by
Damien F. Mackey
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Even many
revisionist scholars consider that Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky made a massive error
in his bold attempt to locate the ‘Sea Peoples’ - at the time of the 20th
Dynasty pharaoh, Ramses III - as late as the Persian period.
But was
Velikovsky right, nevertheless, in his opinion about the similarity between the
Peleset ‘Sea Peoples’ and the Pereset (Persians) mentioned on the Decree of
Canopus?
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Introduction
Dr.
Velikovsky’s everlasting contribution to ancient history was, in my opinion, to
recognise that the highly important Eighteenth Dynasty, which saw the
commencement of Egypt’s so-called ‘New Kingdom’, had begun at the same
approximate time as the United Kingdom of Israel (kings Saul, David and
Solomon). This meant that the conventional estimation of the mid-C16th BC for
the beginning of the reign of the first Eighteenth Dynasty ruler, pharaoh
Ahmose, must now be lowered by some 500 years, to the mid-C11th BC.
Velikovsky
had also recognised that the Sothic based mathematico-astronomical system upon
which Egyptian chronology had been erected was an entirely flawed system.
Much
of what Velikovsky discovered within his new paradigm has served as a solid
foundation for my own historical reconstructions.
Far
less successful was he, though, when attempting to ‘squeeze’ the remaining New
Kingdom dynasties, Nineteenth and Twentieth, into what was now, by conventional
comparison, a greatly reduced chronological space. Velikovsky was, of course,
clever enough to engineer a ‘solution’ to such a difficulty. But it unfortunately
appears to have been a ‘solution’ as artificial and archaeologically impossible
as was the conventional system that he was seeking to overhaul. He, completely
disregarding archaeological, geographical and genealogical fact, (i) wrenched
the Nineteenth Dynasty right away from the Eighteenth, and (ii) pitched the
Twentieth Dynasty down into the Persian era. His expediency of identifying the
formerly (conventional) C12th BC Peleset
(usually identified as Philistines), belonging to the ‘Sea Peoples’, with the C4th
BC Pereset (usually identified as
Persians) of the Canopus Decree, was a case of taking revisionism to an unrealistic
extreme.
However,
as we are going to find, there is good evidence to suggest that pharaoh Ramses
III, and hence the ‘Sea Peoples’, did belong to an era significantly later than
the C12th BC - but definitely not as late as the C4th BC.
Many
of the more able revisionist scholars who had been keenly following
Velikovsky’s early revision, particularly his Ages in Chaos, I (1952), and Oedipus
and Akhnaton (1960), would fairly smartly reject his Nineteenth and
Twentieth Dynasty efforts, Peoples of the
Sea (1977), and Ramses II and his
Time (1978). And I, too, felt it necessary in my university thesis:
A
Revised History of the Era of King Hezekiah of Judah
and
its Background
to
show the impossibility of Velikovsky’s later reconstructions. Archaeologically,
for Velikovsky, these were a disaster. And, genealogically, they left Egyptian
officials running into an unrealistically old age.
However,
there were also embarrassing problems here for the conventional system. This is
apparent from the following section of my thesis in which I also allude to the
important findings of Dr. Donovan Courville, who wrote The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications, I-II (1971). Thus I wrote
(thesis, Volume One, beginning on p. 351):
More
Genealogical and Art-Historical Anomalies
On a
genealogical note, Courville has made a telling point in regard to what had
appeared to be the following severe genealogical problem with the current
chronological setting of Ramses III in relation to the early 19th
dynasty: ….
The case of
Bokenkonsu, the architect under Seti I, presents another anomaly, by current
views, which is eliminated by the altered placements …. Bokenkonsu
lived to have
his statue carved under Rameses III …. By current views, Bokenkonsu must have
lived at least to an age of 118 years … even if the “many years” of the Harris
Papyrus are limited to the brief reign of Siptah as proposed by Petrie. The
more time that is allotted to this “many years” only makes the necessary age of
Bokenkonsu more and more improbable.
Bierbrier had
also included treatment of Bokenkonsu and his family amongst his case
studies (“The
Bakenkhons Family” ….). And here, once again, we encounter the apparently
extreme age of an Egyptian official even when minimal conventional date
estimates are
used. There is no stretch at all, though, with my arrangement that has
Ramses III a
slightly later contemporary of Seti I.
But what might
appear to be a significant difficulty for the conventional chronology becomes a
complete impossibility in Velikovsky’s context, as already argued. More
positively for Velikovsky, both he … and Courville … had rightly insisted upon
a dating much later than that conventionally given for Ramses III on the basis
of Greek
writing on the
backs of Ramses III’s building tiles. I take here Courville’s very brief
account of it, beginning with his quoting of Petrie:
“… A subject
of much difficulty in the earlier accounts of the objects was the marking of
“Greek letters” on the backs of many of the tiles; but as we know that such
signs were used long before the XXth dynasty, they only show that foreigners
were employed as workmen in making these tiles”.
About which
Courville then commented: …. “The difficulty
with this explanation is that it does not explain the use of Greek letters
centuries before the Greeks adopted the
alphabet
…. Hence the dating of Rameses III in the 11th
century is a
gross anachronism”. With
Ramses III re-located to about the mid C8th BC though - and given also the
influx during his reign of ‘Sea Peoples’, likely including Greeks - then the ‘anachronism’
readily dissolves.
Whether or not
my own efforts to fit the Twentieth Dynasty into the new scheme of things turns
out to be realistic, I believe (naturally) that it is certainly more so than the
conventional system. And I give archaeological reasons for this conviction also
in my thesis.
Now, based upon
the following, I have no doubts whatsoever that my estimation for the era of
Ramses III is far more realistic, at least, than was Velikovsky’s:
Velikovsky had
brought some surprising evidence in support of his sensational view that Ramses
III had actually belonged as late as the Persian period, with his
identification of the Peleset arm of the
‘Sea Peoples’ - generally considered to indicate Philistines – as Persians. …. This
Velikovsky did through comparisons between the Peleset,
as shown on Ramses III’s Medinet Habu reliefs, and depictions of
Persians for instance at Persepolis, both revealing a distinctive crown-like
headgear. And he also compared Ramses III’s references to the Peleset
to the naming of Persians as P-r-s-tt (Pereset)
in the C3rd BC Decree of Canopus.
(I have just
added this picture):
Continuing with
the thesis:
My explanation
though for this undeniable similarity would be, not that Ramses III had belonged
to the classical Persian era, but that the ‘Indo-European’ Persians were
related to the waves of immigrants, hence to the Mitannians (who may therefore
connect with the Medes), but perhaps to the Philistines in particular. These
‘Indo Europeans’ had, as we read in Chapter 2, gradually
progressed from Anatolia in a south-easterly direction. Eventually we find for
instance Kurigalzu [II], set up on the throne of Babylon by the ‘Mitannian’
Assuruballit, conquering Elam (Persia) and ruling there for a time…..
So, though
Velikovsky had pitched Ramses III and his Peleset
(‘Sea Peoples’) opponents eight centuries too late (by conventional estimate), or
about four centuries too late (my estimate), he may have been right insofar as
he had perceived a visual and ethnic connection between the Peleset and the Pereset (Persians).
M. Jones would
come to light with some telling genealogical evidence against Velikovsky’s
radical later New Kingdom revision (‘Some Detailed Evidence from Egypt
Against Velikovsky’s Revised Chronology’, SIS Review, vol. vi, nos. 1-3,
Glasgow Conference, 1978, p. 29). I told of this in my thesis (p. 353):
Jones has I
believe produced some solid genealogical or bureaucratic evidence for why Velikovsky’s
late location of Ramses III to the Persian era is impossible. …. The career of
the Chief Workman Paneb for instance, according to the Salt Papyrus, “can
be traced from the 66th year
of Ramesses II to the 6th year
of Ramesses III”, Jones has written. …. This, a span in
conventional terms of a bit over thirty years (c. 1212-1180 BC), is most reasonable.
But Velikovsky’s span for Workman Paneb, with Ramses III located by him to the
Persian era, would be biologically impossible. And the same applies to the
situation of other workmen (e.g. Neferhotep and Sennedjem) investigated by
Jones, following Bierbrier, the connections of which workmen are between the 18th
and 19th dynasties that Velikovsky
had also well separated. Thus Jones can rightly conclude in this instance: ….
… the earliest
members of these two families, Neferhotep and Sennedjem …. link the reign of
Horemheb and the XVIIIth Dynasty with the reigns of the XIXth Dynasty, without
any intervening years. A similar condition can be observed in the transition
from the XIXth to the XXth Dynasty. If an interregnum had occurred then, the
workmen first attested under Ramesses II, Merenptah and Seti II would
all have been extremely old men by the time they
ended their lives in the later years of Ramesses III …. If the hundred years
proposed by Dr Velikovsky had taken place, none of them
would have been alive at all.
[End of quotes]
Obviously a satisfactory revision
has to be fully cohesive - easier said than done, of course. And Velikovsky and
Courville, being pioneers, could be excused for many of their mistakes. Still,
though Velikovsky
may have been wrong in his chronological estimation of the Peleset, he may still have made a useful point about them.
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