpe)

From 1700BC: The Middle Easterners influence peoples of India, Greece and China, till 500BC. (McNeill)

1700BC: Hyksos, the Shepherd Kings or Hill People as Bedouin tribesmen, are on the move. (Mellersh)

From 1700BC to 1200BC: Period age of charioteer and of feudal empires, when kings exchange presents, seal alliances with marriages, correspond on Akkadian cuneiform. (From McNeill)

1700BC: A disputed date for time of Hammaburi (Amorite of Babylonia) in Mesopotamia; an earlier date has been near 2000BC. (Source, McNeill, pp. 60-61)

About 1700BC: a possibly contentious opinion from historian Jared Diamond, that a technique of printing had been developed on Minoan Crete. Chinese printing is traced to C2ndAD (paper smeared with ink). By 868AD, China had printed books, some made with movable wooden type. By 1041AD, Chinese alchemist Pi Sheng, used movable type made with baked clay and glue.

1700BC: First series of Minoan palace destructions, probably by earthquake. (Mellersh).

1700BC: The horse enters significantly into history. Kassites in Babylonia. Hyksos in Egypt. Mittani and Hittites in Asia Minor. Use of the horse revolutionises transport and war with the chariot. (Mellersh)

1700BC, Cuneiform script is adopted as an international language. (Mellersh)

1700BC, The horse and cattle people of the Ukraine go to Northern Turkey, are Aryan-speaking and end up in Scandinavia; they use the battle-axe. (Mellersh)

From 1700BC: Warlike barbarians form social barriers across Central Asia as civilization takes in China itself.

1705BC: Jacob is aged 130 and has 66 descendants, who with their families migrate to Egypt, in the Nile delta region called Goshen. Between 1704and 1700BC, the starving of Egypt sell everything to buy food during the famine, and even sell themselves into slavery. By 1700BC, Pharaoh owns all land except that owned by temples/priests. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1707BC: Severe famine strikes Egypt but Viceroy Joseph has stored grain in many cities. The famine results in Joseph again meeting his brothers who earlier sold him into slavery. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1714BC: Joseph is interviewed by Pharaoh and foretells seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. He is made Viceroy of Egypt. Joseph marries Asenath, daughter of an Egyptian priest and they have sons Maasseh and Ephraim. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1715BC: Isaac dies at age of 180 and is buried by Jacob and Esau.

1720BC: Another date for period of the Hyksos in Egypt, by 1720BC - warriors from Palestine, "the Shepherd Kings" who conquer most of Egypt.
See Reader's Digest, History of Man: The Last Two Million Years. Sydney, The Reader's Digest Association, 1973-1974.

1727BC: Joseph aged 17 is his father's favourite son, so his brothers are jealous and sell him into slavery in Egypt and convince Jacob that Joseph is dead. From 1726-1720 Joseph is slave of Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard. He becomes chief steward of Potiphar's household. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1744BC: Joseph is born son to Jacob and Rachel, when Jacob is aged 91. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

Re looting of treasures of antiquity in Iraq in 2003, items under threat or thought lost include: a solid gold Sumerian harp from 3360BC, 2000-year-old ceramic jars and urns, a 5000-year-old alabaster Uruk vase, a bust of an Akkadian king dated about 2300BC, "the ram in the thicket", a statue of a deity from 2600BC; tablets with Hammurabi's legal code, one of the world's earliest legal documents, a sculpted head of a Sumerian woman, priceless copies of The Koran, fitting and furniture from 9th-Century palaces, mathematics texts that reveal a knowledge of Pythagorean geometry 1500 years before Pythagoras. A 2300BC image of the God Abu and his consort, cuneiform tablets, and 100,000-year-old stone tools from the Kirkuk area.

1750BC: Time of reign of Hammurabi in Mesopotamia.

Tablet Discovered by Hebrew University Matches Code of Hammurabi

Published: 07/26/10, 2:40 PM

(Per IsraelNationalNews.com by 27 July 2010)

1756:BC: Dies Eber, "ancestor of the Hebrews", at age of 464 years. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1760BC: Approx: Date for invasion of Egypt by the Hyksos. (Robert Feather, The Copper Scroll Decoded)

1763BC: Jacob wrestles with an angel of God at Jabbok River and is later reconciled with Esau. Jacob by 1762 has settled in Schechem.

1766BC: In China, Shang Dynasty 1766BC-1122BC, traditional dates, but more likely this dynasty from 1523BC-1028BC. Large city is Anyang, dated about 1300BC-1000BC. (Black pottery culture. Also, charioteer culture. (Dates from McNeill) Here in China, steppe invaders typical re use of horse-drawn chariots, bronze weapons, compound bow (compound bow originates on steppe due to shortage of wood); use of quadrilateral city layout.

1784BC-1777BC: Jacob works for his uncle Laban to obtain his daughter, Rachel, as a wife. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1785BC: Dies Shem (aged 600 years), eldest son of Noah and ancestor of Semitic peoples. Isaac is dying and ends being tricked by his youngest son Jacob who will not now be subordinate to his brother Esau. Isaac is greatly angry and Jacob has to flee from Esau's anger. Jacob dreams of a stairway to the skies with God atop, and calls the spot Bethel (house of God). (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1795BC: Aged 40, Esau marries two Hittite women. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1800BC: Estimated date for early appearance of the Hyksos (Asiatic-Semites) in Egypt, who influenced several Egyptian dynasties but were expelled about 1560BC. Their career seems to coincide with legends concerning The Descent of Abraham. (Drawn from The Architects of the Neolithic Revolution and Bronze Age by Larry West (Texas USA) treating views on the people-movements of the Bronze Age with reference to Blacks out-of-Africa in areas of Europe north of Africa.)

c1800 BC: Sumerian King List compiled; first Chinese dynasty.

1800BC, One date estimated for time of destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Dead Sea region.

1800BC, China, rise of first Chinese dynasty/empire. Iron comes into use. Bronze Age fades into Iron Age. Horses reach Egypt and forms of warfare in North Africa are modified. Compiling of Sumerian king list.

1800BC: A doll-making industry discovered at Kahun in Egypt, in 1887 by British archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie. By 1600BC on Crete, pottery models depict goddesses on swings set from trees. (James/Thorpe)

1800BC: From 1800BC: Rise of the Hittite Imperial state in Anatolia, based on Mesopotamian models, from 2000BC. (McNeill, pp. 108-109)

1800BC-1570BC: 1570BC: End of the Hyksos period of rule in Egypt, which began in 1800BC. (Source: McNeill, p. 96)

1800BC: Abraham leaves Ur. (Mellersh)

1800BC: Bronze Age culture in Britain plus trade to Central Europe, Ireland, Crete and Greece.

1805BC: Esau sells Jacob his birthright. In 1800BC, Isaac moves to southwest Canaan, and becomes a wealthy farmer and herder. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1820BC: Abraham dies: Abraham dies at age of 175 years. Isaac and Ishmael bury him with his wife Sarah see her burial site below. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1836BC: God tells Rebekah she will have twin sons, who will be fathers of two nations, the younger to serve the older. In 1835BC are born Jacob and Esau (the older).

1847BC: Arpachshad, the first patriarch born after the flood of Noah, dies at the age of 438 years. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1850BC: Approx: First recorded use of capital punishment as in Mesopotamia.

1850BC: Egypt: Extant advice on birth control methods appear on a papyrus from Kahun, such as, anti-spermicidal jelly, an early pessary is made of crocodile dung. Also on a papyrus - the Ebers papyrus C150BC - is mentioned a pessary of linen saturated with honey and acacia gum. (Rabbi Brasch, How Did Sex Begin?)

1855BC: Abraham takes a new wife, Keturah, who gives him six sons, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.

1856BC: Abraham: (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1858BC: Dies Sarah, wife of Abraham, aged 127 years. She is buried in the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, which Abraham buys.

1860BC: Tera father of Abraham dies at age of 205.

1875BC: Traditional date, Rebekah is born to Bethuel, a nephew of Abraham who lives at Haran. This Rebekah later in 1855BC marries Isaac son of Abraham.

1882BC: God orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Later, tradition says, the Temple at Jerusalem is built on the spot where God substituted a lamb for the sacrifice which would have been a child-sacrifice of Isaac.

1895BC-1896BC: In 1895, Isaac (the name means "laughter") is born son to Abraham, and later Abraham makes him his heir and puts away Hagar and his son by her, Ishmael. In 1896 Destruction of cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

Notes from a TV documentary on The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah: From 10 March 2002, from series on Ancient Apocalypse: (Narrator is Hermione Norris):
A geologist experienced with working the region of Israel, retired, Graham Harris, tries to explain the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Due to what, perhaps a landslide following an earthquake? There now exist only sparse ruins of nearby settlements of the time, in the Dead Sea valley, and other scientists, such as some at Cambridge University, are sceptical.
The disaster is estimated to have occurred about 4000 years ago. Several leading scientists still wondering include: Jonathan Tubb from the British Museum, an expert in Bible archaeology, thinks Harris' view is plausible.
But, what sort of geological catastrophe? The Bible writing is a serious folk memory. Is there any seismic evidence, of unstable ground that was shaken, what geological evidence can be found.
Tubb is a world expert on the Canaanites, and believes Old Testament stories are inspired by real events, though written "thousands of years" after such events. The Black Sea bursting its banks becomes Noah's flood, the story of the Exodus is about a real exodus from a dynasty from Egypt. "The oldest city on earth is Jericho", where ancient walls are repeatedly rebuilt because of earthquake damage. Such constant destruction passes into folklore, becomes a kernel of historical reality, of things which happened maybe 3000BC, though transplant into an updated timeframe. So when could Sodom and Gomorrah actually have been lost?
Lot in the Bible story went East out of Egypt to the Land of Canaan to find grazing land. Perhaps, Lot's pathway meant his tent was pitched near Sodom, one of the "cities of the plain", near the Dead Sea, in the Early Bronze Age, 2800-2300BC. Are any remains large enough to be regarded as "cities" in the area?
Some large rooms are discovered, inside which is a range of pottery, on the site of an ancient city, with large storage jars, mixed with layer of olive stones and shells, grouped in 7 or 13, perhaps used as tally counters for olive oil production. This is an ancient olive oil factory, only existing in a city, and does it provide any other support for Harris' theory?
The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth, nearly half a km below sea level, with "dramatic geology", it is a unique site on a crack which has dropped down into a basin, the centre of a highly-active earthquake zone, as it separates the Arabian tectonic plate moving north and an African plate moving south. So for the 500 years of city-building in the area, what can be found that is unexpected?
A forensic pathologist works on skeletons found at "Eumera", bones with diagonal breaks, three men crushed to death, an earthquake, mild. A village has been evacuated, the three men are left behind, maybe as guards. There is another earthquake and a roof falls in, about 2350BC as suggested by carbon dating. The Bible says it happened in one night, but does not specifically say an earthquake, rather, there is smoke of "a furnace rising upward". Where did such Biblical fire come from?
Rocks around the Dead Sea conceal a secret. Test drillers have found, some hundred metres down, flammable methane gas, which on fire would be "fire and brimstone". Would there be enough gas to engulf entire cities? Another geologist has evidence of an ancient earthquake about the Dead Sea, 70,000 years ago, concerning a much larger lake, white rock layers.
Regarding clues to centuries-ago earthquakes, we find that each winter, layers are left behind, brown, white, indicating individual years, and any interruptions to these regular patterns can indicate slippage, or some degrees of earthquake displacement.
A clue is in the Bible story, where angels warn people to flee to the hills. They tell Lot, the cities have been built on perilous land. But what of the city's water supply? Nearby rivers are unreliable, and can become torrents, providing flash floods which land debris on the shores of the Dead Sea, creating unstable ground, and so a big landslide. With an earthquake, there is earth-liquefaction, and the ground can literally turn to liquid, as with badly-packed earth filled with water; large rocks fall to the bottom, while the more watery part squirts out at the top, as has happened in Japan.
There are perfect conditions for this near the Dead Sea, and great swirls of sands, still extant, indicate where ground has liquefied - which is devastating for settlement/buildings; as at lobe in 1995, built on loosely-packed ground, as with Sodom and Gomorrah - few buildings remained standing due to liquefaction, the landslide later erased all trace of the cities.
Harris wonders if his landslide theory is built on shaky ground. He would suggest that the cities stood on the edge of Dead Sea in an area not good for agriculture, inhospitable even then. The inhabitants sought large mineral resources of the Dead Sea area, including asphalt, a valuable commodity, waterproof and adhesive, which helps to keep stone blocks in place, and is essential for boat-building. Egyptians used asphalt for embalming the dead (their word "mummy" means asphalt, Greeks and Romans knew of asphalt of the area and how it was harvested.)
Can we find if Dead Sea asphalt was known at time of the disasters, as natural asphalt is still found there today (see a cliff face covered with it, sand, pebbles, mixed with asphalt, large handfuls of it, almost 100 per cent pure). Asphalt can be found floating on the Dead Sea, blocks can be several tonnes. Can it be chemically fingerprinted and compared with material found in Egypt, 5000 years ago? Yes, indeed. It is "a black gold", so Sodom and Gomorrah are cities working as part-miners, part-harvesters of asphalt.
Crucial questions remain. Can all these ingredients produce a massive landslide? At Cambridge University, a huge centrifuge moves at 150 circuits per minutes, and scale models of buildings can be used to simulate an earthquake to test a building's strength. (Eg., where is it safe to build nuclear power stations.) Can a village "disappear into the Dead Sea", can unstable layers of ground be simulated, can saturated sand simulate the lake's water table, made of pulverised rock, "rock flour", water trapped under an impermeable layer, which sloshes; the land above simply slides off.
Sensors will measure the build-up of water pressure, assuming a magnitude six earthquake - now add building models, quite detailed, which, when they are spun, will be made by G forces to behave like life-size buildings. The model is lifted up, the target speed is 50G, can an earthquake happen at this point? It seems that the model houses have sunk a full metre into liquefied ground, but they have not moved sideways. There is an extraordinary result: water is trapped by an impermeable layer - and buildings slide on top of water for 15 minutes, moving many kilometers - ending up at the bottom of the Dead Sea.
An earthquake strikes, fires break out, the land turns to quicksand, houses start to slide into the Dead Sea, and everyone is killed say in 15-20 minutes.
This is support for Graham Harris' theory, and he is "ecstatic". The search area now needs to be widened, he thinks, as the remains are underwater, so what now is needed an underwater search. Will there be a momentous discovery, organic remains of people or wood found, providing radio-carbon dates for an early Bible story?

1896BC: God confirms his covenant with Abram/Abraham ("father of a multitude"), and commands Abraham and his descendants to be circumcised. God promises that Sarah will bear a son. God will also destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. There follows the story of "Lot's wife", changed into a pillar of salt. In 1896BC, Abraham moves south from Hebron to Beer-Sheba.

1900BC: The Great Chinese Flood ...

From BBC Headlines on 5-8-2016 ...

Geologists have found evidence for an ancient megaflood which they say is a good match for the mythical deluge at the dawn of China's first dynasty.

The legend of Emperor Yu states that he tamed the flooded Yellow River by dredging and redirecting its channels, thereby laying the foundations for the Xia dynasty and Chinese civilisation. Previously, no scientific evidence had been found for a corresponding flood, but now a Chinese-led team has placed just such an event at about 1,900BC.

Writing in Science magazine, the researchers describe a cataclysmic event in which a huge dam, dumped across the Jishi Gorge by a landslide, blocked the Yellow River for six to nine months. > The sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood. When the dam burst, up to 16 cubic kilometres of water inundated the lowlands downstream.

The evidence for this sequence of events comes from sediments left by the dammed lake, high up the sides of Jishi Gorge, as well as deposits left kilometres downstream by the subsequent flood.

Lead author Dr Wu Qinglong, from Nanjing Normal University, said he and colleagues stumbled on sediments from the ancient dam during fieldwork in 2007.

"It inspired us to connect the next possible outburst flood with the abandonment of the prehistoric Lajia site 25km downstream," he told journalists in a teleconference. "But at that time we had no idea what the evidence of a catastrophic outburst flood should be."

The Lajia site, famously home to the world's oldest noodles, is known as China's Pompeii; its cave dwellings and many cultural artefacts were buried by a major earthquake. "In July 2008 I suddenly realised that the so-called black sand previously revealed by archaeologists at the Lajia site could be, in fact, the deposits from our outburst flood," Dr Wu said.

"The subsequent investigation confirmed this speculation and showed that the sediments from this outburst flood are up to 20m thick, and up to 50m higher than the Yellow River - indicating an unprecedented, devastating flood."

He and his colleagues suggest in their paper that the very same earthquake that destroyed the Lajia dwellings probably dammed the river upstream. Less than a year later, the waters returned with a vengeance.

"It reached up to 38m above the modern river level," said co-author Dr Darryl Granger, from Purdue University in the US.

"The flood was about 300-500,000 cubic metres per second. That's roughly equivalent to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon river; it's among the largest known floods to have happened on Earth during the past 10,000 years."

Using carbon dating - on flood deposits and even on fragments of bone from earthquake victims at Lajia - the researchers date the megaflood to 1,922BC, "plus or minus about 28 years", Dr Granger said.

If the flood was indeed the source of the Emperor Yu legend then the founding of the Xia dynasty presumably occurred within a few decades, in about 1,900BC.

This date is 200-300 years later than many previous estimations. But Emperor Yu's tale is difficult to pin down using traditional historical sources; the story survived as oral history for a millennium and its first known written record dates to around 1,000BC.

On the other hand, a later, circa 1,900 commencement date for the Xia supports the idea that this first dynasty coincided with the transition from Stone Age to Bronze Age ways of living. Some archaeologists have already linked the Xia dynasty with the Erlitou culture, an early Bronze Age society known from digs elsewhere in the Yellow River valley.

Dr. David Cohen from National Taiwan University, another co-author, said the study was remarkable because of the multiple lines of evidence involved. "We have the geological evidence of just a huge outburst flood, which is incredible in itself," he said.

"But then there's this coincidence of it co-occurring with the destruction of the Lajia site - which is able to give us very, very precise dates… and then that this flood was of such a scale and corresponds in time, and along the Yellow River, with both the beginnings of Bronze Age civilisation and the legend of the great flood itself.

"It's just this amazing story. All these different approaches coming together - it is just great luck."

Prof David Montgomery of the University of Washington is a geomorphologist with an interest in what rocks can tell us about ancient myths and legends.

He was not involved in the research but wrote a commentary for the journal and discussed the findings on the BBC World Service programme Science in Action. Among the world's various flood myths, Prof Montgomery said, Emperor Yu's story is an odd one.

"It's not about surviving. His basic story is about draining the flood waters; it's about river engineering."

The case made for the Jishi Gorge megaflood is a plausible one, he said, particularly because it describes a flood that would have broken the Yellow River's banks far downstream and re-routed its flow.

Prof Montgomery said this is just the sort of event that would take decades to deal with - and a long battle with the waters is a feature of the Yu myth.

"It's very difficult to ever actually prove the origin of pre-written history events. But they've made a very interesting case, that I'm sure geologists will continue to poke at, and investigate, and argue about - because that's what we do."

At a purely geological level, he added, the flood is a major and intriguing discovery.

"But the cultural connection - possibly explaining the origin of the Chinese flood story - is too intriguing to ignore."

Circa 1900BC: Aryans impose an aristocracy on peasant farmers of Anatolia and set up Hittite city states.

Circa 1900BC: The Amorites (a Semitic people from the west), seize control of Mesopotamia, to rule from Babylon. (City god is Marduk, Babylon's sun-god is Shamash)

1911-1909BC: Ishmael: In 1911, God comes to Abraham in a vision and makes a formal covenant with him (re a "new nation").
In 1910 Sarah gives her Egyptian maid Hagar to Abraham as a concubine to provide him with issue. Hagar gives birth to Ishmael, first son of Abraham. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1911BC: Mesopotamian kings attack Canaan. Lot is captured but is rescued by Abraham. Abraham receives the blessing of Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem (Jerusalem).

1920BC: Abraham: God commands Abraham to leave Terah's household and go into an unknown land where he will father "a great nation". Abraham with Sarah go into Canaan, with Lot and a large household. He settles first in 1919BC at Shechem in Central Canaan, an area God promises to give him. But in 1918BC, a famine strikes Canaan so Abraham goes into Egypt. There, he evidently meets the Pharaoh, since he becomes fearful that Pharaoh desires his wife Sarah, so he terms Sarah as his sister. Sarah is taken by Pharaoh, who is later punished by God with plagues, so Abraham and Sarah are sent from Egypt. By 1915BC; Abraham and Lot have separated, Lot near Sodom and Abraham by Hebron. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

1925BC: Abraham: Terah of Ur and his family including Abraham and Sarah (born 1985BC), who have adopted Lot, son of Haran, move from Ur to city Haran in far north-eastern Mesopotamia. (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

About 1950BC: McNeill on Hebrew people, Abraham, ancestor, migrates from Ur northward to north to Harran and then to Palestine (which name arises from the later Philistines).

1950BC: Appearance of useful records for Assyrian history. In Egypt work begins on the Karnak temple complex for god Amon. Copper and gold are mined.

1950: Third Dynasty of Ur falls to the Babylonians and the Sumerian era ends. (Incidents here affect the life of Abraham?)

1920BC, One date given for time of Abraham, the time the Epic of Gilgamesh is set into writing,

1995BC approx: Abraham: Terah of Ur, who worships the gods of Mesopotamia, has son Abram, later Abraham. Terah also has sons Nahor and Haran (dies 1930BC, Haran has a son, Lot). Sarai, later called Sarah, wife of Abram from 1985BC, is born in

1985BC. (Noah dies in 1935BC at age of 950 years.) (Date from Thomas Robinson, The Bible Timeline)

2000-1600BC, brutal climate change in North Africa, desertifications.

2000BC, Austronesian Expansion reaches Java and Sumatra.

2000BC: Stonehenge is built in England; Marduk is worshipped as the chief god of Babylon;

2000BC: Italy: Earliest Palafitte lake villages.

4000BC-2000BC:, Africa: Sahara is desertified, its people to the north go to Egypt, to east and south, and mingled with existing peoples. Built cities, founded empires with high levels of civilization. The first Negroes were probably fishermen of the Niger and Nile about 4000BC.
(Reader's Digest, The Last Two Million Years, p. 204)

2000BC: Date for use of soap in Babylonians. (James/Thorpe).

Circa 2000BC: Ancestors of the Malays arrive from Yunnan in Southern China.

2000BC: Use of magnifying glasses in Nimrud, Sumer, Mesopotamia. First evidence of such found in 1853 by Sir Austen Henry Layard. (Source: James/Thorpe, p. 157). About fifty such lenses have been found at Troy.

2000BC: By now, the cultural achievements of the Akkadians mean that their Semitic language has over-reached the influence of Sumer, and the predominance of Semitic languages in the Middle East lasts to the present. (Source: McNeill, p. 63.)

By 2000BC: The Trojans have a seafaring influence based on a Cretan model. (From McNeill).

By 2000BC: In China is use of painted pottery with Neolithic/European influences. (From McNeill)

2000BC: Greek-speaking invaders begin the Mycenaean period in Greece. (Mellersh)

2000BC: People are disturbed and move from the steppe lands north of the Caspian Sea and by 1800BC they have moved south and west to Asia Minor, northern Greece and Northern Italy. (Mellersh) Some traders from Mesopotamia travel to India to establish trade links.

2000BC: Approx: Iraq, Doctors use surgical knives made of obsidian. They also use saws, and tools for drilling the human skull (trephining for brain surgery). These doctors seem to have been preceded in the use of surgical instruments by Hindus in India, who used about 120 particular instruments. One "instrument" for sutures after surgery were the jaws of Bengali ants. This suturing technique was also used in South America to try to keep surgical wounds free of infection.

2000BC: Approx: A Stone Age tomb of France suggests that by 2000BC, brain surgery operations (trepanation, boring a circlet of bone from the skill), were known and conducted. In other developments, by 2000BC, Indo-European tribes develop a light spoked wheel. In South America, corn is grown for large populations in the Andes of Peru. By 2000BC in Britain, Stonehenge is built as a religious monument-astronomical observatory. In the Rift Valley of Eastern Africa, cattle farmers make bowls from hollowed-out stone. Cutting tools are made from obsidian. By 2000BC in Crete, indoor bathroom plumbing is used. In Syria, Ammonite princes rule some of the most important cities of Syria and Lebanon.

Note: A view from 1985: An idea that Stonehenge is not and was never intended to be any sort of astronomical device, expressed by Professor of Anthropology at Illinois Institute of Technology, Dr Leon Stover, author of an essay on this topic in: Harry Harrison and Leon Stover, (Novel), Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died: The Mighty Saga of Atlantis and Ancient Britain. Panther/Granada, 1985. See also Leon Stover, Stonehenge and the Origins of Western Culture.

China now has a sex museum, at 479 Nanjing East Road, Shanghai. A goddess for sex workers was Lu Dong Bi. By 2000BC in China was an era of genital worship, with relics reflecting a worship of reproduction. Items include pottery and jade phalluses. A stone penis dates from 1500BC. One exhibit is labelled, "bachelor's masturbation pillow". (Reported 20 May 2000)

2000BC: The seafaring Beaker People (named for their boats) of Spain move into modern southern Germany, Czechoslovakia and Britain; are agricultural, use bow and arrow and bronze. (Mellersh)

2000BC: Approx: Names for the day of the week come cross-culturally from Sumerian gods, Sun is Babylonian god Shamash, Sunday, Monday is Moon, Sin in Babylon, Tuesday is Mars, Nergal, Wednesday is Mercury, Nabu, Thursday is Jupiter, Marduk, Friday is Venus or Ishtar, Saturday is Saturn, Ninurta. There seems to be ancient wisdom in the seven-day calendar as modern science detects a human seven-day bio-rhythm, which affects humans and even simple bacteria. (James/Thorpe, pp. 496-498)

2000BC: Cotton is cultivated and commonly used for textile manufacture in Ur, Sumeria. (James/Thorpe)

From 2000BC or earlier: Plight of Iraq's Marsh Arabs makes for surprises: Before 2003's Iraq War, the plight of Iraq's Marsh Arabs (the Madan) had aroused concern world-wide. Saddam Hussein had drained their marshes. Now, the Marsh Arabs are found to be ambivalent about returning to their old lifestyle, and are seriously tempted to enjoy many fruits of the modern world. Their way of life has existed for 4000-5000 years, and they're believed to be descended from the Sumerians. Their home has been the marshes of Southern Iraq, near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area of about 78,000 sq/km. They lived semi-nomadically, building houses of reeds, fishing and herding water buffalo. In 1980 they numbered about 200,000. After the "First Gulf War" they rose as part of the Shia Revolt and were later suppressed by Hussein's regime. But with the suppression, Hussein's troops found it difficult to move in the marshes, so he had them drained for other reasons as well. To allow military movements during the Iran-Iraq War, because they hold about 50 per cent of Iraq's proven oil reserves, and to punish Shias hiding out in the region. But in any case, water retention projects upstream in Turkey and Syria have reduced water flows to the marshes area; now, perhaps only 30 per cent of the area could be usefully reflooded. Now, the Marsh Arabs face unemployment, poverty and prejudice, and especially where they are educated, they want two worlds, the old and the new; or are prepared to reject the old. Some now grow barley and wheat and make more money than they did before 1990. Two waves of harrassment have displaced many of them, in 1981 from near the Iranian border, and in 1991. (Reported 2-3- August 2003 in Weekend Australian, article by Stephen Farrell)

2006-1792BC, Amorite period in Mesopotamia, struggle between Assyrians and new dynasties are founded by Amorite leaders, such as Larsa, Mari and Babylon.

More olde wive's tales from the Net - Where some expressions came from

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the "honeymoon."

1208BCE: Oldest known mention of Israel.

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