by
Damien F.
Mackey
Patrick
Clarke, Egyptologist, and Creationist reviser of ancient history (to align it
with the Bible), has completely abandoned the revised model as laid out by Dr.
Immanuel Velikovsky of whom Clarke is most critical.
Clarke’s
investigation into the era of the biblical Joseph, son of Jacob, appears to have
certain points in its favour, though, and may well be worthy of consideration.
Introduction
·
Was Thutmose III the biblical Shishak?—Claims for the
‘Jerusalem’ bas-relief at Karnak investigated
to show that two of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s most
famous biblico-historical identifications, Queen Hatshepsut as the “Queen of
Sheba”, and pharaoh Thutmose III as “King Shishak of Egypt”, are untenable. Clarke’s
strength is his knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which he uses to good
effect. It was not one of Velikovsky’s strengths, apparently, as Clarke is
easily able to demolish Velikovsky’s hopeful identifications of objects on
Thutmose III’s Karnak wall with items pertaining to King Solomon, his palace
and the Temple. Dr. John Bimson had once done a similar demolition job on
Velikovsky when he proved beyond doubt that Hatshepsut’s Punt expedition could
not have been the same as the Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon in
Jerusalem (see “Hatshepsut” article below).
But just because aspects of Velikovsky’s key
arguments have been proven wrong does not mean that these two popular identifications
themselves are wholly incorrect.
And I have argued back in favour of them in, for
example:
and:
and, also at Academia.edu:
In the early C20th Harold H. Nelson, Professor Henry Breasted’s talented
student, wrote a doctoral thesis entitled “The Battle of Megiddo”, in which
Nelson painstakingly examined the topographical and tactical aspects... more abstractIn the early C20th Harold H. Nelson,
Professor Henry Breasted’s talented student, wrote a doctoral thesis entitled
“The Battle of Megiddo”, in which Nelson painstakingly examined the
topographical and tactical aspects associated with Thutmose III’s “first
campaign”, whose culmination Breasted believed to have been at the city of
Megiddo. But did what Nelson uncover in this thesis really bear out Breasted’s
presumptions?
Essential to Part One (A) were observations made by Harold H. Nelson in his
doctoral thesis entitled “The Battle of Megiddo” (1913) pertaining to
topography and battle tactics. Egyptologist R. Faulkner published an a... more abstractEssential to Part One (A) were observations
made by Harold H. Nelson in his doctoral thesis entitled “The Battle of
Megiddo” (1913) pertaining to topography and battle tactics. Egyptologist R.
Faulkner published an article of the same title, “The Battle of Megiddo”
(1942), in which he lauded Nelson’s thesis as “admirable” and his “sketch-maps
… indispensable to the student”. Faulkner gave as his justification for
re-visiting the subject, not “any difference of opinion on topographical
questions”, but “because a study of the hieroglyphic text … has led to somewhat
different conclusions on various points regarding the operations”. Here I would
like to recall some of what Faulkner had picked up.
Egyptologists believe that pharaoh Thutmose III had, in his ‘First
Campaign’ against the ‘king of Kadesh’, in the C15th BC, assaulted the strong
fort of Megiddo in northern Israel. Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, however, i... more abstractEgyptologists believe that pharaoh Thutmose
III had, in his ‘First Campaign’ against the ‘king of Kadesh’, in the C15th BC,
assaulted the strong fort of Megiddo in northern Israel. Dr. Immanuel
Velikovsky, however, in his Ages in Chaos (I), whilst accepting that Megiddo
was the pharaoh’s target here, had lowered these dates by 500 years, to the
C10th BC. For Velikovsky, Egypt’s foe was king Rehoboam, and Kadesh, the
“Holy”, was Jerusalem. And Thutmose III was the biblical “Shishak king of Egypt”
(I Kings 14:25). My own view, as expressed in Part One, is that Megiddo could
not have been the location arrived at by the Egyptians – though I would accept
Velikovsky’s dating of Thutmose III. So, what is the preferential geography for
this ‘First Campaign’? And was “Kadesh” indeed Jerusalem?
So far in this series I have embraced the Velikovskian view that pharaoh
Thutmose III had belonged to the C10th BC - rather than to the C15th BC, as
according to the text books - and that he was at least contemporaneo... more abstractSo far in this series I have embraced the
Velikovskian view that pharaoh Thutmose III had belonged to the C10th BC -
rather than to the C15th BC, as according to the text books - and that he was
at least contemporaneous with the biblical “Shishak king of Egypt”. I also
argued, following Dr. Eva Danelius, that Thutmose III’s ‘First Campaign’,
against the “king of Kadesh”, could not have been waged against Megiddo as is
commonly thought. But, now, can Thutmose III be reconciled to “Shishak”, in
both name and military aim?
In his Ages in Chaos, I, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky boldly proclaimed -
against the general view that “Qadesh” was the famous city of that name on the
Orontes - that (p. 163): “Kadesh, the first among the Palestinian c... more abstract In his Ages in Chaos, I, Dr. Immanuel
Velikovsky boldly proclaimed - against the general view that “Qadesh” was the
famous city of that name on the Orontes - that (p. 163): “Kadesh, the first
among the Palestinian cities, was Jerusalem. The “wretched foe”, the king of
Kadesh, was Rehoboam”. However, there is good reason now to think that this
could not have been the case.
Regarding the Chief of Qadesh, Dr. I. Velikovsky had written in Ages in
Chaos, I (Sphere Books, 1973, p. 143): “Who the king of the city of Kadesh was
is not even asked”. So, who may he have been? I have previously ... more abstractRegarding the Chief of Qadesh, Dr. I.
Velikovsky had written in Ages in Chaos, I (Sphere Books, 1973, p. 143): “Who
the king of the city of Kadesh was is not even asked”. So, who may he have
been? I have previously (Part Two C) rejected Velikovsky’s identification of
the Chief of Qadesh as king Rehoboam of Judah, son of Solomon. Here I begin my
search for a new site and identification for “Qadesh” and its ruler.
An attempt will be made here to identify the ruler of Qadesh, who was
Thutmose III’s chief foe during the pharaoh’s First Campaign, and whose
aggressive activities against Egypt were, according to Thutmose, the very r... more abstractAn attempt will be made here to identify
the ruler of Qadesh, who was Thutmose III’s chief foe during the pharaoh’s
First Campaign, and whose aggressive activities against Egypt were, according
to Thutmose, the very reason for this Egyptian military action.
Whilst I have accepted Dr. I. Velikovsky’s revised chronology for pharaoh
Thutmose III, as a contemporary of King Solomon of Israel (C10th BC), and,
hence, an older contemporary of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, I have reje... more abstractWhilst I have accepted Dr. I. Velikovsky’s
revised chronology for pharaoh Thutmose III, as a contemporary of King Solomon
of Israel (C10th BC), and, hence, an older contemporary of Solomon’s son,
Rehoboam, I have rejected his view that the pharaoh’s ‘foe of Qadesh’ was
Rehoboam himself, and that Qadesh (Kd-šw) referred to Jerusalem (the “Holy”).
And in Part Three B I arrived at a new identification for the ruler of Qadesh,
as the biblical Hadad, the Edomite, with Qadesh now referring to Qadesh-Barnea
in the south. Also, with my rejection (along with others) of the pharaoh’s
“Mkty” as Megiddo, in northern Israel, it remains to be determined if this
“Mkty” can be related to Jerusalem (as according to Dr. E. Danelius), in
support of Velikovsky’s Thutmose III = “Shishak”.
According to Dr. I. Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos, I, 1952, p. 155): The
treasures brought by Thutmose III from Palestine [Israel] are reproduced on a
wall of the Karnak temple. The bas-relief displays in ten rows... more abstractAccording to Dr. I. Velikovsky (Ages in
Chaos, I, 1952, p. 155): The treasures brought by Thutmose III from Palestine
[Israel] are reproduced on a wall of the Karnak temple. The bas-relief displays
in ten rows the legendary wealth of Solomon. There are pictures of various precious
objects, furnishings, vessels, and utensils of the Temple, of the palace,
probably also of the shrines to foreign deities. Under each object a numerical
symbol indicates how many of that kind were brought by the Egyptian king from
Palestine: each stroke means one piece, each arch means ten pieces, each spiral
one hundred pieces of the same thing. If Thutmose III had wanted to boast and
to display all his spoils from the Temple and the Palace of Jerusalem by
showing each object separately instead of using this number system, a wall a
mile long would have required and even that would not have sufficed. …. But was
Velikovsky right about this?
Patrick Clarke reminds me somewhat of an earlier
revisionist with SIS, Lester Mitcham,
who made a habit of tearing apart the efforts of fellow revisionists, earning
himself the description of a ‘nit picker’ from David Rohl who was then
valiantly trying to bring some sort of cohesion to the highly complex Third
Intermediate Period of Egyptian history - a historian’s greatest nightmare.
Whilst the critical/analytical approach is necessary, forcing one to a deeper
evaluation of things, ‘keeping us all honest’ as a colleague has recently
noted, those who excel in this approach seem rarely, if ever, to come up with a
compelling alternative. I discussed Mitcham’s case in my:
Bringing New Order to
Mesopotamian History and Chronology
Mitcham’s attempted Mesopotamian revision was a
poor thing, I believe, and certainly failed to gain any stout adherents. And
Clarke, whilst being confident that he has obliterated Hatshepsut and Thutmose
III as candidates for, respectively, “Sheba” and “Shishak”, has, despite
promises for the future, failed to propose any suitable candidates of his own.
Regarding Joseph of Egypt
(i)
Some Points of Criticism re Clarke’s article
Clarke, in his article on Joseph (http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j27_3/j27_3_58-63.pdf)
dismisses the possibility that perhaps the most favoured
candidate for Joseph, vizier Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty, could be Joseph.
He does this partly on his basis that the “godly” Joseph would not have borne
such a pagan name: “Imhotep translates
as Content is Horus (lit. Horus who is content). Again the question must be asked, ‘How
happy would the godly Joseph have been to bear the name of the Egyptian sky
god, Horus?’”
I would reply, ‘How happy would have been the godly Mordecai of the Book
of Esther to have borne the name of the god Marduk (= Mordecai)?’
Moreover, Mordecai was, according to my reconstruction at least, none
other than the godly Daniel himself:
Clarke,
moreover, shrinks from any thought that Imhotep and the Third Dynasty might be
able to be shifted down the time scale by some 700 years, though he is prepared
to shift his candidate for
Joseph’s pharaoh by 300 years: “… [he] appears to meet
these requirements perfectly, needing a movement of three centuries rather that
the stress-inducing seven centuries required by Wyatt [for Imhotep] …”.
More on this in the next section (ii).
But it is not only certain ‘godly’ Creationists who appear to have
difficulty in giving any credibility to Velikovsky. I have been critical of how
former Velikovsky-inspired revisionists have come to light with their so-called
‘new chronologies’ as if Velikovsky had never existed:
Velikovsky was a Jewish nationalist, according to Martin Sieff in his
most interesting paper, “Velikovsky and His Heroes”: http://saturniancosmology.org/files/.cdrom/journals/review/12 and
consequently his heroes seem to have been more the ‘baddies’ of the Bible
(Saul, Ahab), rather than the ‘goodies’ (Moses, Isaiah). But whether or not Velikovsky
believed in God, not to have done so would not disqualify him from being able
to arrive at a right synchronism for the Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty, which I
believe he achieved. Sure, his original model was defective and needed
modifications in various places. But the final result has been an impressive
platform for the re-building of ancient history upon proper foundations. His
critics, including Clarke, have not been able to come anywhere near it.
So, is Velikovsky too ‘ungodly’ for the likes of Creationist Clarke, who
must therefore find a model alternative to Velikovsky’s? I don’t know for sure,
but my own view is that Creationism may not be quite as godly as its exponents
may think it to be. In fact, I believe that it can be quite un-biblical. See
my:
What
Exactly is Creation Science?
(ii)
Some Points of Favour re Clarke’s article
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It wasn’t necessarily always a
‘re-establishment of Old Kingdom policies’, or a ‘return to Old Kingdom
values’. It was, rather, a ‘never having left the Old Kingdom!’
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While Clarke, owing to his complete rejection of
Velikovsky, may have placed himself in a kind of no man’s land, without any
hope now of his finding “Sheba”, or “Shishak”, or biblical others, he may have
managed to score points in “Joseph’s Zaphenath Paaneah”, already mentioned. As
I said, Clarke’s strong point is his knowledge of the hieroglyphs, and it is in
this regard that he may have trumped previous efforts of which there have been
many. Thus Clarke: “A search of the
literature reveals a bewildering number of solutions offered to the meaning of
the Egyptian name of Joseph, Zaphenath Paaneah (Heb. Tsophnath Pa`neach—pronounced tsof·nath’ pah·nā’·akh)”.
And he gives a table 1 listing
some of these.
In providing his own solution
to the problem of the Egyptian name, Clarke begins with this realistic tribute
to the cultured Moses:
Moses spent four decades living as an Egyptian
where “[he] was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in
words (Greek logos) and deeds” (Acts
7:22). This clearly implies that Moses was very accomplished in the use of
words; and not just in speaking. The Egyptian system of teaching was very
thorough and, after four decades of life in the royal household, Moses would
have understood the complexities and applications of the Egyptian language and court
etiquette. Therefore his choice of the Hebrew, Zaphenath Paaneah, is very
likely to be a valid transliteration into Hebrew from the original Egyptian.
Having explained the first part of the name, “Zaphenath” as a title, according to Egyptian norm, Clarke
then proceeds to decipher the second part, “Paaneah”, which is the name by which Joseph will now be called.
And I think that what he comes up with here is excellent. Clarke explains:
The second section, p3nn’i3ḫ , is a proper
name, and like the ending ‘ty of ḏf3n‘ty, exhibits Archaic
traits. This name, p3nn’i3ḫ, is also composed of three elements—p3n ;
n’i ; 3ḫ . The first part, p3n, ‘he of’ is written but there is no grammatical or
historical evidence for it necessarily being vocalized. The second part, n’i,
and the third, 3ḫ, combine to express Joseph’s new Egyptian name literally
as [p3n]n’i3ḫ ‘[He of the] Excellent/Gracious Spirit’ where n’i
translates as ‘excellent/gracious’ and 3ḫ translates as ‘spirit’.
Clarke’s argument
that a name such as the one given to Joseph, “Zaphenath Paaneah”, and the Joseph story in general, are most appropriate in
an Eleventh Dynasty (Early Middle Kingdom) context, is quite in accord with the
following table that I gave in my:
Jacob,
Pharaoh and the Famine. Part Three: Jacob Blesses Pharaoh
Patriarch
|
Old
Kingdom
|
Middle
Kingdom
|
Archaeology
|
Abraham
|
0-I
|
X (?)
|
EBI
|
Joseph
|
[II]- III
|
XI
|
EBII
|
Moses
|
IV-VI
|
XII (XIII)
|
EBIII
|
Joshua
(Conquest)
|
MBI on EB
III/IV
|
||
Anarchy
in Egypt
|
VII-IX (?)
|
XIII-XVII
|
aligning the Eleventh
Dynasty with the Third Dynasty (Imhotep’s). (Famine dynasties).
His choice of
Joseph’s Famine pharaoh is the impressive Mentuhotep II Nebhepetre.
However, a failure to
appreciate that the so-called ‘Old’ and ‘Middle’ Kingdom(s) of Egypt were, in part,
contemporaneous, leads Clarke to a statement such as this one:
Mentuhotep
reestablished [sic] the foreign policies of the Old Kingdom, sending military
expeditions against the Libyan tribes to the west, and the Bedouin to the east
in Sinai. He began the process of bringing Nubia back under Egyptian control,
for the purposes of mining and trade.38
On this,
see my:
It
wasn’t necessarily always a ‘re-establishment of Old Kingdom policies’, or a ‘return
to Old Kingdom values’. It was, rather, a ‘never having left the Old Kingdom!’
Strangely,
Clarke does not refer to any actual Eleventh Dynasty Famine.
Dr. J.
Osgood will locate it, archaeologically, to Late Bronze II (“From Abraham to Exodus”: http://creation.com/from-abraham-to-exodus).
And typically,
Clarke does not end up finding his man, Joseph: “Unfortunately, most of the tombs of 11th Dynasty officials have been vandalized, which makes it impossible to
identify a named official of the time as Joseph”.
Though I
think that his deciperment of Joseph’s name may now provide a positive clue.
More on
that later.
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