The Walls of Jericho

[E.P. Grondine]

Thanks, min, but my to-do list is pretty long right now, and I can not move that fast anymore.

[Minimalist]

Pace yourself.

We old guys have to do that now.

[E.P. Grondine]

The date for the explosion of Thera has been refined:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10. ... nfirm=true

AS the author's note,
since the date for that explosion can not be moved,
the reignal years for Ahmose have to be moved.

It needs to be noted that the injection of cometary dust containing 14C by Come Encke may have thrown the 14C dates off a little.

In any case, one can use Astour's Hittite chronology (with the astronomical correction) as a check on Egyptian chronologies.

Of course, one needs to note that archaeologists as a whole have never been the type of scientists who allow hard data to interfere with a good theory.

That is, until they have to.

[Minimalist]

It took less then 30 seconds to determine that there is no consensus about Ahmose I's reign.

Ahmose's reign can be fairly accurately dated using the Heliacal rise of Sirius in his successor's reign, but because of disputes over from where the observation was made, he has been assigned a reign from 1570–1546, 1560–1537 and 1551–1527 by various sources.

Fr. Wiki

Jacobovici tried to use the Ahmose stele, too as evidence for plagues. And he's a moron.

[E.P. Grondine]

It took less then 30 seconds to determine that there is no consensus about Ahmose I's reign.

Ahmose's reign can be fairly accurately dated using the Heliacal rise of Sirius in his successor's reign, but because of disputes over from where the observation was made, he has been assigned a reign from 1570–1546, 1560–1537 and 1551–1527 by various sources.

Fr. Wiki

Jacobovici tried to use the Ahmose stele, too as evidence for plagues. And he's a moron.

"moron"?

Is that the best you can come up with min?

I was recently surprised to learn that I am a liar, fraud, and utterly full of BS, so I guess I have Jacobovici beat.

min, I have not read Jacobovici's work yet. I did not even know it existed until you mentioned it here. (and thanks for that copy of Finkelstein.)

I suppose I might be able to get to it after I've read the most recent work of that other "moron" ( per Geprge) Collins, whose work is being used as course material at the St Andrews School of Divinity. It looks like Collins earlier work has been a real shot in the arm for pseudographic studies.

That date for the Thera explosion is very very hard, with exceptions perhaps for burned layers and for 14C from Comet Encke. The folks who did that study are not "morons".

Given that hard data, I suppose that at this point it would be interesting to check the records for the Heliacal rising of Sirius in Ahmose's successor's reign to see if there is a date for that recurring {note the spread of dates given in wikipedia] astronomical phenomena, a date which would place the eruption of Thera during Ahmose's reign. That date would provide solutions to the 2 problems mentioned earlier, in particular the 14C content of comets.

Like I've stated before, my interest is in Late Minoan 1B and the Joshua Impact, and not in the historicity of the Old Testament, nor its construction. (And to make this even clearer, I support the two state solution, and the foundation of a Palestinian state. I'd also like to note that archaeology as it is currently practiced is tied up with nationalism, which is why I like the "Minoans' and "Etrucans" so well.))

I am pretty certain that Te Hantalishi can pretty firmly be identified with the mythic Tantalus, and that the Joshua Impact led to the destruction of the "minoan" military forces, thus leading to the end of LM-1B.

(It is too bad Dr. Bennett did not live to see the discovery of Iklaina near Pylos.)

All in all, I'd rather be troweling through tsunami deposits on Crete.
Or the Atlantic Ocean tsunami deposits in Spain or Portugal.

[Minimalist]

Jacobovici is a Canadian film producer perhaps best known for this Naked Archaeologist series. That prompted real archaeologist, Aren Maier, to tell him "you aren't naked and you aren't an archaeologist." Xtian scholar, Jonathan Reed watched his dreadful "The Exodus Decoded" and coined the term "archaeoporn."

The Exodus Decoded was blasted in a series of reviews on HIggaion and, fortunately, they still exist. The Ahmose Stele is #1.

http://theheards.us/chris/?page_id=141

And "moron" is to be polite.

[E.P. Grondine]

hi min -

Thanks for the link.

From the review it looks to me like Jacobovici missed it completely.

But then I'd have to see what Jacobovici really said, instead of relying on a hostile witness.

In any case, this has nothing to do with the absolute dating of Ahmose from his stela and the hard data on the Thera eruption.

Note that an earthquake occurred before the eruption of Thera. That earthquake may have been related to a release of toxic water from a southern lake into the Nile River. Very toxic caustic water.

If the story of Exodus reflects any memory of the Thera eruption, then perhaps the records of Khamose mention plagues.

Media claiming a real basis for the Bible always do well in the market - look at Velikovsky's commerical success.

In any case, if the Joshua Impact really occurred, which is highly likely given the data from the multiple independent contemporary documents, then hard geological evidence of it will exist.

[Minimalist]

The Exodus Decoded shows up on History Channel every so often....when they can squeeze it in between Pawn Stars and Axe Men.

Were you here when "archaeologist" was active? He was a fundie xtian and, as you can imagine, about the only thing we agreed upon was that Jacobovici was an ass-clown.

Nonetheless, both Egyptologist Donald Redford and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein using different lines of evidence have concluded that the basic Exodus tale was cobbled together in late 7th century BC.

[E.P. Grondine]

The Exodus Decoded shows up on History Channel every so often....when they can squeeze it in between Pawn Stars and Axe Men.

Were you here when "archaeologist" was active? He was a fundie xtian and, as you can imagine, about the only thing we agreed upon was that Jacobovici was an ass-clown.

Nonetheless, both Egyptologist Donald Redford and archaeologist Israel Finkelstein using different lines of evidence have concluded that the basic Exodus tale was cobbled together in late 7th century BC.

Hi min -

No, I was not here when "archaeologist" was active.

I have to say that "ass-clown" is more creative than "moron"; but epithets can not replace data.

I agree with the current consensus about the date of the composition of the bible; what is interesting is analysis of possible written sources used to compose it.

Separate entirely from that are the contemporary documents and artifacts relating to "international" relations, which are of use in setting up absolute chronologies.

My "work" is locating and dating impact events to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the impact hazard presented by smaller objects.

My working hypothesis is that smaller impacts may solve a lot of archaeological and historical "mysteries".

In other words, impacts were a real phenomenon in the ancient environment which has not been examined before in anthropology, archaeology, of history.

I note that archaeology is tightly tied to nationalism, pretty much in both hemispheres, while impactors do not care about your race, ethnicity, religion, political views, etc.

Thus they serve as a very useful tool and convenient way of getting around biases in research in the previously mentioned fields.

[Minimalist]

If we had any of those alleged written sources, I'd agree with you.

But this was a generally pre-literate culture. Most of what we have is commercial in nature and there are few inscriptions and the ones there are, such as at Kuntillet Ajrud, are ones that fanatical jews and their xtian hangers-on, would rather pretend did not exist.

I suspect that what we are dealing with are oral legends which were later embellished to give yahweh a prominent place. Eventually some Greek wrote them down. In Greek.

BTW, in Egyptian the root word mss means 'son of' ( or born to ) hence Rameses =son of Ra, Thutmoses = son of Thoth and Ahmoses = son of Ah.

Moses by itself would mean 'son of nobody." Not a great title for an alleged "prince" of Egypt.


I'm aware of your theory and wish you had actual, tangible, evidence to back it up. It might be interesting although given the doomsday scenarios of cosmic impacts I'd be surprised that we survived the barrage. You know what I think of folklore.

[E.P. Grondine]

If we had any of those alleged written sources, I'd agree with you.

But this was a generally pre-literate culture. Most of what we have is commercial in nature and there are few inscriptions and the ones there are, such as at Kuntillet Ajrud, are ones that fanatical jews and their xtian hangers-on, would rather pretend did not exist.

I suspect that what we are dealing with are oral legends which were later embellished to give yahweh a prominent place. Eventually some Greek wrote them down. In Greek.

BTW, in Egyptian the root word mss means 'son of' ( or born to ) hence Rameses =son of Ra, Thutmoses = son of Thoth and Ahmoses = son of Ah.

Moses by itself would mean 'son of nobody." Not a great title for an alleged "prince" of Egypt.

I'm aware of your theory and wish you had actual, tangible, evidence to back it up. It might be interesting although given the doomsday scenarios of cosmic impacts I'd be surprised that we survived the barrage. You know what I think of folklore.

Hi min -

The Book "Who wrote the Bible?" did pretty well.

Given the use of papyrus in the area, and its lack of durability,
I don't know if anyone can assert that the cultures were pre-literate.
The frequent mention of "books" in the bible itself pretty much indicates what went on in its composition.

As far as impacts goes, the DNA folks claim that we were down to 50 people at one point.
As a matter of fact, massive impacts occurred at a rate of 1 per million years during hominid evolution.

We've discussed the "proper" use of "folklore" before.
I sum, I generally rely on contemporary documents.

In my view, documents are far more useful in gaining information than area excavations are, and the recovery of documents has to be a key goal when conducting excavations .

Thought for the Day -
Perhaps the reason aliens do not contact us is that they are worried about screwing up the ratings of one of their favorite comedy channels, "Earth".

[kbs2244]

"Moses by itself would mean 'son of nobody." Not a great title for an alleged "prince" of Egypt."

Actualy, taking the Bible story at face value, it is a great name.
He waS found floating in the river, alone, no one arently resonsible for him.
The only parental referance I recall was his mother as a wet nurse.
So, from an Egyptian point of view, he was "son of no one."
The "Pince" title would have been given him due to his adopation by his royal finder.

[Minimalist]

I'm sure they could have found some god for him to be named for, kb. Instead, its just a ripoff of the much older Sargon legend.

Papyrus only grows in Egypt, E.P. Surprisingly, we have quite a few papyrus finds which indicates that if you kept them dry they do tend to last. But in Canaan the writing was on parchment or ostraka except for the occasional inscription and we have damn few of those. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that even parchment doesn't hold up too well even in the most arid climate imaginable.

As I recall it was the Toba Eruption crowd who insisted that homo sapiens was driven back to East Africa and a handful of survivors. A highly specific volcano there as apparently Neanderthal and the megafauna were unaffected. That seems implausible. I would agree that a sizable impact would have catastrophic effects. So catastrophic that there should be evidence of it all over the place. And the people who experienced it would not have been writing folklore..... they would have been fried.

[E.P. Grondine]

I'm sure they could have found some god for him to be named for, kb. Instead, its just a ripoff of the much older Sargon legend.

Papyrus only grows in Egypt, E.P. Surprisingly, we have quite a few papyrus finds which indicates that if you kept them dry they do tend to last. But in Canaan the writing was on parchment or ostraka except for the occasional inscription and we have damn few of those. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that even parchment doesn't hold up too well even in the most arid climate imaginable.

As I recall it was the Toba Eruption crowd who insisted that homo sapiens was driven back to East Africa and a handful of survivors. A highly specific volcano there as apparently Neanderthal and the megafauna were unaffected. That seems implausible. I would agree that a sizable impact would have catastrophic effects. So catastrophic that there should be evidence of it all over the place. And the people who experienced it would not have been writing folklore..... they would have been fried.

First item - Stones for major proclamations, unbaked clay tablets for scratch paper, seal stones, pithoi inscriptions, writing on funerary objects... But in Canaan, is is likely that baked cuneiform was used as well, later transferred to other media; also possible were baked syllabic tablets, or baked alphabetic tablets.

Second item - Very large impacts and hominid evolution were covered in "Man and Impact in the Americas".

It is quiet likely that the next size down, large impacts, played a key role in the generation of mt DNA haplogroups.

There is evidence of impact events all over the place; it is part of the denial mechanism to ignore it.

Far more money and research time has been spent denying the Holocene Start Impact Event than on the recovery of impact data from it.

Fortunately, this one left an astrobleme which is undeniable, and which has been recovered, despite rather intense efforts to prevent that recovery.

Third item - You are correct in noting that one has to survive an impact to incorporate it into either "folklore", or "oral histories".

[Minimalist]

#1. We have a relative paucity of such inscriptions/baked tablets from Canaan, though. We get them in Aramaic but there is a lot of controversy about the derivation of others. Chris Rollston notes that there were other northwest semitic languages, such as Ugaritic, which are far more attested. In fact, as Ugarait and the Hittites, Cypriots, etc fell in the wake of the Sea People attacks the region seems to plunge into a dark age. Eric Cline's 1177 BC is quite instructive along these lines.

#2. I read it, remember.

As far as the Holocene Start Impact Event goes you seem to be the only one talking about it. You have far more significant people to convince than me.


#3

At what distance would you have to be from an impactor to survive and talk about it? At that distance how would you know what had happened? Won't you at least consider the possibility that when you read something your confirmation bias kicks in and everything becomes an impact event?