It is good fortune, some would call it providence, that the Babylonian Chronicle opens with the 10th year of Nabopolassar, 616 B.C. in the conventional chronology.  If we are correct, it is the 22nd / 23rd year of Piankhi, less than two years after he erected his victory stela celebrating the successful suppression of the Tefnakht rebellion.

        As the Chronicle opens Nabopolassar is challenging Assyria for control of the upper Euphrates, the continuation of a power struggle which began almost a decade earlier. In the year 616 B.C., according to the Chronicle, battles were waged, cities were conquered, and captives were taken by the Babylonian army. At long last Nabopolassar was poised to conquer the strategic western fringe of the Assyrian empire. That is, until:

In the month of Tisri the Egyptian army and the Assyrian army marched after the king of Akkad (Nabopolassar) as far as the town Qablinu, but did not overtake the king of Akkad and then went back [1]

        It was a revelation to Egyptologists and Assyriologists alike when the Chronicle was read for the first time in the middle of the 20th century. An Egyptian army ranging the headwaters of the Upper Euphrates, a thousand miles from home and in league with the Assyrians, was not to be expected in the late 7th century B.C., when Egypt was supposedly ruled by an aged Saïte dynasty king named Psamtik (I) (664-610 B.C.), by now probably in his 80's.[2]  For the traditional historian there was no alternative but to accept the fact. Saïte dynasty dates were well established. And so the history books dutifully record the adventures of Psamtik, based entirely on an assumed correspondence in dates. But as we have already explained at length in Nebuchadnezzar & the Egyptian Exile, there is not the slightest hint in the monuments that Psamtik was militarily active beyond the borders of Egypt. And we have argued that this Saite dynasty patriarch reigned as a puppet king of the Persian Empire in the early days of the first Persian domination in the second half of the 6th century B.C. and the first decade of the 5th century. We have no intention of repeating the book length argument here.

        But if not Psamtik then who was the pharaoh whose army acted in concert with Assyria in the next to last decade of the 7th century? If Piankhi, as we claim, then the fact must be supported by means others than a chronological synchronism, as was the case for Psamtik, though for Piankhi we can at least argue the possibility of such an adventure. For him such far ranging conquests were not atypical.. He was already a thousand miles from Napata by the time he conquered the Egyptian Delta in his 20th year. Like the young Alexander three centuries later, one conquest might well have served to invite another. But we need more than speculation. What is required in the case of Piankhi is precisely what was absent in the case of Psamtik - monumental evidence. It is inconceivable that an Egyptian pharaoh could participate in the life and death struggles of the Assyrian empire and leave no record of the fact.

        Our search for the missing monuments of Piankhi is guided by several clearly defined criteria. The inscriptions we seek should constitute a sequel to what is already preserved on the Piankhi stela, i.e. they should begin by describing conquests beyond the borders of Egypt soon after the 21st year of the king. And these military enterprises should correspond precisely with the recorded activity of the Egyptian army preserved in the Babylonian Chronicles of Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadrezzar. It is imperative, therefore, that we examine the Chronicle.

The Chronicle History

        We will not quote extensively from the narrative of the Babylonian Chronicle, save where absolutely necessary. D.J. Wiseman, its first editor, provides a summary in his Chronicle of Chaldaean Kings. We simply reproduce that summary, eliminating from consideration extraneous matters. This should be sufficient for our purposes.

        The details of the Chronicle are dated by the years of Nabopolassar. We have cross referenced these to the years of Piankhi on the assumption, yet to be proved, that the Egyptian army mentioned in several contexts belongs to him. It is not essential that we identify the year 616 B.C. as Piankhi's 23rd year. There is, as previously stated, some flexibility in the method by which the Piankhi years were determined from the data provided by Aston. But as it turns out, the date is correct.

        When we begin the search for Piankhi's missing historiography we look for inscriptions which begin in his 23nd year (or late in his 22nd year), and continue year by year in parallel with the records provided by the Babylonian chronicle. If, as we assume, Piankhi's 23nd year corresponds to the 10th year of Nabopolassar, his 24th must correspond to Nabopolassar's 11th and so on until the death of the Babylonian king in his 21st year, the 34th of Piankhi. The parallels should continue into the reign of Nebuchadrezzar, Nabopolassar's son and successor. The comparison should not be difficult. How decisive it will be remains to be seen. In view of the length of the Chronicle, is seems best to divide the time into manageable units, beginning with the account of the years 10-15 of Nabopolassar. Wiseman's summary for these years is reproduced in Table 1 below. The Egyptian years of Piankhi are added for reference purposes.
 
 

        According to the Chronicle, as outlined above, an Egyptian army fought with Sinsharishkun (the successor of Ashurbanipal) in defense of his Assyrian kingdom in the year 616 B.C. When first mentioned the two armies are acting in league in the vicinity of Qablinu, an Assyrian town on the upper Euphrates, several hundred miles east of the great bend which marked the western extremity of the Assyrian Empire.

        We are uninformed concerning the nature of the alliance that existed between Egypt and Assyria, but we may safely conclude from the Qablinu incident two facts, readily conceded by scholars. For Egypt to be militarily active so far east of the Euphrates it must already control the lands which lie between Egypt and the Euphrates, possibly (though not certainly) extending as far north as the area known to the Chronicler as the Hatti-lands [4].   This would be the equivalent of modern day Syria and Lebanon.  We must also assume that Assyria had forfeited any claim over this same territory as part of an alliance forged between the two nations. The precise nature of the alliance is unknown, but the fact of its existence has already been argued in Nebuchadnezzar, and evidence was therein adduced that Shabaka, a brother of Piankhi, was an active participant in its execution.

        We notice from the Chronicle account that no military assistance for Assyria is documented for the critical years following 616 B.C., those which precede the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C.. Even the year 611 B.C. makes no mention of Egypt. Only in 610 B.C. do we again hear of further dialogue between Assyria and her ally. Where was the Egyptian army during these critical years? We must assume that it was preoccupied elsewhere, possibly maintaining its hold over its Syrian possessions. If our time-line is accurate those lands had been conquered only months before the Qablinu affair.

        We can conjecture a tentative timetable for these eventful years. Early in 618 B.C., near the end of Piankhi's 20th year, he concluded the conquest of the Egyptian delta which began a year earlier. Later that year, now into his 21st year, he retired to Napata, where his stela was erected. The next year, 617 B.C., (Piankhi's 21st/22nd year) he prepared for his Asian campaign, which was launched early in 616 B.C. (still in his 22nd year). We must assume, since his army appears in Qablinu with the Assyrians in October of that year (now his 23rd), that Piankhi's conquest of Syria occupied only eight or nine months (see table 2 below).

        If we are correct, the assistance offered to Assyria by Piankhi was no act of altruism. The Babylonians were as much a threat to Piankhi's recently acquired and tentative hold on Syria as they were to the territorial possessions of Assyria. Egypt and Assyria formed an alliance of mutual defense. Following the Qablinu incident, Egypt's energies are apparently absorbed in maintaining its hold on Syria.
 
 

Note: the fact is assumed here, to be defended later, that regnal years of both Piankhi and Nabopolassar began around March/April of the Julian year, within days of each other.
 

        We expect, in light of this discussion, that the monuments of Piankhi, if they exist, will confirm the essential features of this proposed historical outline. We anticipate that they will identify Piankhi's 22nd /23rd year as that in which he began his warfare in the region of Syria/Palestine, and further, that later in this campaign his armies were in the vicinity of the upper Euphrates. More importantly, the inscriptions should provide evidence of an early alliance with Assyria, and perhaps even mention Babylon as an antagonist of Egypt. Further, they should confirm our suspicion that the 23rd through 28th years of Piankhi consisted of a sequence of expeditions through the regions of Syria/Lebanon to gather tribute and discourage revolt.

        It is time to examine the Egyptian monuments in search of a parallel to this hypothetical construct.