DOCSLIB.ORG

Conclusion Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity Of

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Conclusion Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity Of Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 243–246 brill.com/jeh Conclusion ∵ Ethnic Identities in Ancient Egypt and the Identity of Egyptology: Towards a “Trans-Egyptology” Thomas Schneider University of British Columbia [email protected] In his 2006 contribution, “What is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?,”1 Kanchan Chandra defined that “ethnic identities are a subset of identity categories in which eligibility for membership is determined by attributes associated with, or believed to be associated with, descent”. The two important conclusions that can be drawn from the contributions in this volume pertain to who determines the (purported) membership in the categories of ethnic membership. The prescriptive (rather than descriptive) categorization of peo- ple as “Egyptians,” “Asiatics,” “Libyans,” and “Nubians” occurred in Egyptian documents of state ideology but has also been a major force in modern, “colo- nial” scholarship. In reality, these categorizations were contingent on social and cultural factors among the ancient populations themselves, and fluid. Uroš Matić (“De-colonizing historiography and archaeology of Ancient Egypt and Nubia”) shows to what extent racist and colonial categories have shaped the ways Egyptological scholarship has assessed ethnic identities with regard to ancient Egypt. For the specific case of the Hyksos, Danielle Candelora (“Entangled in Orientalism: How the Hyksos Became a Race”) carries out a sim- ilar assessment of past misconceptions. With regard to an ongoing tendency in recent scholarship and public discourse to uphold a narrative of Hyksos 1 K. Chandra. “What is Ethnic Identity and Does It Matter?” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (2006): 397–424 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.9.062404.170715. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/18741665-12340049 244 Schneider identity as atypical for, and detrimental to, Egyptian national culture, Thomas Schneider (“Hyksos Research in Egyptology and Egypt’s Public Imagination: A Brief Assessment of Fifty Years of Assessments”) postulates that this reveals a disciplinary conflict that sees Egyptology as “infiltrated” by Near Eastern Archaeology. Uroš Matić’s second contribution (“‘Execration’ of Nubians in Avaris? A case of mistaken ethnic identity and hidden archaeological theory”) is a critique of an archaeological case study, the purported evidence for Nubians in two execration pits at Tell el-Daba. He posits that this false identification is owed precisely to scholarly misconceptions about (presumed) attributes of ethnic identity that have been imposed on the archaeological record. These four critiques of how past and present research determined ethnic membership and also membership in an accepted tradition of scholarship, are contrasted in the present volume by four studies of how membership in ethnic and other identities played out in actual society. A complex and volatile situation of how identity was constructed is visible from a careful observation of available sources, a methodological require- ment called for by Candelora’s article mentioned above. Stuart Tyson Smith (“Ethnicity: Constructions of Self and Other in Ancient Egypt”) adopts a multi- scalar approach that seeks for “the creation of difference using particular markers in particular cultural contexts,” whereby ethnicity must not be seen as stable in an essentialist way, but “ultimately fluid and situationally contingent,” with multicultural sites such as Avaris, Gebelein, Askut and Tombos as case studies. Juan Carlos Moreno Garcia (“Elusive ‘Libyans’: Identities, Lifestyles, and Mobile Populations in NE Africa [late 4th–early 2nd millennium BCE]”) shows how the assignment of ethnic membership by the Egyptian state, focus- ing on a model of marked identity and territorial exclusion/inclusion, does not find easy correlates in the populations demarcated as “Libyan” where diverse lifestyles, forms of economic subsistence, and ethnic affiliation coexisted side by side. Kate Liszka (“Discerning Ancient Identity: The Case of Aashyet’s Sarcophagus [JE 47267]”) demonstrates how a person’s multiple identities intersect in their portrayal on one famous object—what attributes Aashyet selected to substantiate herself as a member of the identity categories of ethnicity, gender, age, and religion. Finally, Christelle Fischer-Bovet (“Official Identity and Ethnicity: Comparing Ptolemaic and Early Roman Egypt”) dem- onstrates how differently the state authorities prioritized membership in the identity categories of occupation, social status, citizenship, and ethnicity, and how as a consequence, social status became dominant in legal and fiscal mat- ters, and ethnicity became irrelevant. The contributions assembled here illustrate the need to think of a trans- disciplinary approach that is not limited by membership in the discipline Journal of Egyptian History 11 (2018) 243–246.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: the Evidence from Egypt
    People, Plagues, and Prices in the Roman World: The Evidence from Egypt KYLE HARPER The papyri of Roman Egypt provide some of the most important quantifiable data from a first-millennium economy. This paper builds a new dataset of wheat prices, land prices, rents, and wages over the entire period of Roman control in Egypt. Movements in both nominal and real prices over these centuries suggest periods of intensive and extensive economic growth as well as contraction. Across a timeframe that covers several severe mortality shocks, demographic changes appear to be an important, but by no means the only, force behind changes in factor prices. his article creates and analyzes a time series of wheat and factor Tprices for Egypt from AD 1 to the Muslim conquest, ~AD 641. From the time the territory was annexed by Octavian in 30 BCE until it was permanently taken around AD 641, Egypt was an important part of the Roman Empire. Famously, it supplied grain for the populations of Rome and later Constantinople, but more broadly it was integrated into the culture, society, and economy of the Roman Mediterranean. While every province of the sprawling Roman Empire was distinctive, recent work stresses that Egypt was not peculiar (Bagnall 1993; Rathbone 2007). Neither its Pharaonic legacy, nor the geography of the Nile valley, make it unrepresentative of the Roman world. In one crucial sense, however, Roman Egypt is truly unique: the rich- ness of its surviving documentation. Because of the valley’s arid climate, tens of thousands of papyri, covering the entire spectrum of public and private documents, survive from the Roman period (Bagnall 2009).
    [Show full text]
  • Ethnic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt Instructor
    Egypt after the Pharaohs: Ethnic Identity in Graeco-Roman Egypt Instructor: Rachel Mairs [email protected] 401-863-2306 Office hours: Rhode Island Hall 202. Tues 2-3pm, Thurs 11am-12pm, or by appointment. Course Description Egypt under Greek and Roman rule (from c. 332 BC) was a diverse place, its population including Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Romans, Nubians, Arabs, and even Indians. This course will explore the sometimes controversial subject of ethnic identity and its manifestations in the material and textual record from Graeco-Roman Egypt, through a series of case studies involving individual people and communities. Topics will include multilingualism, ethnic conflict and discrimination, legal systems, and gender, using evidence from contemporary texts on papyrus as well as recent archaeological excavations and field survey projects. Course Objectives By the end of the course, participants should understand and be able to articulate: • how Graeco-Roman Egypt functioned as a diverse multiethnic, multilingual society. • the legal and political frameworks within which this diversity was organised and negotiated. • how research in the social sciences on multilingualism and ethnic identity can be utilised to provide productive and interesting approaches to the textual and archaeological evidence from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Students will also gain a broad overview of Egypt’s history from its conquest by Alexander the Great, through its rule by the Ptolemies, to the defeat of Cleopatra and Mark Antony and its integration into the Roman Empire, to the rise of Christianity. Course Requirements Attendance and participation (10%); assignments (2 short essays of 4-5 pages) and quizzes/map exercises (50%); extended essay on individual topics to be decided in consultation with me (c.
    [Show full text]
  • The Satrap of Western Anatolia and the Greeks
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 The aS trap Of Western Anatolia And The Greeks Eyal Meyer University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons Recommended Citation Meyer, Eyal, "The aS trap Of Western Anatolia And The Greeks" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2473. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2473 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2473 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The aS trap Of Western Anatolia And The Greeks Abstract This dissertation explores the extent to which Persian policies in the western satrapies originated from the provincial capitals in the Anatolian periphery rather than from the royal centers in the Persian heartland in the fifth ec ntury BC. I begin by establishing that the Persian administrative apparatus was a product of a grand reform initiated by Darius I, which was aimed at producing a more uniform and centralized administrative infrastructure. In the following chapter I show that the provincial administration was embedded with chancellors, scribes, secretaries and military personnel of royal status and that the satrapies were periodically inspected by the Persian King or his loyal agents, which allowed to central authorities to monitory the provinces. In chapter three I delineate the extent of satrapal authority, responsibility and resources, and conclude that the satraps were supplied with considerable resources which enabled to fulfill the duties of their office. After the power dynamic between the Great Persian King and his provincial governors and the nature of the office of satrap has been analyzed, I begin a diachronic scrutiny of Greco-Persian interactions in the fifth century BC.
    [Show full text]
  • 3 Briarwood Lane Dept. of Religion Durham NH 03824 145 Bay State Rd
    DAVID FRANKFURTER 3 Briarwood Lane Dept. of Religion Durham NH 03824 145 Bay State Rd. (603) 868-1619 Boston MA 02215 (603) 397-7136 (c) (617) 353-4431 [email protected] EDUCATION Ph.D., Princeton University (Religion — Religions of Late Antiquity), 1990 M.A., Princeton University (Religion — Religions of Late Antiquity), 1988 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School (Scripture and Interpretation: New Testament), 1986 B.A., Wesleyan University (Religion), 1983, with High Honors in Religion and University Honors POSITIONS HELD Boston University: Department of Religion. Professor of Religion and William Goodwin Aurelio Chair in the Appreciation of Scripture, 2010 - present. Chair of Department, 2013 - . University of New Hampshire: Religious Studies Program, Department of History. Professor of History and Religious Studies, 2002-2010 ; Associate Professor of History and Religious Studies, 1998-2002; Assistant Professor of History and Religious Studies, 1995-98; Director of Religious Studies Program, 1997- 2010. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University: Lillian Gollay Knafel Fellow, 2007-08 Brown University: Department of Religious Studies. Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, Fall 2006. Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ: School of Historical Studies. Fairchild Fellow, 1993-95 The College of Charleston: Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, 1990-95. University of Michigan: Department of Near Eastern Studies. Adjunct Lecturer in New Testament, 1989. FELLOWSHIPS, HONORS, AND
    [Show full text]
  • Ancient Egyptian Chronology.Pdf
    Ancient Egyptian Chronology HANDBOOK OF ORIENTAL STUDIES SECTION ONE THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST Ancient Near East Editor-in-Chief W. H. van Soldt Editors G. Beckman • C. Leitz • B. A. Levine P. Michalowski • P. Miglus Middle East R. S. O’Fahey • C. H. M. Versteegh VOLUME EIGHTY-THREE Ancient Egyptian Chronology Edited by Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, and David A. Warburton BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON 2006 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ancient Egyptian chronology / edited by Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, and David A. Warburton; with the assistance of Marianne Eaton-Krauss. p. cm. — (Handbook of Oriental studies. Section 1, The Near and Middle East ; v. 83) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-90-04-11385-5 ISBN-10: 90-04-11385-1 1. Egypt—History—To 332 B.C.—Chronology. 2. Chronology, Egyptian. 3. Egypt—Antiquities. I. Hornung, Erik. II. Krauss, Rolf. III. Warburton, David. IV. Eaton-Krauss, Marianne. DT83.A6564 2006 932.002'02—dc22 2006049915 ISSN 0169-9423 ISBN-10 90 04 11385 1 ISBN-13 978 90 04 11385 5 © Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
    [Show full text]
  • Who's Who in Ancient Egypt
    Who’s Who IN ANCIENT EGYPT Available from Routledge worldwide: Who’s Who in Ancient Egypt Michael Rice Who’s Who in the Ancient Near East Gwendolyn Leick Who’s Who in Classical Mythology Michael Grant and John Hazel Who’s Who in World Politics Alan Palmer Who’s Who in Dickens Donald Hawes Who’s Who in Jewish History Joan Comay, new edition revised by Lavinia Cohn-Sherbok Who’s Who in Military History John Keegan and Andrew Wheatcroft Who’s Who in Nazi Germany Robert S.Wistrich Who’s Who in the New Testament Ronald Brownrigg Who’s Who in Non-Classical Mythology Egerton Sykes, new edition revised by Alan Kendall Who’s Who in the Old Testament Joan Comay Who’s Who in Russia since 1900 Martin McCauley Who’s Who in Shakespeare Peter Quennell and Hamish Johnson Who’s Who in World War Two Edited by John Keegan Who’s Who IN ANCIENT EGYPT Michael Rice 0 London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2004. © 1999 Michael Rice The right of Michael Rice to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
    [Show full text]
  • Roman Collecting and the Biographies of Egyptian Late Period Statues
    World Archaeology ISSN: 0043-8243 (Print) 1470-1375 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwar20 Roman collecting and the biographies of Egyptian Late Period statues Henry P. Colburn To cite this article: Henry P. Colburn (2016) Roman collecting and the biographies of Egyptian Late Period statues, World Archaeology, 48:2, 226-238, DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2016.1225514 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1225514 Published online: 01 Nov 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rwar20 Download by: [Henry Colburn] Date: 01 November 2016, At: 08:37 WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY, 2016 VOL. 48, NO. 2, 226–238 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2016.1225514 Roman collecting and the biographies of Egyptian Late Period statues Henry P. Colburn Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Studies of Egyptian Late Period statuary often assume that the extant corpus Statues; Late Period Egypt; is a representative sample of the artistic output of the Twenty-Sixth to Thirty- Achaemenid Persian Empire; First Dynasties (c. 664–332 BCE). This assumption ignores the various human Roman collecting; processes that affect the survival of statues after their initial dedication. In Aegyptiaca; object biography particular, the Roman practice of collecting Egyptian naophorous statues for reuse in cult spaces of Egyptian gods in Italy has skewed the chronological distribution of the corpus in favour of statues of Twenty-Sixth Dynasty date.
    [Show full text]
  • Places and Peoples in Central Asia Graeco-Roman
    PLACES AND PEOPLES IN CENTRAL ASIA AND IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN NEAR EAST ¥]-^µ A MULTILINGUAL GAZETTEER COMPILED FOR THE SERICA PROJECT FROM SELECT PRE-ISLAMIC SOURCES BY PROF. SAMUEL N.C. LIEU FRAS, FRHISTS, FSA, FAHA Visiting Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge and Inaugural Distinguished Professor in Ancient History, Macquarie University, Sydney ¥]-^µ ANCIENT INDIA AND IRAN TRUST (AIIT) CAMBRIDGE, UK AND ANCIENT CULTURES RESEARCH CENTRE (ACRC) MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY, NSW, AUSTRALIA (JULY, 2012) ABBREVIATIONS Acta Mari = The Acts of Mār Mārī the CPD = A Concise Pahlavi Dictionary, ed. Apostle, ed. and trans. A. Harrak D. MacKenzie (Oxford, 1971). (Atlanta, 2005). Ctes. = Ctesias. AI = Acta Iranica (Leiden – Téhéran- DCBT = W.E. Soothill and L. Hodous Liège 1974f.) (eds.) A Dictionary of Chinese Akk. = Akkadian (language). Buddhist Terms (London, 1934). Amm. = Ammianus Marcellinus. DB = Inscription of Darius at Behistan, cf. Anc. Lett. = Sogdian Ancient Letters, ed. OP 116-135. H. Reichelt, Die soghdischen DB (Akk.) = The Bisitun Inscription of Handschriften-reste des Britischen Darius the Great- Babylonian Version, Museums, 2 vols. (Heidelberg 1928- ed. E.N. von Voigtlander, CII, Pt. I, 1931), ii, 1-42. Vol. 2 (London, 1978). A?P = Inscription of Artaxerxes II or III at DB (Aram.) = The Bisitun Inscription of Persepolis, cf. OP 15-56. Darius the Great- Aramaic Version, Aram. = Aramaic (language). eds. J.C. Greenfield and B. Porten, CII, Arm. = Armenian (language). Pt. I, Vol. 5 (London, 1982). Arr. = Flavius Arrianus. Déd. = J.T. Milik, Dédicaces faites par Athan. Hist. Arian. = Athanasius, Historia des dieux (Palmyra, Hatra, Tyr et des Arianorum ad Monachos, PG 25.691- thiases sémitiques à l'époque romaine 796.
    [Show full text]
  • Lesson 3 Egypt.Pdf
    NAME _________________________________________ DATE _____________ CLASS _______ Ancient Egypt and Kush Lesson 3 Egypt’s Empire ESSENTIAL QUESTION Terms to Know incense a material burned for its pleasant smell Why do civilizations rise and fall? envoy a person who represents his country in a GUIDING QUESTIONS foreign place 1. Why was the Middle Kingdom a “golden age” for Egypt? 2. Why was the New Kingdom a unique period in ancient Egypt’s history? 3. How did two unusual pharaohs change ancient Egypt? 4. Why did the Egyptian empire decline in the late 1200s b.c.? When did it happen? 5000 b.c. 3000 b.c. 2000 b.c. 1000 b.c. 750 b.c. 5000 b.c. 2600 b.c. 2055 b.c. 1070 b.c. 750 b.c. Settlement Old Kingdom Middle New Kingdom Kush begins in Nile begins Kingdom ends conquers River valley begins Egypt You Are Here in History What do you know? Read the list of pharaohs. Circle the names that you know or have heard before. For each circled name, write one fact that you know about that pharaoh. Ahmose Hatshepsut Copyright by McGraw-Hill Education. Thutmose III Akhenaton King Tut Ramses II 49 NAME _________________________________________ DATE _____________ CLASS _______ Ancient Egypt and Kush Lesson 3 Egypt’s Empire, Continued A Golden Age The Middle Kingdom lasted from about 2055 b.c. to 1650 b.c. It was a time of power, wealth, and achievement for Egypt. During the Middle Kingdom, Egypt took control of new lands. The Categorizing pharaoh required tribute, or payments from the conquered peoples.
    [Show full text]
  • Die Hyksos-Blöcke Aus Gebelen: Zur Präsenz Der Hyksos in Oberägypten
    Originalveröffentlichung in: E. Czerny, I. Heim, H. Hunger, D. Melmann, A. Schwab (Hg.), Timelines. Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak I, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 149, Leuven 2006, S. 239-247 DIE HYKSOS-BLöCKE AUS GEBELEN: ZUR PRäSENZ DER HYKSOS IN OBERäGYPTEN Daniel Polz Unsere Kenntnis der politischen Landschaft Ober­ Namen zweier Herrscher beschriftet, deren Zugehö­ ägyptens während der zweiten Hälfte der Zweiten rigkeit zur 15. Dynastie, der sog. Hyksos­Dynastie, Zwischenzeit ist immer noch weitgehend lückenhaft ­ außer Frage steht.4 Es handelt sich um zwei Stücke trotz mehrerer Versuche, die politische Geschichte aus Granit und Kalkstein, in deren Inschriften sich Ägyptens dieser Zeit zu rekonstruieren.1 Die Fragen die nach ägyptischem Protokoll in Namensringe etwa, inwieweit Ägypten von den im nördlichen Teil geschriebenen Thron­ bzw. Eigennamen der Hyksos­ des Landes regierenden Hyksos 'beherrscht' wurde, könige Seuser­en­re Chajan und Aa­user­Re Apophis ob sich das Verhältnis von Hyksos und Thebanern2 finden, des vierten und des fünften Herrschers der wirklich als eine 'Vasallenstaat'­Struktur oder als 15. Dynastie." eine Art 'tributäre Abhängigkeit' beschreiben ließe, Diese beiden Stücke sind bislang die einzigen in und wo schließlich ­ wenn überhaupt ­ eine territori­ Oberägypten aufgefundenen Architekturteile, deren ale Grenze eines wie auch immer gearteten Einfluß­ Anfertigung bzw. Verwendung aufgrund ihrer bereiches der Hyksos gelegen haben könnte, sind Beschriftung eindeutig Herrschern der Hyksos zuge­ letztlich noch nicht beantwortet. Die folgenden Zei­ wiesen werden können. Die Bauteile befinden sich len zu einem Ausgangspunkt dieser Fragen ­ den heute im Ägyptischen Museum in Kairo, sind aber 'Hyksos­Blöcken' aus Gebelen ­ und damit zur politi­ m.W. nie in Zeichnung oder Photographie veröffent­ schen Landschaft in Oberägypten während der 17.
    [Show full text]
  • Demotic Egyptian Instruments of Transfer As Evidence for Private Ownership of Real Property
    Chicago-Kent Law Review Volume 71 Issue 1 Symposium on Ancient Law, Economics and Society Part II: Ancient Rights and Wrongs / Article 10 Symposium on Ancient Law, Economics and Society Part II: Ancient Near Eastern Land Laws October 1995 Demotic Egyptian Instruments of Transfer as Evidence for Private Ownership of Real Property J.G. Manning Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation J.G. Manning, Demotic Egyptian Instruments of Transfer as Evidence for Private Ownership of Real Property, 71 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 237 (1995). Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol71/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicago-Kent Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. DEMOTIC EGYPTIAN INSTRUMENTS OF TRANSFER AS EVIDENCE FOR PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF REAL PROPERTY* J.G. MANNING** "The Ptolemaic law of things is dominated by the distinction between possession and ownership. This distinction has found expression in the terminology: KupiEia -dt Kp6TIraiq denoting, in this connection, possession and ownership. The corresponding terms are KupiE6Etv Kai Kparrdv. Sometimes, however, they are used interchangeably .... Raphael Taubenschlag, The Law of Greco- Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, p. 173. r-Iny jd r ms.t hwy r sh.t "Borrow money at interest, invest it in land." A demotic wisdom text (P.
    [Show full text]
  • Resolving the Chronology of the Hyksos Kings
    RESOLVING CHRONOLOGY OF THE 2nd MILLENNIUM B.C. James B. Parkinson Several puzzling problems of Canaanite archaeology and Hyksos times can be resolved by looking for Israel’s Exodus and entry into Canaan rather earlier than has been commonly considered. Key findings include: The Mediterranean campaign of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur and Sumer, fourteen years before he died, corresponds well to the campaign of Amraphel, king of Shinar, fourteen years before Abram’s victory over him. Nearly 430 years later, Moses would have been contemporary with Pharaoh Khyan/Iannas (as attested in the N.T.); hence the Exodus from Egypt in B.C. 1615 must have begun the decline of the Hyksos kings. The once unexplained end of the Middle Bronze age in the mid-16th century B.C. is readily explained by the Israelite invasion of Canaan. The Habiru threat of the el-Amarna letters apparently follows the contemporary victories of Deborah/Barak and Gideon. The Biblical accounts appear both reliable and precise. Introduction Israel’s Exodus from Egypt and entry into Canaan are central to its early history. Over the past many decades scholars have argued only whether it was around the time of Thutmose III (mid-14th century B.C.) or around the end of the reign of Ramesses II (c. BC1237-1212). Abetted by lack of positive evidence for the former and by progressive lowerings of the reigns of the kings of the United Monarchy, the latter has been strongly favored of late. In the light of Palestinian archaeology, this view has made it fashionable to doubt the conquest tradition of Israel, or that any pre-Kings historical details should be taken more seriously than, say, the bizarre Gilgamesh Epic.
    [Show full text]