Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Abram and Egypt

Abram and Sarai in Egypt


by

Damien F. Mackey




The Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, span the entire period
of Egyptian history from the very first king of the First Dynasty of the Old Kingdom
to, in the case of Moses, the last (woman) ruler king of the so-called Middle Kingdom.




Egyptologists have created too many Egyptian kingdoms and dynasties.
Likewise, regarding the early history of the earth, we are presented with a vast succession of Geological Ages reaching back, say, 4 billion years ago, give or take.
Palaeontology takes us back through the supposedly successive Stone Ages a far more modest 2-3 million years.
Archaeological Ages then follow these earlier ages, all nicely set out in linear, or “Indian file”, fashion. This system, however, is quite artificial, not according with reality. Hence, the already challenging task of trying to marry, particularly the Archaeological Ages, with the historical kingdoms and their dynasties, might seem to have become well-nigh impossible.

Thankfully, though, Dr. John Osgood has already made the task far more manageable, at least, with his “A Better Model for the Stone Ages” series, in which the linear model is rejected on the basis of hard evidence.  
And, regarding the conventional arrangement of the Egyptian Kingdoms (Old, Middle, New), which, too, is linear, Dr. Donovan Courville has argued for the Old and Middle Kingdoms, conventionally separated as to beginnings by (2600-2040 =) about 560 years, to be recognised as being (in part) synchronous.

Here, embracing Dr. Courville’s general thesis (though with quite a different application of it), I would like to attempt to fill out that first ruler of the Old (or Archaïc) Kingdom era of Egypt - the contemporary of Abraham and Isaac - by enfleshing him with a so-called Middle Kingdom aspect or dimension as well.

EXPANDING MENES

Just as I had earlier suggested that the Noachic Flood, when properly deciphered, might serve to bring into some sort of coherent synthesis those unwieldy and vast Geological Ages, so, too, do I believe that the Patriarchs of Genesis (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph), in company with Moses of the Pentateuch, may serve to tidy up the early Egyptian Kingdoms and dynasties. 
And here is a preview of how I think it may be done.
In the course of this book I shall be proposing that those aforementioned Patriarchs and Moses span the entire period of Egyptian history from the very first king of the First Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (as we have already learned) to (and even slightly beyond), in the case of Moses, the last king (actually a woman) of the so-called Middle Kingdom.
Here is the schematic outline of it, with consideration of a possible Second/Tenth Dynasty connection to Abraham and Isaac to follow after it:

Abraham and Isaac (1, 2, 10 dynasties);
Joseph (3, 11 dynasties);
Moses (4-6, 12-13 dynasties).

Dynasties 7-9, which are thought to have followed the collapse of Egypt’s Old Kingdom as a First Intermediate Period (c. 2181-2055 BC), are omitted here.
Dr. Courville identified this period of confusion with the so-called Second Intermediate Period (c. 1782-1570 BC), and I would basically accept this parallel revision of his.
The implications of the drastic revision that I have outlined above are that a period of Egyptian history Sothically calculated as spanning, very roughly, (3100-1780 =) 1320 years, was actually the same 430-year period that we had calculated from the arrival of Abram in Canaan, aged 75, down to the Exodus under Moses.
This is a time discrepancy between Egypt and the Bible of a whacking (1320-430 =) 890 years!

In terms of the Early Bronze Ages (I-IV), these can neatly be set out (to be elaborated on) as:

Abraham and Isaac (EBI);
Jacob and Joseph (EBII);
Moses (EBIII/IV).

Now, in fashion similar to my condensing of the Akkadian dynasty by identifying alter egos, or duplicate rulers, so here do I intend to shorten the early Egyptian history which, I think, fits so poorly against the biblical record. 

The king of Egypt at the time of Abram (Abraham) I have identified as the first ruler of the First Dynasty, the very long-reigning Menes Hor-Aha (‘Min’).
And I have been able - following the structure of the Book of Genesis (toledôt and chiasmus) - to link that ruler with the Abimelech known to Abram (Genesis 20:2) and to Isaac (26:1).
Whilst Abimelech (אֲבִימֶ֙לֶךְ֙) is a Hebrew name, meaning “My Father is King”, I noted that it had a structure and meaning rather similar to that of the supposedly Second Dynasty Egyptian king, Raneb (or Nebra): that is, “Father Ra is King”.

Before I had come to the conclusion that Abram’s ruler of Egypt belonged to the First Dynasty, I had thought - the same as David Rohl, although quite independently of him - that that ruler must have been the Tenth Dynasty’s Khety.
Rohl numbers him as Khety IV Nebkaure, whereas I had numbered the same ruler as Khety III (N. Grimal, I note, has a Khety II Nebkaure, A History of Egypt, pp. 144, 148).
If the so-called Tenth Dynasty were really to be located this early in time, I had thought, then this would have had major ramifications for any attempted reconstruction of Egyptian history. Having Abram’s Egyptian ruler situated in the Tenth Dynasty did fit well with my view then, at least, that Joseph, who arrived on the scene about two centuries after Abraham, had belonged to the Eleventh Dynasty (as well as to the Third, as Imhotep).

Although I would later drop from my revision the notion of Khety (be he II, III or IV) as Abraham’s king of Egypt - not being able to connect him securely to the Old Kingdom era - I am now inclined to return to it.
Previously I had written on this:

So far, however, I have not been able to establish any compelling link between the 1st and 10th Egyptian dynasties (perhaps Aha “Athothis” in 1 can connect with “Akhthoes” in 10). Nevertheless, that pharaoh Khety appears to have possessed certain striking likenesses to Abram’s [king] has not been lost on David Rohl as well, who, in From Eden to Exile: The Epic History of the People of the Bible (Arrow Books, 2003), identified the “Pharaoh” with Khety (Rohl actually numbers him as Khety IV). And he will further incorporate the view of the Roman author, Pliny, that Abram’s “Pharaoh” had a name that Rohl considers to be akin to Khety’s prenomen: Nebkaure.  

Here, for what it is worth, is what I have written about pharaoh Khety III:
  
There is a somewhat obscure incident in 10th dynasty history, associated with … Wahkare Khety III and the nome of Thinis, that may possibly relate to the biblical incident [of “Pharaoh” and Abram’s wife]. It should be noted firstly that Khety III is considered to have had to restore order in Egypt after a general era of violence and food shortage, brought on says N. Grimal by “the onset of a Sahelian climate, particularly in eastern Africa” [A History of Ancient Egypt, Blackwell, 1994, p. 139].

Moreover, Khety III’s “real preoccupation was with northern Egypt, which he succeeded in liberating from the occupying populations of Bedouin and Asiatics” [ibid., p. 145]. Could these eastern nomads have been the famine-starved Syro-Palestinians of Abram’s era - including the Hebrews themselves - who had been forced to flee to Egypt for sustenance? And was Khety III referring to the Sarai incident when, in his famous Instruction addressed to his son, Merikare, he recalled, in regard to Thinis (ancient seat of power in Egypt):

Lo, a shameful deed occurred in my time:
The nome of This was ravaged;
Though it happened through my doing,
I learned it after it was done.
[Emphasis added].
Cf. Genesis 12:17-19:

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai ....
So Pharaoh called Abram, and said,
‘What is this you have done to me?
Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?
Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? so that I took her for my wife?
Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone’.

It may now be possible to propose some (albeit tenuous) links between the era of Khety and what is considered to be the far earlier Old Kingdom period to which I would assign Abraham. N. Grimal refers to another Aha (that being the name of Abraham’s proposed contemporary, Hor-Aha) as living at the same time as Khety II.
Another tentative suggestion would be that the legendary Nebka, ruler of Egypt, whom Grimal and the likes find difficult to locate precisely in early Egyptian history, was Nebkaure, Nebkare, Pliny’s traditional ruler of Egypt at the time of Abraham – and Khety Nebkaure according to David Rohl.
This name, in turn, Nebka, may then allow for a link also to be made with Raneb, whose name we have found to be like Abimelech.
There may be yet more to this king, since “Egyptologist Jochem Kahl argues that Weneg was the same person as king Raneb …”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weneg_(pharaoh)

If Menes Hor-Aha (‘Min’) had really reigned for more than sixty years (Manetho-Africanus), then he is likely to have accumulated many other names and titles.

We may need to start investigating First, Second and Tenth Dynasty inter-connections.

The ancient Egyptians are not renowned for their sea-faring abilities.
Author-mariner Gavin Menzies might dispute this. 
The Akkadian-Assyrian name for Egypt was “Magan”, and we learn that: “… the ships from Magan … [Sargon] made tie-up alongside the quay of Akkad”.
The era of Sargon of Akkad I have synchronised with the First Dynasty of Egypt, and N. Grimal tells of “boats” being referred to in the Palermo Stone in connection with the ruler, Aha.




Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Biblically affirming Ebla (Tell Mardikh) data hampered and censored by authorities


The first kingdom at its greatest extent, including vassals
The first kingdom at its greatest extent,


It is sad to see Truth brushed aside for the sake of political agenda.
That is exactly what has happened at the important site of Tell Mardikh: Ebla,

Thus in an article written in 1979, Boyce Rensberger wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/17/archives/syria-accused-of-sealing-archeology-data-syria-accused-of.html
Syria Accused of Sealing Archeology Data
A leading archeology journal has charged that Syrian authorities are trying to suppress the findings of scholars who are deciphering the huge cache of inscribed clay tablets discovered amid the ruins of the 4,500‐year‐old Kingdom of Ebla.
The recent discovery of Ebla in Syria, with the thousands of tablets in its palace archive, is regarded as one of the great archeological finds of the century. Research at Ebla is shedding light on the political and economic nature of humanity's earliest large cities.
The current controversy stems, however, not from such secular matters but from the religious and ethnic affinities of the Eblaite people. Preliminary reports from the scholars suggested that the tablets contained numerous references linking Ebla to the world of the biblical Hebrews.
The tablets reportedly contain references to persons with names resembling those of the ancient Hebrew patriarchs and to cities, prominent cities Bible stories, that heretofore were thought to have been mostly allegorical. Speculation has even gone so far as to suggest that the ancient Eblaites may have been early Hebrews or, at least, that Ebla was stronghold of Hebrew cultural influence.

Syria, whose recent policies have been strongly anti‐Zionist, has reportedly exerted pressure on ar cheologists and linguists working at the Ebla ruins to stop speculation on biblical links and to emphasize instead Ebla's role in “proto‐Syrian history.” The Ebla research is being conducted by an Italian team whose continued access to the site depends on permission from the Syrian Government.
The charges of improper political interference were made by Hershel Shanks, the editor of Biblical Archeology Review, the journal of the Washingtonbased Biblical Archeology Society.
In a lengthy article in the current issue, Mr. Shanks also calls for prompt publication of some key tablets that, at least until recently, were said to contain important biblical references. Not one of the 15,000 or more tablets has been made available, even in a readable photograph, to the scholarly community.
Word of the tablets’ content has come almost entirely from the linguist who first deciphered their Semitic language. That linguist, Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome, has since issued a subtly worded “declaration” saying that news media have exaggerated the biblical implications of EbIa. “We are not authorized,” he wrote, “to make the inhabitants of Ebla ‘predecessors of Israel.’ ”
The statement was issued at the request of the Syrian Antiquities Department and was published in a Syrian Government magazine called Flash of Damascus Although the statement does not flatly deny an Ebla‐Israel link, the English‐language magazine commented that the statement “refutes all Zionist allegations aimed at defacing Syrian Arab history and emphasizes the antiquity of the Syrian civilization and its wide fame.”

Before issuing the statement, Professor Pettinato had described, in articles and speeches. a number of connections between Ebla and the Bible. These include an Eblaite creation and Flood story resembling those of Genesis; personal names such as Abram, Esau. Israel, Michael, Saul, Ishmael and David, all of which figure prominently in the Bible; the names of several cities otherwise known only from the Bible; and references to deities named El and Ya, biblical names for the god of the Hebrews.
None of the documentation for these statements — the actual tablets — has been made publicly available. Although long delays in publishing archeological discoveries are common, Mr. Shanks suggested in an interview that Syria's political pressure may also be playing a role in keeping the Ebla tablets under wraps.
Biblical Significance
“I can't think of any other finds that are as directly significant for helping us understand the Bible as these tablets would be.” Mr. Shanks said.
The director of the Italian team at Ebla, Paolo Matthiae, has also now repudiated the biblical connections. In the same issue of Flash of Damascus, Professor Matthiae is quoted as calling the biblical links “antiscientific and antihistorical speculation that I vigorously deplore.”
Since writing his declaration. Professor Pettinato has resigned his position with the Ebla research team. He and Professor Matthiae had long been feuding over a number of matters, and at one point, Professor Pettinato was removed from his position as sole translator of the tablets and made one of 10 members of a new international committee of linguists that was to do the translations.
According to Biblical Archeology Review, Professor Pettinato resigned because he was dissatisfied with the way Professor Matthiae was running the committee. Paraphrasing Professor Pettinato's remarks, the magazine said, “The way Matthiae is organizing things, the Ebla tablets won't be published for 300 years.”
In his call for the Ebla researchers to publish some of the tablets, Mr. Shanks singled out one. known as TM‐75‐1860, that has been said to bear on the historical accuracy of Genesis 14.
Mr. Shanks said the accuracy of this chapter could help establish whether there really was an Age of Patriarchs, such as Abraham. Genesis 14 speaks of a military campaign led by Abraham and mentions five Dead Sea city‐states, including Sodom ane. Gomorrah. Scholors have had no other evidence that the city‐states existed.


Monday, April 6, 2020

Pharaohs known to Old Testament Israel


Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt 


by 
Damien F. Mackey


The use of the term “pharaoh” (פַרְעֹ֔ה) as a title as early as Genesis 12:15
is likely anachronistic – a later editing – as it appears that this term was applied
to the rulers of Egypt only late, during so-called New Kingdom Egyptian history. 

Part One: Naming the ruler by title only

Joshua J. Mark explains that “Pharaoh” was a Greek version of the Egyptian pero or per-a-a, meaning “Great House”: https://www.ancient.eu/pharaoh/ 

The Pharaoh in ancient Egypt was the political and religious leader of the people and held the titles ‘Lord of the Two Lands’ and ‘High Priest of Every Temple’. The word ‘pharaoh’ is the Greek form of the Egyptian pero or per-a-a, which was the designation for the royal residence and means `Great House’. The name of the residence became associated with the ruler and, in time, was used exclusively for the leader of the people.



The early monarchs of Egypt were not known as pharaohs but as kings. The honorific title of `pharaoh’ for a ruler did not appear until the period known as the New Kingdom (c.1570-c.1069 BCE) [sic]. Monarchs of the dynasties before the New Kingdom were addressed as `your majesty’ by foreign dignitaries and members of the court and as `brother’ by foreign rulers; both practices would continue after the king of Egypt came to be known as a pharaoh.

[End of quote]


Here, however, I shall be following the biblical usage by referring even to the early rulers of Egypt as “Pharaoh”.





Pharaoh One: Genesis 12:10-20


The ruler of Egypt who abducted Abram’s wife, Sarai, at the time of the famine, is simply called “Pharaoh”:

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are.

When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.

But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.


He seems to be, from this text, a not entirely unreasonable character.

The same may be said about the “Pharaoh” of Joseph also at the time of a famine.

The life of Moses, though, right down to the Exodus (80 years), experienced only persecuting, hard-hearted pharaohs.

Now, it was standard practice amongst the early Egyptian scribes not to name their Pharaoh (see e.g. professor A. S. Yahuda’s The Language of the Pentateuch in its Relation to Egyptian, Oxford, 1933), despite the fact that the rulers of Egypt had a multiplicity of names.

Ishmael, whose toledôt history records the abduction of Sarai, was born of an Egyptian mother, Hagar (some traditions say that she was the daughter of Pharaoh), and he later married an Egyptian, and accordingly, perhaps, followed Egyptian practice.

Moses, having been educated in Egypt (Acts 7:22) would have been expected to – and does in fact – do the same.

And before Moses, Joseph must have become thoroughly Egyptianised as to court protocol and Egyptian etiquette.


However, when we come to Isaac’s toledôt history, telling the same story of the abduction of Sarai – but whom Isaac names, Sarah (his actual mother):


Toledôt Explains Abram’s Pharaoh

https://www.academia.edu/26239534/Toled%C3%B4t_Explains_Abrams_Pharaoh


–  the Pharaoh is finally named. He is “Abimelech”.

In my article (above) we even find that the elements, “Pharaoh” and “Abimelech”, connecting in a chiastic structure – although this does not inevitably mean personal identity.

Isaac (or whoever wrote his toledôt) was under no such constraint to follow Egyptian practice.

This may bring us to another point that will be raised in this series. The name given to a biblical pharaoh may not necessarily be an Egyptian name, but simply the name by which that ruler is known to the Hebrews (Israelites, Jews). Still, “Abimelech” may be compatible in meaning with an Egyptian-style name. See my article:

Comparing the Meaning of Names “Abimelech” and Egyptian “Raneb”


https://www.academia.edu/31154538/Comparing_the_Meaning_of_Names_Abimelech_and_Egyptian_Raneb_


“… the majority of scholars believe that Abimelech was not really a personal name but rather a Philistine royal title, not unlike Pharaoh in Egypt, Candace in Cush or Caesar in Rome”.

http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Abimelech.html#.XJmhtJgzaU


Egypt at this time, we have found, to have taken possession of southern Canaan (or Philistia), hence we get a “Pharaoh” who is also a “king of the Philistines” (Genesis 26:1).

And this, Abram’s “Pharaoh”, I have determined, having ruled from Abram to the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah, must have been an early Pharaoh who reigned for a half century and more.
I thus favour for this biblical “Pharaoh” the very first dynastic ruler, Hor-Aha (Min = Menes).

For more on this, see e.g. my article:

Dr. W.F. Albright’s Game-Changing Chronological Shift

https://www.academia.edu/15313044/Dr._W.F._Albright_s_Game-Changing_Chronological_Shift

If Dr. Albright was correct in his view that the Egyptian Manium (or Mannu), against whom the Akkadian potentate Naram-Sin (c. 2200 BC conventional dating) successfully waged war, was none other than the legendary first pharaoh Menes, himself, then that must lead to the shocking conclusion that the beginning of the Egyptian dynastic history (c. 3100 BC conventional dating) is a millennium out of whack with Akkadian history.

I have even been tempted to try to equate the name “Abimelech” with “Lehabim”, the son of Mizraim (or Egypt). Someone has picked up an old post of mine regarding this:

Genesis 10:6-14
The sons of Ham were Cush and Mizraim and Put and Canaan.  The sons of Cush were Seba and Havilah and Sabtah and Raamah and Sabteca; and the sons of Raamah were Sheba and Dedan.  Now Cush became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.”  The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.  Mizraim became the father of Ludim and Anamim and Lehabim and Naphtuhim and Pathrusim and Casluhim (from which came the Philistines) and Caphtorim.
….
Would not the King Abimelech, contemporary of Abram, be Lehabim (= Abim-lech), son of Mizraim?



Part Two: Who were the nameless Pharaohs of Joseph and Moses?


“Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt”.

Exodus 1:8


Right at the beginning of my article:


Moses – may be staring revisionists right in the face. Part One: Historical Moses has presented quite a challenge

https://www.academia.edu/36803416/Moses_may_be_staring_revisionists_right_in_the_face._Part_One_Historical_Moses_has_presented_quite_a_challenge


I declared this with regard to revisionists who are trying to set the biblical Joseph, historically, in the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, and who then have to try to find a suitable place for Moses:

If any revisionist historian had placed himself in a good position, chronologically, to identify in the Egyptian records the patriarch Joseph, then it was Dr. Donovan Courville, who had, in The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, I and II (1971), proposed that Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms were contemporaneous. That radical move on his part might have enabled Courville to bring the likeliest candidate for Joseph, the Vizier Imhotep of the Third Dynasty, into close proximity with the Twelfth Dynasty – the dynasty that revisionists most favour for the era of Moses.

Courville, however, chose to set Joseph in the (so-called Middle Kingdom) Twelfth Dynasty, the dynasty of Moses, thereby losing the opportunity historically to identify both Joseph and Moses. And certain revisionists have tended to follow him in that direction.

Some revisionists recently, though, have woken up to the fact that by far the best historical candidate (or so I have long thought) for the “new king” (מֶלֶךְ-חָדָשׁ) of Exodus 1:8 is pharaoh Amenemes (Amenemhat) I, the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty.

See my article on this:


Twelfth Dynasty oppressed Israel



https://www.academia.edu/38553314/Twelfth_Dynasty_oppressed_Israel



Joseph’s “Pharaoh” of the Famine era thus pre-dated the Twelfth Dynasty, and is best found as pharaoh Zoser of the so-called Old Kingdom’s Third Dynasty, with Joseph himself being the genius Vizier, Imhotep.

What Dr. Courville’s revision has enabled us to do, however, is to revise Egypt’s Old Kingdom in relation to the Middle Kingdom, thereby bringing the Third Dynasty (Joseph’s) into far closer proximity to the Twelfth Dynasty (Moses’s).

The “new king” of Exodus 1:8, Amenemes I, can then be linked to his pharaonic mirror-image Sixth Dynasty counterpart, pharaoh Teti:

Moses may help link 6th and 12th dynasties of Egypt

https://www.academia.edu/35653614/Moses_may_help_link_6th_and_12th_dynasties_of_Egypt


which move, in turn, facilitates the identification of Moses historically as the Sixth Dynasty’s Chief Judge and Vizier (another genius), Weni, who served pharaohs Teti, Pepi and Merenre.

Moses can then also be the Chief Judge and Vizier, Mentuhotep, of Egypt’s Twelfth Dynasty – this Mentuhotep being Dr. Courville’s actual choice for Joseph.


So far in this series we have concluded that:

The “Pharaoh” of Abram (Abraham) and Isaac was also known as “Abimelech” (may possibly be the biblical Lehabim), and may, historically, have been Hor-Aha (Min = Menes) of the First Dynasty;

The “Pharaoh” of the Famine era of Joseph was Zoser of the Third Dynasty;

The “new king” of Moses’s infancy was Teti of the Sixth Dynasty = Amenemes I of the Twelfth Dynasty.



Part Three: During United Kingdom Era

Going by memory, here, I can think of a potential three Pharaohs (biblically mentioned as such) who ruled Egypt during Israel’s era of the United Kingdom of kings Saul, David and Solomon.

The first of these was reigning at the time of King David, according to I Kings 11:15-20:


Earlier when David was fighting with Edom, Joab the commander of the army, who had gone up to bury the dead, had struck down all the men in Edom. Joab and all the Israelites stayed there for six months, until they had destroyed all the men in Edom. But Hadad, still only a boy, fled to Egypt with some Edomite officials who had served his father. They set out from Midian and went to Paran. Then taking people from Paran with them, they went to Egypt, to Pharaoh king of Egypt, who gave Hadad a house and land and provided him with food. Pharaoh was so pleased with Hadad that he gave him a sister of his own wife, Queen Tahpenes, in marriage. The sister of Tahpenes bore him a son named Genubath, whom Tahpenes brought up in the royal palace. There Genubath lived with Pharaoh’s own children.

The second one was ruler around about the beginning of the reign of Solomon (I Kings 9:16): “Pharaoh king of Egypt had attacked and captured Gezer. He then burned it, killed the Canaanites who lived in the city, and gave it as a dowry to his daughter, Solomon’s wife”.

The third one, now towards the end of the reign of king Solomon, is actually named.

He is “Shishak” (I Kings 11:40): “Solomon tried to kill Jeroboam, but Jeroboam fled to Egypt, to Shishak the king, and stayed there until Solomon’s death”.

Soon, I shall be adding to these a fourth, though biblically unspecified (that is, as “Pharaoh”).

If it were not for the research of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, in his series Ages in Chaos, we would still be floundering around within the conventional system, trying desperately to find archaeological and documentary evidence for Israel’s United Kingdom amidst the murky – and archaeologically entirely inappropriate – Third Intermediate Period (so-called) of Egyptian history (c. 1069-525 BC, conventional dating).

Velikovsky happily aligned the rise of the United Kingdom of Israel with the beginning of the famous Eighteenth Egyptian Dynasty (c. 1540-1295 BC, conventional dating), now to be lowered on the timescale by some 500 years by Velikovsky. With this new scheme set in place, kings Saul and David became contemporaneous with the first Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs Ahmose, Amenhotep I and Thutmose I.

Velikovsky, in Ages in Chaos 1 (p. 99), even claimed to have historically identified the above-mentioned “Queen Tahpenes”, as belonging to first pharaoh, Ahmose:


This was in the days of David. The pharaoh must have been one by the name of
Ahmose. Among his queens must have been one by the name Tahpenes. We open the register of the Egyptian queens to see whether Pharaoh Ahmose had a queen by this name. Her name is actually preserved and read Tanethap, Tenthape, or, possibly, Tahpenes ….

Thutmose I fits nicely into place for Velikovsky as our second Pharaoh, who attacked Gezer. Dr. John Bimson once argued that this identification appears to be supported archaeologically. I had previously written on this:

Velikovsky had identified David’s era as the same as that of the 18th dynasty pharaoh, Thutmose I, as Dr. J. Bimson tells when providing an appropriate stratigraphy (“Can there be a Revised Chronology without a Revised Stratigraphy?”, SIS: Proceedings. Glasgow Conference, April, 1978):

In Velikovsky’s chronology, this pharaoh is identified as Thutmose I [ref. Ages in Chaos, iii, “Two Suzerains”] … In the revised stratigraphy considered here, we would expect to find evidence for this destruction of Gezer at some point during LB [Late Bronze] I, and sure enough we do, including dramatic evidence of burning [ref. Dever et al., Gezer I (1970, pp.54-55 …)].

[End of quote]


Now Thutmose I’s famous (so-called) “daughter”, Hatshepsut, who does figure in the Bible, apparently, but not as a “Pharaoh” (which she would become later, nonetheless), and who was brilliantly identified by Velikovsky as the biblical Queen of Sheba (or Queen of the South), will be that fourth “Pharaoh” to whom I referred above as being “biblically unspecified”.

Though not of royal Egyptian blood, Thutmose I had married pharaoh Amenhotep I’s sister, according to some views. ….

Thutmose I is generally considered to have become the father of Hatshepsut. “Yet”, according to Gay Robins” (“The Enigma of Hatshepsut”), “none of Thutmose I’s monuments even mentions his daughter”: https://www.baslibrary.org/archaeology-odyssey/2/1/11

But what I have suggested is that pharaoh Thutmose I, when crowning Hatshepsut, used a tri-partite coronation ceremony that uncannily followed the tri-partite pattern of David’s coronation of his son, Solomon. See my article:

Thutmose I Crowns Hatshepsut


https://www.academia.edu/26201708/Thutmose_I_Crowns_Hatshepsut



For kings first and second above no actual name is given as we have learned.

Both are called “Pharaoh king of Egypt”.

We have noted in this series that that was an Egyptian trait – “Pharaoh” being un-named by Egyptianised biblical writers, Ishmael (at least in his toledôt history), and Joseph and Moses.

Now there is the possibility that the accounts of our first (I Kings 11) and second (I Kings 9) pharaohs in this article were recorded by the Egyptianised king Solomon (Senenmut), in his “book of the annals of Solomon” according to a verse (I Kings 11:41) following these texts.

The only “Pharaoh” who is actually named in the Bible for this particular period is our third one, “Shishak”. Chronologically speaking – especially in Velikovsky’s context of Hatshepsut as Solomon’s contemporaneous Queen of Sheba – this “Shishak” can only be, as Velikovsky had indeed identified him, pharaoh Thutmose III (the “Napoleon of Egypt”: Breasted), who reigned contemporaneously with Hatshepsut.

See also my article on this:


Solomon and Sheba

https://www.academia.edu/3660164/Solomon_and_Sheba


for my identification of Solomon-in-Egypt as the famous, quasi-royal official, Senenmut (var. Senmut), thought by some to have been ‘the real power behind Hatshepsut’s throne’.


Moreover, the “Genubath” whom Queen Tahpenes bore to Hadad, as we read above, Velikovsky claimed to have identified, now as a people, at the time of “Shishak”/Thutmose III.

I wrote of this in my as follows:

As for “Genubath”, the son of Hadad, Velikovsky had rather strikingly identified his name amongst those giving tribute to Thutmose III, very soon after the latter’s First Campaign. Velikovsky wrote about it (in ch. iv) in “Genubath, King of Edom” (pp. 179-180):

Hadad had returned to Edom in the days of Solomon, after the death of Joab [I Kings 11:21-22]. Since then about forty years had elapsed. Genubath, his son, was now the vassal king of Edom …. Tribute from this land, too, must have been sent to the Egyptian crown; there was no need to send an expedition to subdue Edom. When Thutmose III returned from one of his inspection visits to Palestine he found in Egypt tribute brought by couriers from the land, “Genubatye”, which did not have to be conquered by an expeditionary force.

When his majesty arrived in Egypt the messengers of the Genubatye came bearing their tribute.3 [3. Breasted: Records, Vol. II, Sec. 474].

It consisted of myrrh, “negroes for attendants”, bulls, calves, besides vessels laden with ivory, ebony, and skins of panther.

Who were the people of Genubatye? Hardly a guess has been made with regard to this peculiar name. The people of Genubatye were the people of Genubath, their king, contemporary of Rehoboam.

Velikovsky had, in the course of his historical revision – and despite his obvious mistakes – managed to come up with many such brilliant and helpful identifications as this one pertaining to Genubath – an identification obviously impossible in the conventional system, with Egypt’s 18th dynasty and the biblical Genubath separated in time by some 500 years.

[End of quotes]


While there is still plenty of work to be done by revisionists, especially to modify appropriately certain controversial aspects of the “Shishak” identification, I would now consider Velikovsky’s Hatshepsut-Sheba and Thutmose III-Shishak twin identifications to be firm pillars of the revision. Revisionists who have rejected these twin links have inevitably failed to come up with any plausible alternatives.

Recently a researcher has tried to shift the identification of “Shishak” to Thutmose III’s successor, pharaoh Amenhotep II. For more detail on all of this, see my series beginning with:

Slightly Shifting “Shishak”


https://www.academia.edu/36014694/Slightly_Shifting_Shishak_


This writer, a Creationist believer in a biblical literalism, may perhaps be inconsistent in looking for the name “Shishak” in Amenhotep II’s nebty name, considering that the Bible appears to use only the Egyptian prenomen or nomen whenever it actually names a pharaoh.

We shall find this to be the case in Part Four.

Here is a small, but relevant section of my interchange with this researcher in Part Two: https://www.academia.edu/36157096/Slightly_Shifting_Shishak_._Part_Two_Response_to_my_critique 

The article under review follows a conga-line of revisionists who have tried to find an Egyptian explanation for the biblical name, “Shishak”, in this case taking the Egyptian nebty name of pharaoh Amenhotep II, weser fau, sekha em waset, whilst admitting that:

“At first glance, this name might not look like “Shishak”.”

And with very good reason, I say. It looks nothing like it!

It certainly does look like it. I recognized it at once when I saw it. The “f” seemed to be in the way, until I researched it and discovered that they didn’t have the “f” sound back then.

I found perhaps more plausible K. Birch’s suggestion (“Shishak Mystery?”, C and C Workshop, SIS, No. 2, 1987, p. 35) that “Shishak” may derive from pharaoh Thutmose III’s Golden Horus name, Djeser-khau [“chase a cow”] (dsr h‘w): “… the (Golden) Horus names of Thutmose III comprise variations on: Tcheser-khau, Djeser-khau …”.

[End of quotes]

More than likely, though, I think that the name “Shishak” was the name by which young Thutmose III was known to king Solomon and his court in his close relationship with his relative, Hatshepsut-Sheba.

Solomon had officials, secretaries, whose father was named “Shisha” (I Kings 4:1-3):

So King Solomon ruled over all Israel.

And these were his chief officials:

Azariah son of Zadok—the priest;

Elihoreph and Ahijah, sons of Shisha—secretaries ….



Part Four: During Divided Kingdom Era

Going by memory, here, I can think of a potential four Pharaohs who ruled Egypt during Israel’s era of the Divided Kingdom (c.930–c.586 BC, conventional dating).


The first of these was this enigmatic ruler at the time of Assyria’s Shalmaneser and Israel’s Hoshea (2 Kings 17:4):

But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea was a traitor, for he had sent envoys to So king of Egypt, and he no longer paid tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year. Therefore Shalmaneser seized him and put him in prison.

“So king of Egypt”.

Intriguingly, the Lucianic tradition of the LXX refers instead to “Adrammelech the Ethiopian, living in Egypt” (Duane L. Christensen, “The Identity of “King So” in Egypt”, Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 39, Fasc. 2 April., 1989, p. 141).

The second one was Tirhakah, and happily by now we have far more solid Egypto-Assyrian historical links. Tirhakah is especially famous for this incident (Isaiah 37:9-10):

Now Sennacherib received a report that Tirhakah, the king of Cush, was marching out to fight against him. When he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah with this word: ‘Say to Hezekiah king of Judah: Do not let the god you depend on deceive you when he says, ‘Jerusalem will not be given into the hands of the king of Assyria’.’

The third one, late in the reign of King Josiah of Judah, is Necho, who actually killed Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:20-24):

After all this, when Josiah had set the Temple in order, Necho king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. But Necho sent messengers to him, saying, ‘What quarrel is there, king of Judah, between you and me?

It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God, who is with me, or he will destroy you’.

Josiah, however, would not turn away from him, but disguised himself to engage him in battle. He would not listen to what Necho had said at God’s command but went to fight him on the plain of Megiddo.

Archers shot King Josiah, and he told his officers, ‘Take me away; I am badly wounded.”  So they took him out of his chariot, put him in his other chariot and brought him to Jerusalem, where he died’.


From the Assyrian records we know that Tirhakah and Necho were contemporaneous rulers of Egypt and/or Ethiopia.

And what tightens things even further, at least according to my revised version of chronology, is that King Hezekiah of Judah, a contemporary of King Hoshea of Israel (and hence of So king of Egypt), is to be identified with Josiah of Judah (and hence was also a contemporary of Necho king of Egypt). For this chronological tightening, see e.g. my article:

‘Taking aim on’ king Amon – such a wicked king of Judah

https://www.academia.edu/37575781/Taking_aim_on_king_Amon_-_such_a_wicked_king_of_Judah


The fourth is this one at the time of King Nebuchednezzar II (Jeremiah 44:30):

This is what the LORD says: ‘I am going to deliver Pharaoh Hophra king of Egypt into the hands of his enemies who want to kill him, just as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the enemy who wanted to kill him’.

It needs to be said of these four named pharaohs that some may turn out to be duplicates.
That is unlikely to be the case, though, with Tirhakah and Necho, who appear from the Assyrian records to have been two distinct rulers at the time of Ashurbanipal (or Assur-bani-pal): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Assur-Bani-Pal

ASSUR-BANI-PAL (“Assur creates a son”), the grand monarque of Assyria, was the prototype of the Greek Sardanapalus, and appears probably in the corrupted form of Asnapper in Ezra iv. 10. He had been publicly nominated king of Assyria (on the 12th of Iyyar) by his father Esar-haddon, some time before the latter’s death, Babylonia being assigned to his twin-brother Samas-sum-yukin, in the hope of gratifying the national feeling of the Babylonians.

After Esar-haddon’s death in 668 B.C. the first task of Assur-bani-pal was to finish the Egyptian campaign. Tirhakah, who had reoccupied Egypt, fled to Ethiopia, and the Assyrian army spent forty days in ascending the Nile from Memphis to Thebes. Shortly afterwards Necho, the satrap of Sais, and two others were detected intriguing with Tirhakah; Necho and one of his companions were sent in chains to Nineveh, but were there pardoned and restored to their principalities. Tirhakah died 667 B.C. ….

In my reconstructed history the neo-Assyrian succession from Esarhaddon to Ashurbanipal becomes altered. Esarhaddon, following Sennacherib, is now identified as Ashurbanipal. Whilst Esarhaddon-Ashurbanipal is now further identified as Nebuchednezzar II.

See my series on this most radical revision:


Aligning Neo Babylonia with Book of Daniel. Part One: Shortening the Chaldean Dynasty

https://www.academia.edu/38330231/Aligning_Neo_Babylonia_with_Book_of_Daniel._Part_One_Shortening_the_Chaldean_Dynasty

Aligning Neo-Babylonia with Book of Daniel. Part Two: Merging late neo-Assyrians with Chaldeans

https://www.academia.edu/38330399/Aligning_Neo-Babylonia_with_Book_of_Daniel._Part_Two_Merging_late_neo-Assyrians_with_Chaldeans

I have also suggested, in light of this revision, that Necho I and Necho II of conventional history might be condensed into just the one pharaoh Necho.

What we find with our potentially four pharaohs in this article is that all of them are named:
“So”; “Tirhakah”; “Necho” and “Hophra”.
Of these, “So” – just like “Shishak” – may not be an actual Egyptian name, but the name by which the pharaoh was known to the scribes of Israel. Conventional scholars have searched long and hard for him, always destined to arrive at a dead end.
The situation is briefly summed up at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaohs_in_the_Bible

2 Kings 17:4 says that king Hoshea sent letters to “So, King of Egypt”. No pharaoh of this name is known for the time of Hoshea (about 730 BC), during which Egypt had three dynasties ruling contemporaneously: 22nd at Tanis23rd at Leontopolis, and 24th at Sais. Nevertheless, this ruler is commonly identified with Osorkon IV (730–715 BC) who ruled from Tanis,[5][6] though it is possible that the biblical writer has mistaken the king with his city and equated So with Sais, at this time ruled by Tefnakht.

Dr. Courville was far closer to the mark (The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, 1971) when he proposed for “So” the great Ramses II himself of the Nineteenth Egyptian Dynasty. Though his suggestion that “So” was derived from the Suten Bat name of Ramses II is far-fetched. Moreover, Courville had the long reign of a now-aged Ramses II concluding with the ‘So’ incident, whereas I think that the ‘So’ era would be far closer to the beginning of the reign of Ramses II. Previously I have written on this:

Courville’s hopeful derivation of the name, ‘So’, from a Suten Bat name of Ramses II is far from convincing. I wrote of this in my university thesis:

A Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and its Background

AMAIC_Final_Thesis_2009.pdf

(Volume One, p. 266):

Now according to Courville’s system … Ramses II, whose reign would have terminated in 726/725 BC, must have been the biblical “King So of Egypt” with whom Hoshea of Israel conspired against the king of Assyria (2 Kings 17:4).

Courville had plausibly (in his context) suggested that the reason why ‘So’ was unable to help Hoshea of Israel was because the Egyptian king was, as Ramses II, now right at the end of his very long reign, and hence aged and feeble.

Courville had looked to find the name ‘So’ amongst the many names of Ramses II, and had opted for the rather obscure ‘So’ element in that pharaoh’s Suten Bat name, Ra-user-Maat-Sotep-en-Ra.727 (See also pp. 286-287). ….

[End of quotes]

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples


THE SUN TEMPLE OF NIUSERRE AT ABU GURAB
 

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
  
 
A similar problem arises with the so-called Fifth Dynasty,
with four of its supposed six sun temples undiscovered.
 
 
 
 
A different approach is obviously needed when, after decades or more of searching, a famous ancient capital city such as Akkad (Agade) cannot be found; nor the tombs of virtually an entire dynasty (Egyptian Second); nor four whole sun temples (Egyptian Fifth).
 
The Second Dynasty of Egypt, however - whose beginning I would re-date to about a millennium later than does the conventional model - appears to overlap, in great part, with (according to what I have already tentatively determined) the very beginnings of Egyptian dynastic history.  
That the Second Dynasty may be, to a great extent at least, a duplication of the First Dynasty, may be supported by the disturbing (for Egyptologists) non-existence of Second Dynasty burials (Miroslav Verner, Abusir, p. 16. My emphasis): “The tombs of the rulers of the Second Dynasty, which for the most part have not yet been discovered, represent one of the greatest problems of Egyptian archaeology”.
 
A similar problem arises with the so-called Fifth Dynasty, with four of its supposed six sun temples undiscovered. Thus Jeff Burzacott, “The missing sun temples of Abusir”:
 
There are some sun temples out there somewhere. 
Abusir is one of the large cemeteries of the Old Kingdom kings, around 16 kilometres south of the famous Great Pyramids of Giza. 
Although the history of the Abusir necropolis began in the 2nd Dynasty, it wasn't until King Userkaf, the first ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, chose to build here that the Abusir skyline changed forever. 
What Userkaf built here wasn't a pyramid; he nestled his final resting place close to the world's first pyramid, that of Djoser at Saqqara. What Userkaf raised at Abusir was something new - a sun temple.
The sun temple was a large, squat obelisk, raised on a grand pedestal, and connected with the worship of the setting sun. Each day the sun sank below the western horizon into the Underworld where it faced a dangerous journey before rising triumphantly, reborn at dawn. It was a powerful symbol of cyclical resurrection.
The obelisk shape is likely symbolic of the sacred benben stone of Heliopolis, which represented the primeval mound, the first land to rise from the waters of Nun at the dawn of time, and where creation began. This was the centre of the cosmos.
For the next 70 years, Abusir was a hive of activity as the pyramids of Userkaf's sons, Sahure (rightmost pyramid) and Neferirkare, (leftmost pyramid), as well as his grandson, Niuserre (centre) raised their own step pyramids and sun temples there. 
Buried in the Abusir sand are also the barely-started pyramids of Fifth Dynasty pharaohs whose short-lived reigns saw their grand monuments hastily sealed, just a few courses of stone above the desert.
Six sun temples are mentioned in inscriptions, although only the ruins of Userkaf's and Niuserre's have been discovered. Hopefully, buried out there somewhere lay four more sun temples, waiting to feel Ra's rays once again.
 
I do not think so.
It is my belief that the rulers of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, just like those of the Second, have been duplicated - {a duplication of dynasties occurring at various stages of Egyptian history as well} - meaning that there were not six rulers who built six sun temples.
 
Most likely, then, all (two) of the sun temples that were built have already been discovered.
 
 
 

Ancient Australians. Part Two: Southern Indian Tamil-Dravidian likeness


File:Untouchables of Malabar Kerala Dravidian Australoid.png
Ancient Australians
– culture going south
 

Part Two:
Southern Indian Tamil-Dravidian likeness
 

 
by
 
Damien F. Mackey
 
 
 
“I sat and watched Ten Canoes the other day [Australian aboriginals].
The language in it sounded like Tamil”.
 
 
 
 
 
Dr. John Osgood wrote on ancient India in “A Better Model for the Stone Age. Part Two”:
 
….
The pre-Harappan cultures of the Indus River system all show evidence of continuity of cultural traits into the Harappan culture. Although there is evidence of destruction in some sites, as the Harappan culture emerges, the continuity is evident. This also leaves open the possibility that we are dealing with a population which is the same genetically from the pre-Harappan to the Harappan phase, an exceedingly strong possibility given the early days of this culture and the geography of the area.
The Harappan civilization had its own script, which first appears during its classical period and therefore a short time after the appearance of other scripts, such as proto-Elamite in the west. In fact, their emergence may have been, and probably was being, invented by the separate peoples simultaneously (see Figure 25).
….
This Indus script as been of recent times shown to be, or at least strongly suggested to be, Proto Dravidian; that is the forerunner of the Dravidian scripts of today.58 It was another centre of the multi- centred redevelopment of writing.
The Indus River civilisation was driven out and conquered by the invading Aryans, southward, and its homeland occupied by Aryran speakers. Likewise in India today the Aryan languages (e.g. Hindi) are mainly in the north and the Dravidian languages (e.g. Tamil) are mostly in the south (see Figure 26). ….
To what genetic origin do we owe the Iranian plateau people of these times and the Indus Valley peoples? We must admit that there is at present no certain identification of origin, but the following facts may help:
 
1.  They moved eastward probably from the Mesopotamian area.
2.  The Iranian Plateau and Indus Valley had a cultural affinity.
3.  The Indus Valley people had a separate script from the Elamites and it came into prominence a little later.
4.  The Indus people were apparently dark skinned.
We may provisionally theorise that they were not Shemites - no connection can be made. The skin colour would suggest Hamites, but after that the trail becomes much more speculative. ….
[End of quote]
 
 
An ethnic link can almost certainly be established between the dark-skinned southern Indians and the Australian aborigines, whose cultural type was also found emerging at Göbekli Tepe.
Thus Lulu Morris writes, “Four Thousand Years Ago Indians Landed in Australia”: https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/australia/four-thousand-years-ago-indians-landed-in-
….
Genetic evidence suggests that just over 4 millennia ago a group of Indian travellers landed in Australia and stayed. The evidence emerged a few years ago after a group of Aboriginal men’s Y chromosomes matched with Y chromosomes typically found in Indian men.  Up until now, the exact details, though, have been unclear.
But Irina Pugach from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology may have recently solved the thousand-year-old case. 4,000 years before the First Fleet landed on our fair shores, Indian adventurers had already settled and were accepted into the Indigenous Australian culture.
 
By studying the single-nucleotide polymorphisms and their patterns, Dr Pugach revealed a diverse tapestry of ancestry, one different from the lineage of New Guineans or the Philippines. The study found a pattern of SNPs that is only found in Indian genetics, specifically the Dravidian speakers from South India. Dr Pugach’s results were consistent with the Y-chromosome data found years earlier. Using both results she calculated exactly when India arrived in Australia.
Dr Pugach estimates this to be around 2217 BC. An interesting time for both Australia and India. Indian civilisation was just about formed and Australian culture and wildlife were rearranging.
The Indus Valley civilisation (India) emerged between 2600 BC and 1900 BC. During this period, Indus Valley managed to develop seaworthy boats, which they used to trade with their neighbours: The Middle East. This new technology was used to get to Australia.
 
There is evidence of a shift in technology that coincides with the time Indians were thought to have arrived in Australia. Indigenous Australians switched their palaeolithic crude, stone tools, for neolithic refined tools. Again around about the time India washed up in Australia, the way food was collected and cooked changed, particularly the preparation of the cycad nut. An important source of food for early Australians, the cycad nut is quite toxic until the toxins are drawn out. The indigenous method always involved roasting the nut, but by 2000 BC Indigenous Australians were removing the toxins via water and fermentation. Similarly, the nut, which is found in Kerala in Southern India is commonly dried or roasted. The last rather important piece of evidence that suggests Indian settled in Australia is our beloved dingo.
The dingo has always been an enigma. No one really knows how or why it ended up in Australia. We know it probably exterminated the Tasmanian Tiger on Mainland Australia (apart from the dingo-free island known as Tasmania) and we know it didn’t originate here. The dingo has a striking resemblance to wild dogs found in India and so may have travelled with the first Indian settlers to our Island. However, there are similar looking dogs found in New Guinea and South East Asia.
 
Whatever the case, modern genetics has highlighted a part of Indigenous Ancestry previously lost to the world.
 
Makes you think what else we’ll find.
 

 

Tamil and Australian aboriginal languages

 
 
I sat and watched Ten Canoes the other day. The language in it sounded like Tamil. Which was a surprise. Just like years ago I realised that Japanese and Tamil words were interchangeable in a sentence. So I went looking for research where others may have found this too. I came across this:
 
Perhaps most similar to Australian languages are the Dravidian languages of southern India. Tamil, for example, has five places of articulation in a single series of stops, paralleled by a series of nasals, and no fricatives (thus approaching the Australian proportion of sonorants to obstruents of 70% to 30%). Approaching the question from the opposite direction: according to the latest WHO data on the prevalence of chronic otitis media (Acuin 2004:14ff), Aboriginal Australians have the highest prevalence in the world – 10-54%, according to Coates & al (2002), up to 36% with perforations of the eardrum. They are followed – at some distance – by the Tamil of southern India (7.8%, down from previous estimates of 16-34%), … (from http://www.flinders.edu.au/speechpath/Manly%20final.pdf)
Then I started to look at other linking the tamil and the Aboriginal. And here I encountered a lot of material. I big proportio of this has to be discounted as it is typically in the vein of the Indian or Tamil suprematist.
Quickly – that vein is one that claims that Tamil is the original language – and the class of languages called Dravidian ( an unfortunate appellation?) is huge and spread all over the world. Some claim the flaw in this na,ing has given rise to the feeling that Tamil ( as dravidian) is the original language. Still now we can start to read about DNA evidence. See this:
 
Dr Rao and his colleagues sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of 966 people from traditional tribes in India. They reported several of the Indian people studied had two regions of their mitochondrial DNA that were identical to those found in modern day Australian Aboriginal people. (http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/2011921/1/)
Then there is the Human Genome Project and here is what that has to say:
During his own journey in pursuit of the Y chromosome story in the late 1990s, Wells took blood samples from males of Dravidian ancestry in southern India. The Dravidians were among India’s earliest colonists; they now live among the descendants of a later wave of Sanskrit speakers — like Latin and ancient Greek, Sanskrit is an a branch of the Indo-European ‘mother tongue’, more closely related to modern English and French than to Dravidian.
Wells was looking for a genetic marker called M130, the most ancient, non-African, Y-chromosome marker. It is rare in Dravidians, but quite common in Australian Aboriginal males — and, intriguingly, in the Na Dene peoples of the Pacific north-west of North America.
The Na Dene peoples are descended from a second, later wave of immigrants into North America, who were ultimately of Sino-Tibetan stock — M130 is both the oldest non-African Y-chromosome marker, and the most travelled.
Wells’ suspicion that M130 might have survived, at very low frequency, in southern coastal regions of India, was proven correct
The first African emigres left a durable calling card on the coastal migratory route between Africa and Australia.