PREFACE When I decided to write this book, I found I had two things to consider. One was what the book would say; and the other was what motivated me to write it. A brief account of why I chose to write this book can help make the nature of the work more understandable. For this reason, I will tackle the second consideration first. Like most Christians, I grew up with bible stories. I came to believe in the truth of what the Bible said. As my education in science developed, I also came to believe in the truth of the scientific model of the universe and the development of the human species. However, I was troubled. There did not seem to be much physical evidence to show that the descriptive picture presented in the Bible actually matched the scientific model. For instance, Noah's flood is a well-known story, and pivotal event in biblical history; but the physical evidence is lacking. People have been looking for Noah's ark without success for over 200 years; and, there seems to be no evidence of flood debris in the Middle East around the time when the Bible says it should be, ~2300 BC. This is just one example of a lack of scientific evidence available to support the biblical account. After much study I discovered, what I believe, shows how both the scientific picture and the biblical picture are telling the same true story. Only the audience is different. I discovered that there really is physical evidence to support biblical events. Only the traditional dates are shifted in time. In short, I found a different way to interpret the timing so that the biblical events and their dates actually match the physical scientific evidence and its dates. In other words, the Bible is more than just a collection of morality tales. It is real – and it is supported 1 by evidence when viewed from the right timeline. Because of this, I felt a need to share my discoveries. That is why I wrote this book. I can now tell you what the book has to say. Following the Table of Contents, we begin our story with a philosophical discussion of the allure of ancient history. In Chapter 1, we find my perspective on the significance of trying to understand ancient history. The chapter speculates about the relationship between history and mythology. It also considers the mythological symbolism and its relation to the human psyche. Following this interlude into the psychology of ancient historical studies, we begin to discuss the main purpose of the book. The main purpose of this book is about dating important events that happened during the ancient past. The ancient past to which I refer includes historic events and mythological events, which I believe have a real place in history. The historic period usually refers to times when there are written records. Some of the written records come in the form of monument inscriptions, stone tablets and papyrus records. Others come in the form of the Kings' Lists. These are lists of the kings, and the length of their reigns. These are the records considered here in this work. In general, there are several lists for each ancient culture or nation. Different political groups compiled the various lists, with which there is no BC date association. To obtain a complete list over the entire historic period, the collection of lists must be ordered with redundancies removed, and then tied to a BC date. This for the Sumerian and Babylonian line (Appendix A), the Egyptian line (Appendix B), and the Chinese line (Appendix C). (We discuss the reason for these choices later.) Throughout this work, we compare the RABMEC dating developed here to the traditional (standard) timeline (STL) and in many cases an older timeline development of Waddell. However, scholars know that the historical record does not support the traditional biblical timeline. To address this, David Rohl developed a New Chronology (NC). He modified the traditional dates to be more consistent with the historical record based on astronomical consideration stated in the Bible and non-biblical historical records that support the biblical events but indicate the traditional dates are misplaced in time. Appendix F compares the RABMEC with the STL and the NC. We look at the biblical timeline, and the dating of the Sumerian/Babylonian kings and the Egyptian kings. When you talk about timing, dates, and ancient events you are talking about a timeline – an ordered sequence of events matched with a BC date. This means that the written and oral records from the past are ordered relative to one another. Then, the ordered list is assigned dates based on the known BC date of some of the most recent events. That is what this work does for a group of Eastern cultures. In Chapter 2, reevaluating the historic portion of the ancient timeline is the first step that I take in making my new timeline. Even though we are looking to support biblical events with evidence, no culture (like the Hebrews in the Bible) grows and develops in a vacuum. Traditionally, the historic biblical period extended from the birth of Christ in ~6 BC, back to the birth of Adam in ~4004 BC. Throughout the Bible there are references to other peoples with whom the Hebrews interacted. (See Figure 1) The most notable for the purpose here were the Egyptians and the Babylonians. By looking at the records of these peoples, as well as the Bible, I was able to see a way to match the events with different BC dates than are usually used. 2 Section 2.1 provides the details of the biblical genealogy beginning with Adam and going to the birth of Christ. The Egyptians were particularly important mostly for Moses and the Exodus story. The historic period for the Egyptians traditionally extends from ~30 BC with the last Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra, back to ~3100 BC with the first Egyptian pharaoh Menes. (Menes is important to the new timeline because his date is a pivotal point between the historic period and the mythological period. His date is needed later to date the mythological period that precedes him in time.) The Babylonians were important largely because of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent exile of the Jews. The historic period for the Babylonians extends from ~538 BC when the Persians conquered the land back to the well-known king Khammu-Rabi (also known as Hammurabi), ~1728 BC. Nebuchadnezzar II, 606 BC, is the fourth Babylonian king before the Persia conquest. He is important to the new timeline because his date is a pivotal point marking: 1) the beginning of the exile, and 2) setting the length of the exile. These two things together affect other dates of the new timeline, shifting them from their traditional dates. The Bible describes interactions of the Israeli kings with certain the Babylonian kings and the Egyptian kings. Based on these interactions, I was able to re-date the historic portion of the timeline from the traditional times, and fix the date of Menes to 2638 BC. Figure 2 shows events on the new RABMEC timeline (identified as ATL) with their traditional date and the new timeline date indicated. 3 4 The flood date is the most well-known event whose date we shifted. This shift is a direct result of the Babylonian exile. Traditionally, the exile begins in 606 BC when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem. The prophet Jeremiah foretold that the exile would last for 70 years. Using the genealogies in the Bible, this exile length fixes the Noah flood date at 2294 BC – but there is no evidence of a flood event in the region at that time. The new timeline developed here uses a different definition of the exile length made by the prophet Daniel. Daniel's prophesy is more ambiguous, saying the exile would last "time, times and a half". Section 2.2 shows that the alternate definition allows the new timeline to shift the exile to begin with Nebuchadnezzar I in 1204 BC, and last for 665 years. This shifts the date of the flood to 3113 BC where there is physical evidence of a massive flood event in the Middle East. (There is more about that evidence later.) The reevaluation of the accepted historic dates completed the historic portion of the new timeline. That is what Chapter 2 did. After establishing the historical portion of the new timeline, we turn to the mythological times. The mythological period usually refers to times before there are written records. Knowledge of these times was passed forward in oral tradition that was later recorded when the people learned the art of writing. The traditions of interest here come in two forms. One is the mythological portion of the kings' lists. The other is the origin (creation) myths of the different cultures. The Egyptians and the Sumerians both list mythological god-kings in the beginning of their kings' lists. However, the dating of these kings is hard because the lengths of reigns appear to be unphysical. Some last hundreds to thousands of years. In addition, it is not clear how to relate the Egyptian list to the Sumerian list to aid the dating process. In Chapter 3, we demonstrate a connection between the two cultures by showing that Egypt was part of the greater Sumerian empire. We indicate the vastness of the Sumerian empire by examining five important cultures in the broader region. Because we are looking at the origin myths, Section 3.1 begins with a brief description of the modern concepts of cosmology, which tells the story of the development of the early universe before proceeding to the discussion of the five cultures under consideration.