There is but a single problem with this history.   According to Egyptologists it never happened.  The denial is based on an Egyptian history which places Manetho’s 26th dynasty in the time frame 664-525 B.C., leaving no room either for a  twenty year interregnum or for a twenty year rule by the Persians prior to 525 B.C.  Amasis, the penultimate  Saite dynasty king, ruled throughout the critical forty year period (570-526 B.C.)

        But historians are wrong.  The fault lies in the Egyptian chronology on which the traditional history is based.  That chronology, throughout the  relevant period, is in error  by 121 years!   Saite dynasty dates need to be lowered by that amount, moving the dynasty to a position overlapping the first Persian domination of Egypt.

        Four books are dedicated to proving this proposition.   Nebuchadrezzar & the Egyptian Exile was begun on May 1, 2000 and was completed Dec. 31 that same year.   The second book, Piankhi the Chameleon, was begun November 1, 2001 and completed August 26 of 2002.    The third book, The Genealogy of Ashakhet, was begun November 8, 2002 and was completed July 10, 2004.  The fourth and final book, entitled The Exodus & Beyond, was begun in the fall of 2006 and completed Sept. 28, 2007.

Nebuchadrezzar & the Egyptian Exile

        While the first book of this Displaced Dynasties series sets out with intent to prove the historicity of Nebuchadrezzar’s invasion of Egypt in 565 B.C., and of the ensuing forty year “exile” of the Egyptian population, the subject matter is almost exclusively concerned with repositioning the Saite dynasty.   It is admittedly difficult reading.   The reader is required to learn not one but two histories, since the argument is forced to criticize the errant traditional history at the same time as it attempts to establish the revised alternative.  It can be confusing, but there is no alternative to this detailed analysis if we are to convince the critics.

        As the reader of Nebuchadrezzar will quickly realize, it is not only the Saite dynasty history which is in error.  Egyptian dynasties 22-25 precede the 26th Saite dynasty in an unbroken chronological sequence and are subject to the identical 121 year error.   At the completion of the first book, three  hundred years of Egyptian history are repositioned in a context over a century removed from their traditional location.

        Needless to say, with the proposed contextual change Egyptian history acquires a radically new look.  Activities typically ascribed to the early 7th century, 25th dynasty king Taharka, are now credited to the late 9th century, 22nd/23rd dynasty kings Takeloth II and Takeloth III.  Psamtik I, the first king of the Saite dynasty, no longer proclaims himself king after driving the Assyrians out of Egypt in 664 B.C.;  he is installed in office by Cyrus following the expulsion of the Babylonians from Egypt in 543 B.C.    Amasis is transformed from a contemporary of Nebuchadrezzar and sovereign ruler of Egypt in the mid to late 6th century,  to a puppet king of a Persian province ruled by Artaxerxes I and Darius II in the late 5th century.   In the new history ancestors turn out to be descendants,  bitter enemies turn out to be allies, and villains emerge as heroes.   History is literally turned on its heels.

        This revised history is confined to the late 8th through the 5th centuries B.C.   But the reduction in dates for the beginning of the 22nd dynasty leaves an historical vacuum in the preceding centuries which needs to be filled.  In fact, attempts to rewrite Egyptian history earlier than the twenty-second dynasty have been underway for close to a half century, beginning with the pivotal, ground breaking Ages in Chaos (1952) of Immanuel Velikovsky and continued most recently by Peter James et. al. in Centuries of Darkness (1991) and  by David Rohl in his controversial book A Test of Time  (U.S.A. Pharaohs & Kings (1995)).  The changes introduced by the arguments of Nebuchadrezzar should go a long way toward confirming aspects of these and other revisionist works and will perhaps suggest some necessary correction to those efforts.

Piankhi the Chameleon

        In the spring of 2001, four months after the completion of Nebuchadrezzar, I announced a proposed second book in the Displaced Dynasties series entitled Piankhi the Chameleon.  Publication began in October of 2001 and the volume was completed in August of the next year.  Since the emphasis of the first book was on the 26th dynasty, it had dealt summarily with the history of the 7th century B.C., arguing only that throughout the one hundred year interval between the Assyrian occupation of Egypt (671-664 B.C.)  and the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadrezzar (565 B.C.) Egypt was parceled out among the last pharaohs of the 22nd and 23rd dynasties, the enigmatic Bocchoris of the 24th dynasty, and most importantly, the 25th dynasty ancestors of Taharka, including Piankhi, Shabaka and Shabataka.   It is these kings of the Ethiopian 25th dynasty that occupy our attention in the second book of the Displaced Dynasties series.   In particular it is Piankhi that arrests our attention.

   Piankhi the Chameleon set out to prove the proposition, stated briefly in Nebuchadnezzar, that the pharaoh named Neco in the Hebrew Bible was none other than Piankhi of the 25th dynasty, whose Horus name Nakht Ka (strong bull) was the likely source of the nickname parodied by the Jewish authors.   The argument was raised, and defended in five chapters of the book, that Piankhi adopted as his own the throne names of the famed warrior king Menkheperre Thutmose III of the 18th dynasty, and that in this name he recorded his battles for supremacy over Syria in the late 7th century B.C.   A month by month comparison between Piankhi's Annals as recorded on the walls of the Karnak temple, and the Babylonian Chronicles of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar for the identical 15 years period, established the proposed identity beyond reasonable doubt.

    This identification of Piankhi with the Neco of the Hebrew Bible, and with Menkheperre Thutmose of the Amun temple Annals, left unchanged the relative chronology of the revised history proposed in Nebuchadnezzar.  But that history was itself radically altered by the acquisition of yet a third identity by the chameleon-like Piankhi.  The similarity in name and length of term in office between the ultra religious Menkheperre Piankhi and a 21st dynasty priest/king named Menkheperre led to the conclusion that the two individuals were one and the same person.   This in turn caused us to move the entire 21st Theban dynasty of priest/kings to which Piankhi belonged hundreds of years forward into the 7th century, and to identify them as the extended family of Piankhi.   How surprising it was to discover at long last that Piankhi's ancestors where not unknown, as the traditional history had long led us to suspect, but that his father and grandfather, Pinudjem I and Piankh, and his son and grandson, Pinudjem II and Psusennes III, were well known historical figures, unfortunately divorced from their near relative by the errant chronology we are attempting to set right.

    Even at this point we were not finished.  Since we had moved the Theban 21st dynasty from the 11th century into the 7th,  we were compelled to move along with it the Tanite branch of that same dynasty.   Investigation had shown that the last Tanite king Psusennes II was a contemporary of Piankhi's father Pinudjem I.   Thus the Tanite priest/kings were moved forward into the 8th and early 7th centuries.   And since Piankhi's grandfather Piankh lived near the end of the whm mswt, that mysterious period of civil unrest which began in the 17th year of Ramses XI of the 20th dynasty, we had inadvertently discovered the true time frame for the conclusion of the 20th dynasty.   Thus by the end of our second book we had fixed in place the end of both the 20th and the 21st (Tanite) dynasties.  At this point our 3rd book, The Genealogy of Ashakhet (previously entitled Merenptah, Midas & the Fall of Troy) takes up the cause.

The Genealogy of Ashakhet.

    Publication of this book began Nov 8, 2002.  A second chapter was published May 28, 2003 and a third on Dec 15, 2003.   The fourth and concluding chapter was finally completed and placed online on July 10, 2004.   The agonizingly slow pace was in part the result of a heart attack suffered by the author in October 2002.

    These chapters trace the beginnings of the 20th, 21st Tanite, and 22nd dynasties back to a common origin in the middle decades of the 8th century B.C.  Using the Berlin genealogy as a guide they have also outlined a tentative chronology for the 19th dynasty, placing the 19th dynasty kings Seti I and Ramses II in the years 869-840 and 840-774 B.C. respectively and the Amarna age of Egypt in the years 930-900 B.C.   The rebel Labaya (Rabaya or Yaraba/Jeraba), the author of several Amarna letters and a key participant in dozens of others, has been identified as the rebel king Jeroboam I, who led the seperationist movement of the northern Israelite tribes against the Judean ruler Rehoboam, shortly following the death of Solomon.   The majority of these dates have also been supplied with the assistance of the Berlin genealogy of Ashakhet.

        In the third chapter we assign dates to the Empire kings of the Hittites, Suppiluliumas I through Suppiluliumas II, confirming our suspicion that the 9th/8th century neo-Hittites of the traditional history were nothing other than vassal states of the Empire Hittites, located at the south-eastern fringe of this Anatolian kingdom.  The Empire Hittites have been wrongly positioned by scholars in the 14th/13th centuries B.C.

        In our concluding chapter we move forward to the first half of the 8th century B.C., the time of Merenptah and his ephemeral successors.   It is the time of the Hittite kings Tudhaliyas IV, Arnuwandas II and Suppiluliumas II, contemporaries of a Phrygian king Midas and the Asian (Hittite Assuwa) kingdom of Troy (Hittite Taruwissa), ruled by Priam and Alexander/Paris.  It is therefore the time of the classical "Trojan war" celebrated not only by Homer in his Iliad, but by multiple ancient authors in multiple other works in the decades that followed.  We date the beginning of the war to 765 B.C.   In this chapter we argue that the "earthquake" which destroyed the walls of Troy VI and precipitated the Trojan War, was part of a  widespread catastrophe which displaced the occupants of multiple lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean.  These displaced migrants are identified as the "sea peoples" of the traditional history.   We conjecture as the source of these multiple disasters, the cataclysmic explosion of the volcanic island of Santorini, otherwise known as Thera,  75 km north of Crete.   That massive explosion and ensuing climatic changes brought to an end the empire of the Hittites, destroyed the port city of Ugarit, destroyed ninety percent of the population of the Levant, and terminated the 19th dynasty of Egypt.   The light of the sun was obscured for years; calendars changed.   Egypt was overrun by various groups of refugees from the great explosion, one led by the Syrian chieftain Rezin, who for a brief period ruled over some portion of the Delta.   Most of these Syrian invaders were driven out of Egypt in 757 B.C. by Ramses III, though within Egypt a rival 22nd dynasty soon emerged among a powerful remnant of Libyan intruders. In Tanis a third faction also contested for power, later known as the 21st dynasty.  We have come full circle.

The Exodus and Beyond

        Strictly speaking, our revised history might have ended with the publication of the fourth chapter of the Genealogy of Ashakhet.  It was our original intention only to demonstrate that the 26th dynasty belonged to the 5th century B.C., not to rewrite the entirety of Egyptian history.  That goal was accomplished with our first book.  The second and third books merely served to answer anticipated objections by critics regarding the necessary changes to the chronology of earlier dynasties.   One obvious consequence of the argument of our first three books is that Egyptian history must be grossly in error through the entirety of the 2nd millenium B.C.   We have moved the 18th Egyptian dynasty into the 10th century, a dynasty positioned by traditional historians in the 15th century B.C.  This leaves a gap of 500 years between 1500 and 1000 B.C. that needs to be filled.  Dynasties 17 and earlier must move forward from their traditional location to fill this void, assuming that Egyptologists are correct when they state that dynasties 11-17 lasted for a combined 500 years.  This implies further that dynasty 11 must fall near the beginning of the 15th century B.C., approximately where  biblical sources place the exodus of the Jews from Egypt under Moses.  It was decided, therefore, to dedicate one final book in this series to an investigation of the Egyptian background of the Exodus and the period of the Judges, to test the viability of this conclusion.

The genealogy of Ashakhet, which served to guide our deliberations in the third book of our series, served also to establish parameters for our 2nd millenium B.C. chronology.   In particular that document confirmed our suspicion that the traditional history is grossly in error regarding the Jewish exodus from Egypt and its immediate aftermath.  In the traditional history the Egyptian 18th dynasty, beginning with its famed founder Ahmose I, was preceded by a series of foreign dynasties (dynasties 13-17) collectively referred to as the Hyksos period.   This Hyksos interlude is referred to in Egyptian chronology as the 2nd Intermediate Period.   These foreign intruders were in turn preceded by the Egyptian Middle Kingdom, consisting of dynasties 11 and 12, which followed one another in uninterrupted succession.   Instead, the genealogy of Ashakhet confirmed beyond doubt that the 11th dynasty was followed immediately by roughly a century of catastrophic physical destruction, civil disruption and foreign domination, ending only with the arrival of Amenemhet I and the 12th dynasty established by him.  Then followed the Hyksos interlude and ultimately the arrival of the New Kingdom under Ahmose I.   The lengthy interlude between the 11th and 12th dynasties ought to have been predicted by Egyptologists, since it is confirmed by at least two lengthy and important Egyptian documents, the Ipuwer Papyrus which describes its onset, and the Prophecy of Neferti which describes both its duration and conclusion. 

The genealogy of Ashakhet not only argued for an intrusive chaotic interlude between dynasties 11 and 12, it argued convincingly that the 11th dynasty ended and this interlude began around the year 1445 B.C..   Coincidentally, this was the identical year that the Jewish exodus began according to numbers preserved in the Hebrew Bible.   Thus we were able to conclude that the pharaoh of the Exodus must have been the terminal 11th dynasty king Seankhkare Mentuhotep III.  In turn it followed that the pharoah of the oppression must have been his father, the famed warrior king Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II, whose victory over the Heracleopolitan 10th dynasty in the north of Egypt brought about the reunification of Egypt, divided since the end of the 6th dynasty.  Working backward we were able to established that Moses, the Israeli/Egyptian prince who led the Exodus, was born and raised during the Heracleopolitan era.   In particular, we were able to identify the Heracleopolitan pharaoh who ordered the execution of all Israelite male babies at the time of Moses' birth, and soon thereafter orchestrated the slaughter of all Egyptian male offspring.  Memory of this king, named Achthoes, was fortunately preserved in the history of Manetho, who describes him as "terrible beyond all before him, (who) wrought evil things in all Egypt". 

Finally, we were able to focus our attention on dynasties preceding the Heracleopolitan era, for which the genealogy of Ashakhet provided no assistance.   Carefully, and with due regard for the numbers preserved in various extant Egyptian manuscripts and monuments, the Sakkara and Abydos king lists, the Turin Canon, and Manetho, we revised the lists of dynastic succession for dynasties 3-6, thereby providing a chronology for the first half of the second millenium B.C..  This revised Egyptian chronology was then compared with the chronology of the Jewish patriarchs previously outlined, and in particular with known dates for the arrival of the patriarch Jacob and his family in Egypt during a prolonged 7 year famine, described in the concluding chapters of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible.  .  By chance, the arrival of Jacob coincided with the reign of the Egyptian 3rd dynasty king Djoser, in whose reign a 7 year long famine is known to have occurred.  This in turn led us to conclude that Jacob's son Joseph, whose genius had led to his elevation to vizier, second in command of all Egypt, must be identified as Imhotep, vizier to Djoser, second in command of all Egypt, whose fame had led to his deification by later generations in Egypt.  Both lived at the same time.  Both held the same office.  Both are associated in the centuries following with a 7 year famine from which Egypt was delivered.   And the similarities do not end there.  Many conservative scholars have long argued for the identity of Joseph and Imhotep, based on multiple strands of evidence, notwithstanding the hundreds of years which separate the two individuals in the traditional history.   The fact that the revised history now synchronizes their lives during the reign of Djoser establishes their identity beyond question.  

The remarkable confirmation that Joseph and Imhotep are one and the same person also led to one further incredible conclusion.  The vizier Imhotep has long been credited with initiating the Egyptian practice of construction with stone, and with being the architect who designed and supervised the construction of the first of the stone pyramids, that of king Djoser himself.   He is also given credit for the construction of a pyramid belonging to one of Djoser's successors.  On the assumption that Imhotep and Joseph are the same person, and that Joseph lived to the age of 110, as argued by the Hebrew Bible, it follows from the revised chronology that Joseph/Imhotep lived well into the 4th dynasty.  It follows that he was probably responsible for the design and construction of all the 3rd dynasty pyramids, including the Bent and Red Pyramids, and almost certainly the first of the three great pyramids of Giza, the one belonging to Cheops.  And since his life overlapped the early years of Chephren and Mycerinus, the successors to Cheops, he may also have been involved in the planning for their pyramids.   Since Imhotep is also famed as the likely founder of modern medical procedure, and is renowned otherwise as a literary genius, we are not exaggerating when we refer to the young Jewish "interpreter of dreams" as the da Vinci of the ancient world. 

We should qualify one aspect of the description provided above.  Our discussion of 2nd millenium Egyptian chronology has worked backward from the beginning of the 18th dynasty to the time of the 3rd dynasty pharaoh Djoser.  In fact the book, as presently written, proceeds in the opposite direction.   It begins by revising the chronology of dynasties 3-6, providing the context in which to discuss the Joseph/Imhotep synchronism.  It then proceeds to outline the Heracleopolitan dynasties and the rise of the Middle Kingdom, placing Moses in context and arguing that the year 1445 not only marked the end of dynasty 11 and the beginning of the exodus, but also the beginning of the lengthy and chaotic period of foreign domination which followed.  This discussion consumes the first three published chapters of the book.  Pending is the fourth chapter, in which we will detail  the physical and social upheaval which followed the demise of the 11th dynasty.