CHAPTER IV

THE CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM EGYPT: B. DATING "TIRHAKAH KING OF ETHIOPIA"

As I have already noted above, the contain only some three or four references to Egyptian which are specific enough to be useful for chronological research. Undoubtedly the most problematic of these references--as well as the most notori­ ous--is the brief notice found in 2 Kgs 19:9 which informs us that a certain "Tirhakah king of Ethiopia" (MT Tirhaqiih melek kus)1 was threatening to confront the invading armies of the Assyrian king on the coastal plains of Palestine. Now the actual identification of this "Tirhakah" is not in dispute: biblical scholars concur that the reference in question is to Taharqa, the third and most influential of the 25th (Ethiopian or Nubian) Dynasty.2 This identification, however, presents us with a major chronological difficulty: the Egyptian monumental evidence3 firmly fixes the accession of Taharqa to c. 690 B.C.E., considerably later than the Palestinian invasion of Sennacherib in the summer of 701.4 Therefore,

'LXX ecxpcx(Kcx) ~cxmM~ Al0t6mov. Hebrew kus was frequent- ly used to designate the kingdom of , which was located on the Nile River south of Egypt (thus roughly equivalent in location to the modern Republic of the ). For a useful discussion of the geography and history of the Nubian kingdom, see 0. Winter­ mute, "Cush," !DBS, pp. 200-201.

2Manetho Tcxp(CX)KO~. For convenient summaries of the reign of Taharqa, see Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, pp. 344-47, and Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, §§ 348-54. Concerning the Hebrew vocalization of tirhiiqiih, see Kitchen, ibid., § 421, n. 136.

3For a convenient discussion of this evidence, see Siegfried H. Horn, "Did Sennacherib Campaign Once or Twice Against ?" AUSS 4 (1966) 3-11, and the references cited there. More recently, Egyptologists have raised the date of the commencement of the 26th Dynasty by a year (to 664); cf. Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period, § 119, and the references cited there.

"This date, like many derived from the Assyrian or Babylonian chronologies of the 74 Chronology of the Divided Monarchy we are confronted by a dilemma: either we must dismiss the Tirhakah reference in 2 Kgs 19:9 as a simple error or anachronism in the biblical tradition (Taharqa being the best known pharaoh of the relatively obscure 25th Dynasty), or we must reject the plain sense of the verse (and/or of its context) and reinterpret it in some manner. Scholars who have opted for some sort of reinterpretation have generally followed one of two approaches: either they have taken the phrase melek kus as proleptic ("Tirhakah, the one who later became king of Ethiopia"); or, as part of a grand reinterpretation of the Sennacherib narrative, they have suggested that the Tirhakah reference corresponds with a hypo­ thetical second invasion of Sennacherib (to be dated after 690, when Tirhakah was indisputably on the throne). Reputable scholars have championed each of these options for more than a century ,5 and it is fair to say that no consensus has yet been manifest (or is likely ever to be manifest, barring the future discovery of some sort of unambiguous evidence from Egypt or ). Therefore, I dare not presume to settle this issue once and for all in the following discussion; all I hope to accomplish in the next several pages is to review the recent literature

first millennium B.C.E., is chronologically quite firm; cf. Hayim Tadmor, "The Chron­ ology of the First Temple Period: A Presentation and Evaluation of the Sources," The World History of the Jewish People, First Series: Ancient Times, The Age of the Monarchies: Political History, vol. 4, pt. 1, Malama!, ed. (Jerusalem: Massada Press, 1979), pp. 53-55, and his references cited in n. 31.

5For a thorough review of the Assyrian and biblical evidence concerning the invasion(s) of Sennacherib, as well as a detailed analysis of the various solutions proposed by scholars to account for all these historical data, cf. the still very useful monograph of Leo L. Honor, Sennacherib's Invasion of Palestine: A Critical Source Study (New York: Columbia University Press, 1926); unhappily, however, he declined to present any historical conclusions of his own. This fault also besets another otherwise excellent examination of the biblical data, that of Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah and the Assyrian Crisis (London: SCM Press, 1967). I must confess that, as I reviewed these two works, I was in full sympathy with the statement made by John Bright concerning their utility: "Admittedly, any conclusions must be highly tentative. But the historian cannot be satisfied to draw none, but is obligated to indicate where the balance of probability in the matter seems to him to lie." (Bright, "Excursus I: The Problem of Sennacherib's Campaigns in Palestine," A History ofIsrael, 3rd ed. [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1981), p. 298, n. 2; his entire excursus is a concise, useful introduction to the problem, including selected bibliography, much of it recent.)