The Time Traveler Rest Stop

A Little Nefertiti Logic

2012-01-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last night, sleepless from too much sleep due to having been in bed for a couple of days on account of a nasty virus, I was struck by a jolt of logic. In 1999, as many of you know, I published an online paper with the title, "Do We Have the Mummy of Nefertiti?" If you haven't already read it, you can find it here:

http://www.oocities.org/scribelist/do_we_have_.htm

Ever since Dr. Hawass et al published the JAMA paper on the DNA of the family of Tutankhamun, there has been, among the online Egyptolophiles, the knee-jerk reaction that, because she has now been confirmed as a daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, the mummy the "Younger Lady from KV35" cannot possibly be Queen Nefertiti. But the fact remains I first got the idea that KV35YL could be Akhenaten's wife because of physical resemblances of the remains to her portraits. There are quite a few, and I point them all out in my paper. I do admit to having had doubts that the KV35YL can have been a daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye because their [at the time purported but now confirmed] mummies are excessively short in stature and the KV35YL is taller. At 5' 2", the YL is taller than her father and certainly taller than the 4' 9" Queen Tiye.

But here's the thing. No matter what arguments people line up against the KV55 individual and the KV35YL being Akhenaten and Nefertiti, it seems an undisputed fact that Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye had a daughter who looked like Nefertiti, possessed the physical attributes evidenced by that lady's portraits [when she was allowed to look like herself and not like a strange version of Akhenaten]. Put differently, Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye were capable of engendering a Nefertiti or someone who resembled her greatly--down to the extraordinarily long, swanlike neck. Logic and DNA dictate it must be so. After I had proposed that the KV35YL might be Nefertiti, another woman, Susan James, took a good look at the Elder Lady and concluded that *she* looked like Nefertiti and advocated this identification. There is no hope for Ms. James' theory now, evidently, but perhaps James' perception of a resemblance was not far off the mark. For more, please do a search on the blog post "Tutankhamun's Family Tree--the Possibilities" here.

Granddaughter, Danya, making obeisance to the royals

Hatshepsut's Obelisk, Astronomy, and Why Thutmose Went East

2012-01-02T16:35:00.000-08:00

In my last post on Hatshepsut's obelisk and its telling inscription, I contented myself that the date of its completion, the 30th day of the 4th month of Shomu, was well within the season of the Nile flooding. I also observed that the inundation should have begun 40 days earlier, around the 20th day of the 3rd month of Shomu, for the waters to have achieved a maximum depth for floating the monument downstream to Thebes from Aswan. Based on all that, I speculated that around 32 years had lapsed since the end of the reign of Amenhotep I.

Having done a little more astronomical research, I find I now have to contemplate [in addition to taking into consideration lunar data from the reign of Thutmose III] a spectacular eclipse in the reign of Mursili II, king of the Hittites, which places the beginning of his reign in a much-accepted 1322 BCE--around the time of the death of Tutankhamun of Egypt. Therefore, I have become convinced that a better date for Year 22 of Thutmose III could be 1457 BCE of the Middle Chronology. The new moon [or "no moon"] for 21 Pakhons in that year would have fallen on Sunday, May 9.

Moreover, it would seem that, counting backwards from 1457, the Year 16 of the obelisk inscription [no matter whose Year 16 it was] we would arrive at 1463. Much study into the matter of when Sirius could best be sighted in that year [progression, etc.] has led me to July 10 or 21 Epiphi [3rd month of Shomu]. Whether this was at Memphis or Thebes, I am still not certain.   Regardless, that amounts to 36 years having gone by since the end of the reign of Amenhotep I. If it was really Year 16 of Hatshepsut [using the count of the true king, Thutmose III] that would mandate 20 years for the interim rulers.   If it was actually only her Year 13 [she having appropriated 3 years of Thutmose II and made a fictional Year 7 coincide with Year 4 of her nephew, Thutmose III]---the entire 20 years would have belonged to the reign of Hatshepsut's father, Thutmose I.   Why, then, did Hatshepsut celebrate a Heb-sed in her Year 15?   She might claim that her father had made her a co-king in his Year 2, but 15 and 18 add up to 33. However, 18 and 12 [the actual number of her "Year 15"] add up to 30.   Perhaps Hatshepsut was no more scrupulous about math than she was about history. Although I wish I could be absolutely certain of how long Thutmose I and II ruled, there is still room for doubt in that area. However, my shift from the High to the Middle Chronology has led me to ponder something new which is--why did Thutmose go to war in the 22nd Year of his sole reign at the time that he did? I thought that seemed clear enough previously--but now I think there's more to it.

In my article, "Ruler of the Stars", reproduced on this blog, I wrote the following: "In the era of Menkheperre Thutmose III, the months of the civil calendar did not have names, only numbers from one to twelve. Much later, names were derived from the main feast days of each month. Even in more modern times, the farmers said, “Baramhat [Phamenoth], go to the field and fetch.” This means that in this month, which ideally runs through part of April, the harvest is in full swing. Then came the saying, “Barmuda [Pharmouti], pound with the rod”, April/May being the time for threshing. By May/June there is nothing left in the field and that’s why one declared, “Bashans [Pakhons] sweeps the field entirely.” So the sayings remained, but the civil months were only in their proper season for limited times in pharaonic history as their calendar did not employ leap years and therefore wandered through the three naturally-occurring seasons of Egypt, Inundation, Winter and Summer. Only after another 1,460 years did the civil calendar and these seasons synchronize fully once again and the sighting of the star, Sirius [spdt] occurred on New Year’s Day, the beginning of the month of Thaout."

All those who do not believe in what the Hebrew Bible has to say about an exodus from Egypt can tune out now.  Or keep an open mind and read on. This will be interesting. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, claimed that this exodus had taken place in the month of Pharmouti. No doubt he was going by the Alexandrian Calendar, which was a reformation of the old Egyptian civil calendar, accomplished in 30 BCE. By the Alexandrian or Coptic Calendar, Pharmouti runs from April 9 through May 8.   Of course, that would seem convenient for the 15th of Nisan, the date designated for the great event, generally celebrated in April by the Passover commemoration.   And, yes, for many years prior to Year 22 of Thutmose III, 1457 BCE, 15 Nisan did fall in April by retroactive calculation. But, in 1457, 15 Nisan fell on March 27.   This may have no significance, as in subsequent years in the reign of Menkheperre 15 Nisan fluctuated between late March and April. In another post here, "From Memphis to Gaza", I wrote regarding the itinerary of Thutmose III on his first big Asiatic campaign: " It only required two days for Meshullam of Volterra to get from Cairo to where the desert began and, at most, the pharaoh's army needed four on foot--unless they by some chance had some business to conduct at Avaris in the eastern Delta. Were it not for a lacuna where it stated the day of departure from Memphis, we might have a pretty good idea if there were any protracted stops along the way to Djaru. If the army went straight through, it probably left Memphis on the 21st Day of the fourth month of winter." That would have been Julian April 9, 1457 BCE. And this is where it gets intriguing.

The fact remains we really don't know the date of departure. It can have been even earlier. Also, Egyptology has generally assumed that, once Hatshepsut was out of the picture, Thutmose went east with a large army as soon as he could in order to show the Canaanites he was no weakling, despite having been second to a woman in his land for so many years.   This is but the merest speculation--but what if he had a much more pressing reason to make war on the Levantines, those so-called "rebellious princes"?   What if, in Year 22, the Egyptian crops had failed and it was necessary to get wheat from Asia? According to the annals of the ever-victorious pharaoh, numerous sacks of it were collected as spoils that year--at least 207,300 of them. As has been stated, the king's army could hardly leave Memphis any later than the 21st of Pharmouti if one had arrived at Djaru, the fortress, on the 25th.   Since the wheat and the rye supposedly ripen in late March or early April in Egypt, that would have left scarcely any time for the men to finish the harvest by April 9, much less for a great army to be mustered from among the peasantry. Not in 1457 BCE!

Moreover, if there is no harvest to speak of and that lack had been known for some time, it was also possible for Thutmose to stop at Avaris in March and make a siege of that city. According to the Book of Exodus, the flax and the barley, which are generally ripe in late February or early March, had matured prior to the damaging hail and the subsequent invasion of locusts. There was nothing green left in Egypt after that--except in the Land of Goshen [the eastern Delta], which had been spared. If there was going to be a year of famine in Year 22, it would not matter who had been spared.  Food had to come from somewhere in order to feed the nation. Could one really say "We had a severe shortage and so we stole the crops of the Canaanites?" Better to blame everything on some rebellious princes. Centuries later, Manetho, an Egyptian historian, wrote that a king "Thummosis" besieged Avaris but ended up coming to an agreement with those who had taken refuge within the city, allowing all of what seems to have been a foreign element to depart without bloodshed. If this had taken place in March, there would not have been time for a long siege, anyway, given the likely plan of Thutmose to get to Canaan in time to harvest and take away its winter wheat. At any rate, the day of departure on March 27 would have fallen on a Saturday with the night previous having evidenced a full moon--IF the 15th of Nisan was involved.   Even if it wasn't, Thutmose may have gone to war to avoid hunger in his country.

The Reign of Thutmose III/Hatshepsut--Three Lost Years

2011-12-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

In an earlier article on this blog, "Neferura--Heir Apparent" I wrote:

"It is scarcely any wonder, then, in light of the above image, that William Petty, in a couple of articles, has pointed out that there are no unambiguous inscriptions of Thutmose III between his Year 5 and Year 13. Where was he and what was he up to? But, sometime after Year 13, Hatshepsut changed her mind and Thutmose began to appear with her on monuments albeit in a secondary position. Then, in her Year 21, Hatshepsut, herself, becomes absent from the record. Under the circumstances, I have to agree with Petty that Thutmose found it convenient to continue the last regnal date of the woman-king. He may have been the rightful sovereign, but it now seems to me he had been deposed, not merely eclipsed, and was not expected to ever resume his kingship during a certain period."

William Petty's paper in the journal, Ostracon, "Redating the Reign of Hatshepsut" can be found here:

http://www.egyptstudy.org/ostracon/vol12_2.pdf

Upon re-reading this paper, I discovered something that would have made no sense to me had I not been doing the calculations connected to the obelisk inscription of Hatshepsut, described on this blog.   There I concluded the progression of the Sothic sighting within the civil calendar showed 32 years had gone by between the end of the reign of Amenhotep I and Year 16 of Hatshepsut, leaving 16 years for the interim rulers. These I apportioned as 13 for Thutmose I and three for Thutmose II.

Now it appears that may be exactly right.   William Petty mentioned that the Donation Stela of Senenmut was a perplexing item. Even though it is evidently dated to Year 4 of Thutmose III, "Maatkara", the prenomen of Hatshepsut, is mentioned and the mortuary temple of the queen and Senenmut's tomb are referenced. However, there is ample evidence that neither of these were begun until Year 7, which some regard as the year of the "switch" from Hatshepsut as regent to a ruler with full pharaonic titulary. How is it possible for things not constructed until Year 7 to be mentioned in Year 4? The answer is now obvious.

William Petty suggested the regnal years of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut were "artificially synchronized", but he did not say exactly when. He was correct, in my opinion, but I think my astronomical calculations serve to reinforce the assertion of Petty that, if taken at face value, the Donation Stela implies that Year 4 of Thutmose III was coincidental with Year 7 of Hatshepsut. Therefore when she became a "woman-king"--Hatshepsut did not adopt the regnal count of Thutmose III--exactly. Hatshepsut counted her reign back to the death of her father, Thutmose I, and, in doing so, appropriated or rather obliterated the entire three-year rule of her half-brother, Thutmose II. And that is why she asserted the fictitious claim that her father made her his successor when she was still young--so she could not only usurp the throne of her nephew but claim the three regnal years of her dead husband as her own, in addition.   That is how Year 4 of Menkheperra became Year 7 of Maatkara--she usurping the entire time that had passed since Thutmose I had "flown to heaven". Even though Thutmose III apparently hung on for yet another year, his Year 5----there is nothing that attests to his kingship for some years afterward.

Once he reappeared on the scene, the year count no longer belonged to Thutmose III. As he was re-instated as a kind of "junior partner" of his aunt, he had no choice but to assume her false regnal count with her and, after she disappeared in her year 21, it was no longer practical to go back three years to his own count as by now hundreds of records were surely in existence using Hatshepsut's dubious reckoning. Since these records had to be referenced in legal disputes, to go back instead of foreward would have resulted in chaos. Doubtless many would disagree with me and say that there were retrospective additions to the Donation Stela--but Petty could not see this. I have not been able to examine the stela, myself. However, one must admit my reasoning addresses the question of why would Hatshepsut wait a full seven years to usurp her nephew's prerogative with the boy or young man growing older every year and ostensibly more firmly ensconced on his throne? Probably she did not wait seven years at all.

More On Substitution Portraits

2011-12-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

The Theban tomb of Sennedjem was found intact and contained the man, his wife, and some of their relatives. Their coffins were beautifully decorated, even though the mummies of Sennedjem and spouse, Iyneferti, were discovered to be switched. Nevertheless, that Sennedjem's outer coffin was made in the long reign of Ramesses II is rather obvious from the coffin's face--not that of Sennedjem but that of the sovereign. Just like the face of the actual mummy of Ramesses the Great, the right eye is somewhat smaller than the left.

However, the most realistic portrait of Ramesses II I have ever seen is below:

The detail is not very good in this scanned image but a haughtier portrait is difficult to imagine. Note that the right eye is, once again, smaller than the left and there is the big, puffy chin under the smallish mouth of what is supposed to be a portrait of the scribe, May. I cannot recall where the statue resides.

Granville's Mummy Died of TB

2011-11-22T05:41:00.000-08:00

This news is 2 years old but still interesting. Here is a report on Granville's Mummy, one that was unwrapped in the 19th Century:

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0910/09100104

and here is a contemporary report from a witness to the unwrapping, from a bit in the London Magazine:

http://tinyurl.com/78cfbvc

Granville found a tumor in the remains and figured the woman, Irtyersenu, had died of cancer, but the tumor was actually benign.

From Nurses to Queens

2011-11-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

In the winter of 2005 I published a piece in Britain's Ancient Egypt Magazine called "The Head-dress of Lady Rai". The point of the article was that the indentations on the forehead of a female mummy from the Deir el Bahari cache, named Rai, seemed to conform to the joins on a golden headdress of another [lost?] mummy, Satdjehuty, as depicted on her mask in the British Museum. The joins, as visible in a larger image, have been traced over in red by me to demonstrate just how they line up with the bottom of the head-dress. Here are the relevant images:

I no longer have a copy of my own article but, if I recall correctly, there were nurses of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari named Satdjehuty and Rai, the latter's coffin being in the Deir el Bahari cache but containing the corpse of Queen Inhapi. Rai's head-dress seems to have gone slightly askew but that of Inhapi slipped down so much onto her face that it crushed her nose and left a pattern of its rishi-feathers on her face. More about the mummy of "Rai", shown here, can be found on Max Miller's website at:

http://members.tripod.com/anubis4_2000/mummypages1/Early18.htm#Rai

I also remember that, even while writing my piece for the magazine, I wondered how anyone knew the BM mask belonged to Satdjehuty as the visible inscription did not evidence such a name. Now I know the answer. The burial of Satdjehuty was discovered around 1820, according to Wiki, but how that is known eludes me. The lady, being a king's daughter, king's sister, and king's wife, seems to have been a consort of Seqenenre Tao II. Her nickname was "Satibu". Her mummy mask went to the British Museum but the remains of her wooden sarcophagus was acquired by Munich, where it was exhibited in 1999. That Satdjehuty was a queen is known from the Munich artifact. In 2005 I could find nothing indicating that the Satdjehuty of the BM mask was a queen and opinions fluctuated between "lady of the court" and "princess". Even now the BM website does not recognize this Satdjehuty as a queen.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/aes/m/mummy_mask_of_satdjehuty.aspx

But Wikipaedia indicates she is and I will try to investigate the matter further, although I think Wiki is correct. While the mask does not have a uraeus, the Munich sarcophagus head-dress, much the same, clearly once did:

I wrote in my article that what appeared to be golden head-dresses of ladies of the court were very queenly in appearance and now, of course, I know why. The Satdjehuty [which seems to have been a common name of the era] of the BM mask was no nurse or lady of the court--but a queen. A bandage, probably also in the BM, indicating a Satdjehuty as "a praised one of Ahmose-Nefertari" likely belonged to different lady and has been erroneously connected to the owner of the mask. The grandmother of Senenmut, great servant of Hatshepsut, was called Satdjehuty, too. Satdjehuty, the queen and sister-wife of Tao II, is also mentioned on the mummy-shroud of her daughter, Ahmes, who was buried in QV47 and is now in the Turin museum. [Dodson] The other wives of Tao II were Ahhotep and Inhapi.

Therefore, the mummy, supposedly named "Rai", can also not be a mere nurse but is surely a queen, as well. Now there is nothing known to be worn by ladies of the court that can have left the impression on the brow of the mummy--just the weighty golden crown of a king's wife. If you read about this mummy on Max Miller's site, you will have noticed that an inscription on a bandage was thought to say "Rai", but the other inscriptions were left vague in what Professor Eliott Smith had to say about these female remains in his book, "The Royal Mummies". A curious photo of one of the bandages along with some hair can be seen below, souvenirs of Smith in a frame. Scroll down and you will come to it here:

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/blog/index.php/tag/egyptian-gods/

Yes, indeed, a coffin of a nurse of Ahmose-Nefertari, belonging to "Rai", was certainly found in the cache but that the mummy, supposed to have been Rai, herself, all these years can be that lady is now very doubtful. An investigation into the matter should be conducted by the Cairo Egyptian Museum and the DNA of "Rai" could be compared with the mummies of other queens of the period. There is the coffin of a man named Paherypedjet, too, in which "Rai" was found, but what happened to him? His mummy does not appear to have been discovered among those in the cache. The BM mask was purchased in 1880 at Morten & Sons from the sale of the collection of Samuel Hull, of whom I know nothing. The mask is no more than 13 inches high. It does not make so very much sense that, if the nurse of Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, Rai, was going to be included by the reburial commission with the defunct royals of Egypt, that her coffin would be taken from her and used for Inhapi. Why not, then, just leave Rai in her own coffin and place Inhapi in that of Paherypedjet? It seems to me that the nurse was never deemed of sufficient rank to be included in the cache but lost her coffin to one royal lady and possibly even some of her bandages for the re-wrapping of another young queen.

The Face of Tutankhamun

2011-11-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

I have written it here and elsewhere that the best way to know how a king of Egypt really looked is to see his face as substituted for those of his servants and nobles. The above is supposed to be the head of a statue of Paramessu, a northern vizier of Tutankhamun who eventually became pharaoh as Ramesses I. Even though this stone face is less than perfectly intact, it is easy to see that it actually belongs to the boy-king Paramessu served. In these "substitution portraits", which were a very common way to show ones loyalty to the ruler in the New Kingdom, the artists did not bother to flatter the pharaoh nearly as much as they did in his own official images. Therefore, the above rendering of the young Tutankhamun is about as faithful a portrait as would have been made of him in antiquity and it compares very well to the face of his mummy. Notable are the almond eyes with their heavy lids and the thick lips that close with difficulty over the large, protruding front teeth. Click on the image for a larger view.

Sven Geruschkat--A Modern Master

2011-10-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Have jusr been introduced to the work of Sven Geruschkat, a veritable Holbein among digital artists.
Just look at his marvelous reconstruction of the head of Nefertiti. It looks like a photograph of the queen. Of this guy I totally approve! When you get to his page click on "CGINew" and you will see it. Then click on the thumbnail.

http://www.svenger.de/

Neferura, Heir Apparent

2011-10-25T15:24:00.000-07:00

This is thanks to Stuart Tyler and his Hatshepsut Project at

http://styler78hatshepsutproject.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html

Perhaps because the fragment rests in a rather obscure Scottish museum, I had never viewed an image of it and was so surprised and appalled that I asked Stuart if there was any possibility it might be a fake. You can see my conversation with him, as well. But he convinced me it was not and I then realized that, at the time of the building of Hatshepsut's mortuary complex, [ca. Year 7] Thutmose III was supposed to be out of the picture entirely. He really had lost his throne to Hatshepsut's ambitions.
They were not joint rulers at all or Neferura, Hatshepsut's daughter, would have been displayed as a mere princess and not with the diadem and sidelock of an heir apparent--yet another female pharaoh waiting in the wings. During my conversation with Stuart at his site, you can view the URLs to some images of Ramesside Era princes wearing a nearly identical diadem and sidelock.

[click on image for larger view]
There is nothing in existence depicting Thutmose, himself, as a prince. It is scarcely any wonder, then, in light of the above image, that William Petty, in a couple of articles, has pointed out that there are no unambiguous inscriptions of Thutmose III between his Year 5 and Year 13. Where was he and what was he up to? But, sometime after Year 13, Hatshepsut changed her mind and Thutmose began to appear with her on monuments albeit in a secondary position. Then, in her Year 21, Hatshepsut, herself, becomes absent from the record. Under the circumstances, I have to agree with Petty that Thutmose found it convenient to continue the last regnal date of the woman-king. He may have been the rightful sovereign, but it now seems to me he had been deposed, not merely eclipsed, and was not expected to ever resume his kingship during a certain period.

William Petty's paper in the journal, Ostracon, "Redating the Reign of Hatshepsut" can be found here:

http://www.egyptstudy.org/ostracon/vol12_2.pdf

There he gives an account of the items dated to the years of Thutmose III and Hatshepsut, finding a gap of seven for the former.

Addition of October 30: There is however, the problem of Thutmose III being depicted at the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut. According to Alberto Siliotti, construction of the temple of Hatshepsut took fifteen years, between years 7 and 22. Here is where I hit a limestone wall because I have no way of knowing if the depictions of Thutmose are contemporary or retrospective. For example, he is present in a scene commemorating the famous expedition to Punt in Year 9--but in which year was the scene executed? Probably not until at very least Year 10 and by then a co-regency may have been restored. Since I am not familiar with the stages of Djeser Djeseru, I can say no more until I have done more research on the temple.

Hatshepsut's Obelisk Again

2011-10-14T13:53:00.000-07:00

On May 31 I wrote a post about in what month of the civil calendar the inundation could be expected in Year 16 of the rule of Queen Hatshepsut. I think I can now add a little more to the calculations of her engineers. Here's how the other post, which must be deleted due to an error, began:

"Those who like to argue that the Sothic dating is out of whack are going to have to admit one of these days that it is not. It looks increasingly to me that the most important one, the pEbers, has been correctly interpreted and that Sothis was, indeed, sighted on the 9th Day of the 3rd month of Shomu in Year 9 of Amenhotep I.

Previously, I have attempted to show here from agricultural indices that, in the time of Thutmose III's first Asiatic campaign, the civil dating was pretty much in sync with the seasons. Now there is another indication--the date of Hatshepsut's obelisk. I found it a very sensible idea that moving an obelisk north from the quarry at Aswan was easiest at the time of the flood, mainly to insure the depth of the water needed to transport such a heavy object. That led me to check the obelisk text of Hatshepsut and, by golly, there it is. It was finished by the season of the inundation, according to the civil calendar. Here's what the inscription says:

'My Majesty commissioned it [the obelisk]in Year 15, Day 1 of the second month of Winter, ending in Year 16, the last day of the fourth month of Summer, making seven months from the commissioning in the quarry.' "   So far so good.

I also wrote: "After Year 9 of Amenhotep I, that king ruled about 20 more years. The civil calendar slipping by one day every four years, Sothis should have been sighted about the 14th day of the 3rd month of Shomu by the end of the reign of Djeserkare Amenhotep..."

However, I believe I wrote in error and Amenhotep I most likely did not reign that long. [Manetho assigns him 21 yrs. or perhaps 20 years and 7 mos.] And so I must start anew today. Therefore, by the end of his reign, the heliacal rising can only have advanced three more days in the calendric third month of Shomu to Day 12.  But how much slippage had occurred by Year 16 of Hatshepsut is problematic, as we do not know the lengths of the reigns of the intervening kings, Thutmose I and II. But we can try to follow the logic of Hatshepsut's engineers. By the way, the slippage goes forward by a day every four years through the Egyptian civil calendar but simultaneously backwards through the Julian one.

In 1050 CE, Naser-e Khosraw observed the following about the annual flood: "When the sun enters Cancer, the Nile begins its increase and gradually rises day by day to twenty cubits [a high estimate] above its water level. " Khosraw wrote that unless the level went past 18 cubits by the Nilometer "the sultan's land tax is not levied on the peasantry." According to Khosraw, the water rose for 40 days until it reached 18 cubits [or so] and then it remained at that level for another 40 days, neither increasing nor lowering. After that it gradually decreased for yet another 40 until it reached the winter level. When did the first 40 days begin? The first signs of the flooding were seen at Aswan at the end of June, normally, but there was a lot of possibility for variation. Only the star, Sothis, was dependable and one might say that, normally, one could also see some flooding at Thebes by July 12.

Note: The hydrology of the Nile basin [from Encyclopedia Britannica] "The Nile ... floods rising as a result of the heavy tropical rains in Ethiopia. In the southern Sudan the flood begins in April, but the effect is not felt at Aswan, Egypt, until July. The water then starts to rise and continues to do so throughout August and September, with the maximum occurring in mid-September. At Cairo the maximum is delayed until October. The level of the river then falls rapidly through November and December. From March to May the level of the river is at its lowest."

If we count backwards 40 days from Day 30 of the fourth month of Shomu, when the obelisk of Hatshepsut was finished and, ideally, the inundation at its peak for floating the heavy stone downstream,[as such an enormous weight displaces a lot of water] we revert to Day 20 of the third month for roughly the start of the inundation.   One could say, then, that about 32 years must have passed between the end of the reign of Amenhotep I and Year 16 of the joint reign of Thutmose III/Hatshepsut. That leaves about 16 years for the interim rulers and that is very possible, *especially* since Hatshepsut decided to celebrate a heb sed or jubilee in her Year 15.   Scholars have opined that, since a first jubilee was not supposed to be celebrated until Year 30, it may have been 15 years retrospectively since the accession of Hatshepsut's father, Thutmose I. Therefore, since Hatshepsut considered or propagandized herself as his designated successor in her father's Year 2, she simply added on all the years that had gone by since. It works out pretty well. Of course, another day of slippage would add four more years for the interim rulers, but it is difficult to assign anymore regnal years to these men who already have so few by the archaeological evidence.

The important thing is that the obelisk date text puts the completion in the flood season--after it had already probably begun a month before. Perfect timing, as it turns out. For me, the inscription is a marker that corrroborates another one, the pEbers. It all points to, so far, three Sothic anchors being correct, the el Kahun, giving the Middle Kingdom concordance, the pEbers, and the Elephantine concordance, which must be from the reign of Thutmose III by default, even though his name is not mentioned. Moreover, by sheer calculation, the mention of the flood in the time of Merneptah is also proven to be *in its time* by the civil calendar, a new Sothic Cycle having begun by Merneptah's reign. 30 Mesori [4th month of Summer] amounts to Julian August 24, 1489 BCE, a possible date for Year 16 of Thutmose III/Hatshepsut.

Addendum of Oct. 15: That the bulk of the interim years should be assigned to Thutmose I seems indicated by scarabs manufactured during the reign. Among Hatshepsut, Thutmose II and I, the woman-king has by far the most and Thutmose II by far the fewest. Therefore, Luc Gabolde estimated 11 years for Thutmose I and 3 for his successor. Gabolde, Luc (1987). "La Chronologie du règne de Thoutmosis II, ses conséquences sur la datation des momies royales et leurs répercutions sur l'histoire du développement de la Vallée des Rois". SAK 14: 61–87.

That is not very far from my own estimate .of 13 years for Thutmose I and three for Thutmose II. At the start of Manetho's 18th Dynasty, there is a king "Chebron" or "Chebros" who is assigned 13 years of rule. This has rightly been thought to be Aakheperenre Thutmose II on account of the similarity of the prenomen. However, the archaeological evidence leans toward those 13 years belonging to Thutmose I and not his successor, as was evidently believed in antiquity. Or perhaps "Chebron" just gained a digit by scribal error just as Harmais/Horemheb evidently lost one [Manetho assigns him 4 years] as the latest scholarship has determined he probably reigned for 14 years.

Also, if the heliacal rising was sighted at Memphis instead of Thebes in that Year 9 of Amenhotep I, the date would be different. If someone subscribed here knows how to use Skyview Cafe or some other astronomical program, please give us your input as to the Sothic dates for this reign.

From Memphis to Gaza--the Road to Conquest

2011-10-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

Related to the post, below, is a check of the annals of Thutmose III and his trek with his army from Memphis to Gaza. Unfortunately, the day in the fourth month of winter that the king set out from his northern capital is not known, but he passed the fortress of Djaru [Sile] , the gateway to Canaan in Year 22, the fourth month of winter Day 25. It took the pharaoh nine days to reach Gaza from Djaru.

Above: Thutmose III in middle age by M. Luban

That this is the truth is, ironically, corroborated by a Jewish traveler, Meshullam ben Menachem of Volterra, who made the same trip in 1481 CE. Thutmose III possibly made his journey in 1482 BCE. Meshullam, an Italian jeweler, merely wanted to see the Holy Land via Egypt, as he also wished to learn about the Jews in that country and their number. The traveler wrote that it was 298 miles from Cairo to Gaza and that was about the distance from ancient Memphis to Gaza, as well. Meshullam left Cairo on the 4th of July, a time of much greater heat than the departure of Thutmose in the spring. But Meshullam was not walking and rode donkeys and camels. He waited at a place called "Alhanika, that is Rephidim", two miles from Cairo, for a caravan, and left with it at dawn on July 12, reaching Bilbeis in the eastern Delta on the same day. Meshullam figured that Bilbeis was Goshen. The caravan left Bilbeis on the 13th of July and arrived at a small place known as Hatara and from there "entered the desert". Leaving Hatara, Meshullam and company got as far as Salahia on July 14 where they had to pay a tax [one of many] to the guardian of the roads and riders. This Salahia is suspiciously Sile, which also once monitored the main way out of Egypt. [Note of Oct. 11: An old Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910 confirms this, stating that "Salihia" is just south of Lake Menzala and was the start of a caravan route from Egypt.] There Meshullam remained until the 15 of July and after that continued on to Rivayrar, a spot that meant "wells", according to the traveler. On the 16th of July Meshullam advanced to Kastaia, " a fine city with many palm trees" and his caravan decided to rest there until Sunday the 18th.

That same day Meshullam found Bir-Debur "a place of brackish water". On the 19th El-Arish was reached. Meshullam sensibly deduced this must be the Succoth of the Torah on account of its name meaning "reed hut". On the 21st of the month the caravan was at Gaza. Meshullam's journey from near Cairo to Gaza took nine days but, again, he was not on the march. The forces of Thutmose III required nine days to reach Gaza from Sile on foot and they made very good time as it required Meshullam seven days by camel to traverse the same distance. It is reasonable to think that Thutmose and his men halted and rested at the same places that Meshullam did, although they probably did not have the leisure to sojourn two days at the spot with all the palm trees. It only required two days for Meshullam of Volterra to get from Cairo to where the desert began and, at most, the pharaoh's army needed four on foot--unless they by some chance had some business to conduct at Avaris in the eastern Delta. Were it not for that lacuna where it stated the day of departure from Memphis, we might have a pretty good idea if there were any protracted stops along the way to Djaru. If the army went straight through, it probably left Menphis on the 21st Day of the fourth month of winter. See my post about "Lemonade" for a description of the winged creatures that bit Meshullam and the men en route.

Biblical Exodus 101

2011-10-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

There are a few simple facts to remember about the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt that is described in the second book of the Torah. They are these:

The first plague must have taken place at the very start of the inundation, as only then did the Nile take on a reddish-brown hue, the rains of Ethiopia having washed its red earth downstream into Egypt.
The next nine plagues occur throughout the coming months into the winter season. The winter crops have been ripening and the Bible, when the wrath of God supposedly brings down hail to destroy the crops, gives a telling clue that it is only sometime in late January or early February because only certain of the crops were ripening and the others had not yet matured.
The legend had it, according to the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, that the exodus took place in the Egyptian month of Pharmouti, the month of threshing, ideally corresponding to April/May. After that month the harvest is done. Pharmouti must also correspond to the Hebrew month of Nisan [by retroactive reckoning] and this only happens during limited periods in Egyptian history. In some years, the 15^th of Nisan, the day of the departure, will fall within other months in the Egyptian civil calendar. For example, in 1359 BCE, a year in the reign of Amenhotep III, the 15^th of Nisan would fall on Julian 21^st of April—but this would amount to 27 Pakhons by the civil calendar.
Nearly all of the ancient historians were convinced that an exodus occurred during the sway of the 18^th Dynasty, yet not all agreed as to the reigning pharaoh. But, giving another example, April 3, 1482 BCE, probably a year in the reign of Thutmose III, amounts to 8 Pharmouti and 15 Nisan 2279. I do not know the year in which the Biblical exodus was supposed to have occurred. Perhaps no one did by the time the Book of Exodus was written. However, it is obvious, even from the way the plagues are described, that it had to be in what we call the spring season. Therefore, the Jewish calendar was devised as a lunar-solar one, so that the month of Nisan would always fall in the spring. However, since the Egyptian civil calendar was a lunar one without leap years, this was not the fate of the month of Pharmouti, which could fall within any of the three naturally-occuring seasons of Egypt but was in what we view as the spring only at limited times.

The Unexplained

2011-09-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

In June, while doing some research, I took some photos of a church that is going on 200 years old with a disposable camera. I am not much for taking pictures so don't have a better camera any longer. This is the view, above. This is the largest the photo will show up on this blog, but the images are clickable for a better look. Here is an enlargement of something odd I saw by the left railing of the double doors:

Is it a ghostly figure hovering above the top step? Who knows? There was no one there when I snapped the shot.

The Sothic Cycle Continues

2011-08-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

Below, I wrote regarding the floating of the obelisk of Hatshepsut on the river to Thebes:

"The best compromise would be that, by Year 16 of Hatshepsut, Sothis should probably be sighted sometime toward the end of the 3rd month of Shomu, signalling the start of the flood season, and that, by the end of the 4th month, when the obelisk was ready to leave Aswan, the inundation should be REALLY high in time to float the great stone downstream." [Addendum of October 14, 2011: The start of the flood season in Year 16 should have begun around Day 20 of the third month of Shomu.]

38 more years would follow until the end of the reign of Thutmose III and the civil calendar should have slipped by about 9 days. There is the inscription on what is called the Elephantine Stela, which does not bear the name of a king [or the year of his kingship] but which has been ascribed to Thutmose's long rule because it states that a Sothic rising occurred on the 28th day of the third month of Shomu. Later this month would be called "Epiphi". So far we are on schedule, but....

TT192 is the tomb of Kheruef, an official of the time of Amenhotep III. This tomb is dated to the end of the reign of the latter because his son also appears there as king--before he became Akhenaten. This indicates either a co-regency or a time of transition, a point much argued. Evidently Kheruef helped organize two of the jubilees of Amnehotep III, in years 30 and 37 [I am not sure if Kheruef mentions the second one in Year 34.]. By Year 30 about 70 years should have lapsed since the passing of Thutmose III. By now the sighting of Sothis should be happening in the middle of the fourth month of Shomu, but there is a text from the tomb on a wall dedicated to the first Heb-sed or jubilee.

Amenhotep is shown in a barque with Queen Tiye and others and one translation is "Beginning the journey by [his majesty at the time] of the High Nile in order to transport the gods of the jubilee by water."
At left, the date looks like "Year 30, month three [of] Shomu" to me and I can't even read the day. Regardless, it seems hardly possible that this can have been the time of the inundation in Year 30 of Amenhotep III. If correct, the pEbers is meaningless and the Elephantine Stela must belong to a reign following that of the third Amenhotep. Since the inscription is most likely a retrospective one, a scribal error can have been made or even a lapse by the stone cutter. The transporting of the gods should have taken place during the 4th month of Shomu if it was the time of the actual inundation because soon there needed to be a "wHm mswt" or New Era occurring in the reign of Seti I. That would mean that the civil calendar and the natural seasons would be in sync once more with the Nile flood occuring in the first month of the first season, Akhet, where it would in a "perfect year".

Addendum of Aug. 27: I finally managed to check the Oriental Institute's The Tomb of Kheruef: Theban Tomb 192. The Epigraphic Survey. The text of the barque scene is discussed on page 54. Here the reading is "Year 30, third month of the third season, day...." and reaches the same conclusion I did. The text regarding the Nile is "Hm=f r tr n Hapi aA" but footnote "e" says "the date of this text actually falls several months before the advent of a high Nile; see the remarks of H. W. Helck" and the reference is "Nilhohe und Jubilaumsfest", ZAS 93 (1966) 78-79. Thus, Helck seems to have agreed with me that the text is incorrect regarding a high Nile, but it is only one month off where the start of the season of inundation and the heliacal rising of Sothis is concerned.

Tutankhamun's Family Tree--the Possibilities

2011-08-18T16:54:00.000-07:00

Once again, a very helpful, color-coded DNA chart of King Tut's family tree is at

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/09/tut-dna/tut-family-tree

There one can see the alleles at certain loci of various royal mummies, beginning with the oldest generation, Yuya and his wife, Thuya, down to two tiny little girls, who are nameless and could be the ill-fated children of Tutankhamun. Remember, one inherits one allele from each parent at a given locus.

No Matching Wedding Bands

Even though the mummy known as the Younger Lady from KV35 [KV35YL] and the remains from KV55 appear to be the parents of Tutankhamun, that is no guarantee that they were--or that they were even husband and wife.   When it comes to females breeding with their full brothers--and because there is the potential of offspring inheriting one of four combinations of alleles at a given locus--we cannot rule out that the KV35YL was not married to another of her full brothers, instead, whose mummy we do not have.  Such a brother cannot be ruled out precisely because we cannot see his alleles at the eight loci. Things can get quite complicated where there is incest, but I'll try to explain. Because, epigraphically, Tut was the son of a king, there were three candidates for his father--and this used to include Amenhotep III. Amenhotep III is out of the running now, leaving Akhenaten and his ephemeral successor, Smenkhkare. But which of these two pharaohs is KV55? Many persons are of the opinion that the remains are too young at time of death to be those of Akhenaten due to pronouncements by those who examined the skeleton in the past. However, it was most recently subjected to a CT-scan whereas Egyptian radiologist, Ashraf Selim, opined that the young man to whom the bones belonged had to be at least 22 years old when he died, but the doctor could not pinpoint the age any nearer than 22-45. That could certainly fit to Akhenaten, as well. Historically, King Akhenaten was the son of the pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. If KV55 is not Akhenaten but King Smenkhkare, then Smenkhkare was definitely a full brother of Akhenaten and not a son of Akhenaten, as some believed.

The Problem of Queen Meritaten

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the KV55 individual is Smenkhkare. The only king's daughter that we know of who was his wife was a child of Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti. The KV35YL and KV55 are full sister and brother. Their parents were Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. However, Meritaten cannot have been the full sister of Smenkhkare if he was the son of that couple. The same difficulty would apply to Meritaten's full sisters if Smenkhkare had married any of them, in addition. Therefore KV55 and the KV35YL are not Smenkhkare and Meritaten.

Was Nefertiti the Daughter of Amenhotep III?

Many people cannot believe in this possibility as Nefertiti is never styled "king's daughter" in any of the texts where she is represented. However, we know nothing of Nefertiti before she became the Chief Wife of Akhenaten--except one textual fact. Her nurse was Tey, the wife of Ay, and this is recorded in Ay's commoner tomb at El Amarna.   A girl named Mutbeneret is also depicted in this tomb who seems to be Nefertiti's sister but, unfortunately, the term "snt" can mean both "sister" and "female cousin" in the Egyptian language.  The fact that Mutbeneret is depicted in their tomb may make her the daughter of Ay and Tey but there is no way to know this for certain. While the daughters of Nefertiti are always called "king's daughter" while they are children, this changes when they married. Meritaten and Ankhesenamun are not depicted with their husbands very often, but when they are they are not styled "king's daughter" any longer but only "great royal wife"--just as was Nefertiti. Regardless of all this, the DNA seems to indicate that Nefertiti could have been the daughter of Amenhotep III--and he had many. They are depicted in the tomb of Kheruef, but they are not named there.  Yet...even if Nefertiti was only a half-sister of Akhenaten or a cousin [but the descendant of kings] it would not have been so far-fetched to have her as the living incarnation of Tefnut to his Shu [twin deities who sprang from Re and were also husband and wife] than if Nefertiti was a mere commoner.

A Different Spouse for KV35YL?

There is nothing preventing the KV35YL from being the mother of Tutankhamun with another man who was a full brother of the KV55 individual and who had much the same alleles at the loci. If KV55 is not Akhenaten, the latter can still have sired King Tut. A brother of KV55 could have had, for instance, 6/15 at the second locus instead of the 15/15 of KV55, although at other loci they can have had the same numbers, as do KV55 and his sister, the KV35YL. But, if Akhenaten was the father of Tutankhamun, that still leaves us with the problem of "Who is the KV35YL?" Nefertiti is seen as the wife of Akhenaten quite early in his reign. The only other wife we know of for the pharaoh is the mysterious Kiya, no more styled "king's daughter" than Nefertiti. Beyond that, it would appear that Akhenaten, in later years, attempted to have offspring with his elder daughters. But Akhenaten would have had to sire Tutankhamun with his full sister.

What the Alleles Say

You will see at the National Geographic website, that a badly-treated mummy is thought to be the best candidate for the mother of the two little babies found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. This female mummy is called KV21A, after the tomb in which her remains were discovered. One of the most interesting aspects of this mummy's DNA profile is that she has the allele 35 at D21S11, not seen there since the profile of Thuya. Allele 35 is rather rare at the locus, but makes the biggest showing in Africa, not so much Egypt where it is shown at 0.0110. Elsewhere in Africa it is definitely higher at the locus. Otherwise, in the Middle East, there is only Turkey, the So. Adana Area having the highest at 0.0070. These numbers come from the DNA of modern populations, but this may be indicative of the distant past, as well.

Also, KV21A   has an extremly rare allele, 16, at the first locus, which she shares with Amenhotep III. In fact, her numbers at the locus are 10/16, exactly the same as the king. Since 16 is a much rarer allele at the first locus than 35 is at the fourth, this is most interesting.   The important question is--since Tutankhamun *could* be the father of the babies and his Chief Wife was Ankhesenamun--is KV21A actually Ankhesenamun? Although Tut makes a good candidate for the father, that does not rule out other males of his family according to the 8-locus profile.

For the sake of argument, let us say Akhenaten  isn't KV55 and did not have 10/12 at the first locus like KV55--but the combination of 11/16 instead [which is very possible given his known parentage]. Then where does KV21A, as Ankhesenamun, get the 10 at the first locus? Even if KV55 *is* Akhenaten, then where does KV21A get the 16? None of those numbers are present at the first locus in Yuya, Thuya, or their daughter Tiye. They only show up in the first locus with Amenhotep III.  My suggestion for the best solution to the problem is this: I think it's most likely that KV21A is the offspring of a union between a daughter of Amenhotep III [and an unknown female] and a son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye [probably Akhenaten]. That way, whether Akhenaten had 10/12 or 11/16 at the first locus, the number required to make up the 10/16 of KV21A will be provided by the daughter of Amenhotep III, who got it from his side of the family. I suppose one might say that KV21A seems to be related to Amenhotep III any way you cut it.   Even if she is merely the offspring of one of Amenhotep III's brothers. Without this connection of Nefertiti to Amenhotep III, discussed above, it is unlikely that KV21A  can be Ankhesenamun and another identity would need to be sought for this mummy.

Now the allele of KV21A at the fourth locus, which is 35, may just coincidentally be the same as Thuya there. The reason I think so is the 10 of KV21A at the 6th locus. Nobody has it there in the entire family tree until KV21A and the next generation. That's why I think the grandmother of KV21A is someone unrelated to the family as represented in the tree we have so far. But further test results from these mummies, such as mitochondrial DNA, might help answer the questions.

It would have been helpful to include Thutmose IV, the father of Amenhotep III, in this family tree. Since the parents of Queen Tiye were tested, another generation from the patrilineal side would have aided in showing what "royal DNA" of the 18th Dynasty looks like. Or, rather, which alleles Amenhotep III got from his father. That way we might get a better idea of how someone like the lady, KV21A, was related to the royal line. There can be little question, however, that Yuya was a relative of Amenhotep III. They share alleles at five of the eight markers, too many for it to be coincidental.  This goes a long way toward explaining why the young pharaoh was married to Tiye, Yuya's daughter. But, again, without the DNA profile of Thutmose IV, we cannot tell if Yuya was related to Amenhotep's mother or his father.   My guess is--and this is mere speculation--that allele 10 that Amenhotep III introduces into the presently-known family tree at the marker D13S317 is non-Egyptian and may have been contributed to the gene pool via a foreign female. 10 at this locus does not make a very good showing in north Africa [Egypt, pooled, has only .0631 and central Egypt, el-Minia, does slightly better with .0830] or in Africa in general. However, the farther east of Egypt the higher the numbers, from Anatolia to India and best of all, the Far East.    In other words, it is an Asiatic allele, with numbers as low in Europe as in most of Africa.

A Brief Synopsis of My Books

2011-05-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Some may have wondered what my books are about and haven't taken the time to go to the booksellers' sites to find out. So I thought I'd render a brief synopsis of each one here in the order that I wrote them:

The Samaritan Treasure [1990] Short fiction collection nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. The stories narrate the Jewish experience throughout time from ancient Israel to Regency England and the American Midwest.

The Exodus Chronicles [2005] In this work of nonfiction I have assembled all that was said in antiquity about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt by the ancient historians and have also included some interesting tidbits from Medieval and modern writers. I included my own commentaries about dates and other things relative to Egypt and primary texts from this land. Basically, this book is an "Everything you ever wanted to know about the exodus"--or was there actually more than one?

The Pharaoh's Barber [2008] Set in the court of Thutmose III, this tale of mystery and murder is experienced through the eyes of the king's own barber, a young Canaanite captive named Levi. Who hated the pharaoh's beautiful new wife, Satiah, enough to kill her? More than one individual has a motive, including the members of Thutmose's own family, beginning with his first wife, Neferura, the proud and iron-willed daughter of Hatshepsut.

The Priest [2008] Father Raphael Arnheim is a man with an unusual past, who ultimately describes himself as "the worst priest in all of Christendom". This erotic novel shows what can happen to a man before he realizes that love is "the one true and holy thing in the universe".

Jane Austen's Thimble [2009] A novella whose setting is London. Andrea Beller, a young American woman, has given up on life but a diverse cast of characters and a thimble she found at Chawton, the home of her favorite novelist, help Andrea to find her way back to happiness and solve the puzzle of her identity.

Lucien Galtier-Pioneer Priest [2010] Biography of the first priest to come to the Minnesota Territory and who built the first church. Born in France, youthful Father Galtier struggles to survive physically and spiritually in the rough frontier towns on the Mississippi river.

More On Royal DNA

2011-04-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Some say "yes", some say "no" but when it comes to testing the royal mummies of Egypt, the green light still flashes "Go, go, go"!

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110427/full/472404a.html?s=news_rss

The Return of Zahi Hawass

2011-03-31T08:52:00.000-07:00

Like the Ghost of Christmas Past. Why? Because "no one else can do the job". Sigh.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/egypts-antiquities-minister-rehired-less-than-a-month-after-leaving/

Baking Old Bones

2011-03-28T11:04:00.000-07:00

This is old news but I missed it. It's a method for facilitating the extraction of DNA from skeletal remains. Interesting.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0201-baking_out_dna.htm

Who You Are

2011-03-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

Many people, when talk of ancestry arises, say "I am Heinz 57 Variety", chiefly due to the melting pot called America. But, in reality, it is simpler than that--and at the same time more complex. Studying the world of DNA has changed my view of ancestry entirely. We inherit two sets of genes, one from each of our parents. These genes determine our appearance, intelligence, and other traits and we can certainly favor one parent over the other in regard to all that. We also inherit our blood type from one or the other of our parents. These genes or alleles are very useful when it comes to determining our recent relatives, if that is in doubt but, in a most basic sense, we are never "Heinz 57 Variety". That's because our "ancestral" DNA never varies, even though, living in a melting pot society, the various ethnic types that contributed to who we are certainly influenced other things about us.

If you are a male, you have inherited what is called y-DNA from your father in a chain that goes back indefinitely. This DNA can be broken down into a haplogroup and the haplogroup into sub-clades so that one can pretty well narrow down what part of the world your distant male ancestor came from. Studying the various surnames of men who have been tested by companies such as Family Tree DNA in various haplogroups and their subclades, it is quite amazing to see how these last names which seem to belong to various ethnicities--belong to persons who are related, regardless. That's right. Your last name can be Bailey but you can still have the same common ancestor as a man called Goldberg. There were times when certain areas of the globe, including the Middle East and Europe, were devastated by catastrophic diseases. On account of them many male lines died out and it was basically a case of the survival of the fittest. In other words, at these dreadful periods in history the progenitors, men who were able to perpetuate their y-DNA into the future, became relatively few. Minorities, like the Jews, were hit especially hard and that is why so many Jewish men with dozens of different last names [last names can be acquired by various means and are something relatively recent in the history of Mankind] have a common ancestor. Of course, persons who lived in distant lands like the Far East or were isolated by great bodies of water, such as the Americas or even Scandinavia usually do not fit into this picture because foreigners normally did not go there in antiquity. Some places were simply too far, too cold, beyond great mountains, or their men had reputations of being too fierce. But, sometimes, for certains reasons, men went far from their own lands--like the crusaders did to battle over Jerusalem.

Of course, if you are a male, you also inherited your mothers mitochondrial DNA--but you cannot pass that on to your children. You just pass your y-DNA on to your sons. Mitochondrial or mtDNA also has haplogroups and it is not at all rare for a man's mtDNA to come from a different part of the world than his y-DNA did. One of the reasons is that wandering men married or at least procreated with local women. Mitochondrial DNA is passed on from mother to daughter in an unbroken chain going back many thousands of years. If you are a female, the haplogroup your mtDNA belongs to is your unchanging ethnicity. This has nothing to do with religion, citizenship--or any group of which you might consider yourself a part. It is who you are in the most basic sense. You do not inherit y-DNA from your father if you are a female, just some of his genes. Being a woman, if you want to know where your remote paternal ancestors come from, your father or a brother, an uncle or a male cousin, need to be tested. Your own DNA is of no use for determining this.

The science of microbiology or DNA testing has shown that people have many more relatives everywhere than they ever imagined--and that people are more alike than they ever considered. DNA is immune to prejudice and national chauvanism. It does not lie. You may have believed your great-great-grandfather came from Ireland--and that may be so--but his own ancestors might have lived in Spain.

"Ruler of the Stars"

2011-02-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

When Thutmose III, finally freed of the shadow of his aunt in the 22nd year of his unusual reign, decided to march east on his first Levantine campaign, there were some things to take into consideration. According to the annals of the pharaoh, there were 330 princes rebellious toward the Egyptian empire waiting for him in Asia, each with his own army. The one who had actually consolidated the empire was Thutmose’s grand-sire, Aakheperkare Thutmose I, and so the grandson doubtless felt it his duty to maintain his inheritance. But there was another factor at play as well. Menkheperre Thutmose was fully aware that the Canaanite petty rulers knew that he had been second to a woman for nearly two decades and probably considered him a weakling on account of it. Now was the time to dispel that misconception of his true nature once and for all. Thutmose was resolved to do battle with those princes, if necessary, besiege their walled cities, for certain, but that required the mustering of a great force of his own.

Ancient Egypt of the New Kingdom did not have a standing army. It was drawn from the citizenry, primarily the peasants since most of the nation was devoted to agriculture. But the farmers could only leave their fields at certain times of the year. The optimal time was when the harvesting of the crops was completed in the spring and there was nothing to do but wait out the scorching summer until the inundation arrived and receded to allow for fall planting. In other words, the main crops of Egypt, the wheat and the barley, matured during the winter season of Peret or “the coming forth”. Bread was the staple of the Egyptian diet.

In the era of Menkheperre Thutmose III, the months of the civil calendar did not have names, only numbers from one to twelve. Much later, names were derived from the main feast days of each month. Even in more modern times, the farmers said, “Baramhat [Phamenoth], go to the field and fetch.” This means that in this month, which ideally runs through part of April, the harvest is in full swing. Then came the saying, “Barmuda [Pharmouti], pound with the rod”, April/May being the time for threshing. By May/June there is nothing left in the field and that’s why one declared, “Bashans [Pakhons] sweeps the field entirely.” So the sayings remained, but the civil months were only in their proper season for limited times in pharaonic history as their calendar did not employ leap years and therefore wandered through the three naturally-occurring seasons of Egypt, Inundation, Winter and Summer. Only after another 1,460 years did the civil calendar and these seasons synchronize fully once again and the sighting of the star, Sirius [spdt] occurred on New Year’s Day, the beginning of the month of Thaout. This astral sign was the harbinger of the season of the flood and was sighted around July 18 by the Julian calendar.

But there was yet another consideration–the harvest in the Levant. One could take advantage of that, were one to arrive in time. The Canaanite harvest was slightly behind that of Egypt and the cereal crops there could be seized as booty, not to mention the newly-trod wine, if one was victorious and could wait until September for the grapes to mature. After that, hauling back the goods to Egypt, which could include pomegranates, figs, and olives, the pharaoh’s army returned to their villages to tend to the sowing of the fields. Therefore, without any other indications, we can already surmise what time of the year it was by more modern calendars when Thutmose set out with his army. However, it so happens that his annals give the itinerary and they say that Thutmose and his forces found themselves at the fortress of Djaru/Sile [the place at the gateway to Egypt where one collected the weapons of war] on the “4th month of the second season, day 25″. That would have been April 20th in 1482 BCE–according to the Julian calendar–later to be known as the month of Pharmouti. Why I choose the year 1482 for Year 22 in the reign of Thutmose III will soon become apparent but it is already manifest that, by now, the citizen soldiers had already completed their harvest task.

In the first month of the 3rd season [which is Shomu], Day 4, the Egyptian calendar turned to Year 23 because it was the anniversary of the accession of the pharaoh to the kingship–but, of course, it is still 1482 by the Julian calendar. Later, the first month of Shomu would be called Pakhons, after the moon god, Khonsu. On Day 21 of Pakhons, Thutmose appeared at dawn to address the troops and then set off in a golden chariot to engage the enemy at a place called Megiddo in Canaan. Thus began a siege of the walled city that lasted seven months. Day 21 of Pakhons was May 16 by the Julian calendar. It was also the “feast of the new moon”. The term used for the “true new moon” was “psDntiw mAaty”. According to the Egyptians, the moon, “the ruler of the stars”, was conceived on a day of the month known as the “psDntiw” and was not born until the following day–or night. That means that the “psDntiw” was the new moon [or “no moon”, in reality] prior to the sighting of the first sliver of its waxing. In fact, May 16, 1482 BC appears to be the date of the new moon by the lunar phase’s retroactive calculator.

The new moon would appear on 21 Pakhons in 25-year increments, but I believe that 1507 BCE might be too early for Year 23 of Thutmose III. Regardless, the dates 1507 May 22, 1482 May 16, 1457 May 9 all seem not unreasonable, but it becomes clear that the higher the date, the more time the Egyptians had to finish their own harvest in the month of Pharmouti. However, agriculturally speaking, the middle date allows the army not to miss the Canaanite cereal harvest, as well. Had these crops been taken from the fields surrounding Megiddo by the time Thutmose arrived, the siege of the city might have lasted longer than seven months. But, as it turned out, many of the shut up people emerged from hunger to be taken captive and the Egyptians claimed to have carried off “207, 300 [+x] sacks of wheat, apart from that cut as forage by his majesty’s army” – with the rest of the considerable spoils of war.

The Foreign Wives of Thutmose III

2011-02-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

While almost nothing of the vast treasure that must have been buried with the great warrior pharaoh, Thutmose III, survives except some items left on his mummy, three of his concubines fared much better. Their names are obviously foreign, probably West-Semitic, and are usually written as Menhet, Menwi, and Merti. They ended up in my mystery novel, "The Pharaoh's Barber" and I made them sisters, although their true relationship is unknown. I also gave them the formal Semitic names of Marta, Menukhah and Manahet and the last two do seem to correspond to the nicknames given them in antiquity. These foreign girls were buried in a rock cut tomb in what is known as the Wady Gabbanat el-Qurud, discovered in 1916 by Herbert Winlock. The tomb had already been robbed but some of the looted artifacts were recovered and the collection is now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Above is a diadem bearing the gazelle heads commonly worn by secondary wives or concubines instead of uraei. Only such golden objects and those made of stone survived as damp had gotten into the tomb and disintegrated the wood and, most unfortunately, the mummies. Winlock thought the women had probably all died at the same time, possibly of a pestilence, and that is their fate in my book. Before that, however, Marta, a very clever and beautiful girl, does a great service to her lord, Menkheperre Thutmose. Here is an excerpt, describing the girls' first meeting with the great man, as viewed by the pharaoh's young barber:

"The Canaanite wives wore their colorful, embroidered dresses they had brought from home but they also had some beautiful golden things upon their heads and all kinds of jewelry on their necks, wrists and ankles. Each one had a little ring in her nostril. Their eyes were painted like the Egyptian wives, but not so much, and they were lacking reddened lips and cheeks. But their own blood in their cheeks gave them the blush of roses. Instead of sandals, the sisters wore on their feet small shoes of yellow leather. Levi was glad to see that the scorned sisters confronted the pharaoh, whom they did not know at all, bravely, and held their thin, arched noses proudly before them."

By the way, the person doing the observing was not born in Egypt but in Asia. Probably, he had never seen the kind of flower we westerners call a rose, but he had surely seen rock roses, which look like this:

Although my book is not really geared toward young adults, it begins where my favorite teenage novel, "Mara, daughter of the Nile", by E. J. McGraw, left off. I am as convinced as McGraw that Hatshepsut was not a nice lady. Ultimately, these wives must have come to mean something to the king because they were given a sumptuous burial, including the wonderful jewelry that can be seen today.

Who Is This Mummy?

2011-01-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

I suggested, some years ago on my now defunct website [some of it still exists at Reocities.com] the possibility, that the mummy "Thutmose I" may be a son of Amenhotep I-- Prince Sipair. At least that is what Scott Woodward, the first microbiologist to do a genetic study of the royal mummies seemed to think, that they were father and son, although his findings were never published. The erstwhile "Thutmose I" does not have his arms positioned across his chest like a pharaoh, but his now missing hands were once placed over his genitals in a pose that has been seen in royal princes. Yet, even in remote antiquity, there was some confusion as to whether Sipair was a prince or an actual king. In the tomb of Inherkhauy, Sipair is included in the famous tableau called "The Lords of the West". There he sits at the end of the first row without a cartouche, but holding royal insignia, the crook and the flail, regardless. A ceremonial beard is tied on his chin, although he sports only the princely sidelock.

Sipair was reburied by Butehamun, a scribe in charge of dismantling the Theban necropolis, whose sovereign instructed him to strip the "ancestors" of their wealth for his own profit at the end of the 20th Dynasty. On Butehamun's coffin, in the Turin Museum, Prince Sipair is there among the royals depicted that Butehamun "restored" and he is shown as an adult, as he is on other artifacts. The pAbbot, however, refers to the burial of a "king" Ahmose-Sipair [his full name in a cartouche] but supplies no prenomen for him. His tomb, wherever it was, was reported in the papyus as being "sound" i. e. "unplundered" in the reign of Ramesses IX. The other royals depicted on Butehamun's coffin are Amenhotep I, Queen Ah-hotep, Queen Ahmose-Nefertari, Queen Sitamun and Queen Meryetamun--all of their mummies "supposedly" discovered in the Deir el Bahari cache. So we may suppose that Prince Sipair was there with the other members of his family. Queen Ah-hotep was a relative of Amenhotep I, (possibly even his chief wife) Ahmose-Nefertari was his mother, and Sitamun and Meryetamun apparently sister-wives of the pharaoh. There is one such Meryetamun, her tomb [a reburial] discovered beneath a part of Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, who bears quite a resemblance to the now nameless male mummy, including their very thick, brush-like eyelashes and prominent over-bites.

As we now know, Amenhotep I did not seem to have had a surviving son and was succeeded by Thutmose I, whose father is an unknown. It may have been that Prince Ahmose-Sipair was the heir-apparent at one time, even assumed some kingly duties for some reason, but met an untimely death.

Recent scanning of the corpse has revealed that he met a violent end, perhaps even in battle, as what seems to be an arrow-head is still imbedded in his chest. The mummy was discovered in a coffin of the actual Thutmose I but which was altered for Pinudjem I. Why that was still poses many questions. On the other hand, as the latest DNA report for the person in question has not yet been released, the mummy could possibly be one of the sons of Thutmose I, as the features correspond closely to those of other persons within the Thutmosid dynasty.

Help For Bald Mummies?

2011-01-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

Hair color of unknown offenders is no longer a secret

means that hair and eye color can now be predicted from DNA.

"Prof. Manfred Kayser, Chair of the Department of Forensic Molecular Biology at Erasmus MC, who led the study, said, "That we are now making it possible to predict different hair colors from DNA represents a major breakthrough because, so far, only red hair color, which is rare, could be estimated from DNA. For our research we made use of the DNA and hair color information of hundreds of Europeans and investigated genes previously known to influence the differences in hair color. We identified 13 'DNA markers' from 11 genes that are informative to predict a person's hair color."

This would work with non-European populations, as well. As for King Tut and family, they carry a European haplogroup, anyway, it is thought, so their characteristics could be predicted under the above guidelines.

EEF--Time To Take Off That Tight Garter

2011-01-04T17:29:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, ladies [and longer before that even men] used to wear blood-stopping garters to hold up their stockings. There were other contraptions, too, that were constricting, like corsets that scarcely allowed one to take in air. Such things went the way of the Dodo but there are still influences in life who make it unnecessarily difficult to breathe freely. Sometimes it's because they're so damned dry you can't stop sneezing from the dust. For well over a decade now, I have been a member of the Egyptologist's Electronic Forum, hereafter the EEF. If nothing else, it was a respite from the flame wars so hard to escape elsewhere in the virtual world. It was full of smart people instead of trolling idiots. But now I feel it has stagnated in its own mainstream Egyptology pool [seldom a lively discussion about anything], resembling more a bulletin board ["reference wanted" or "wanted, Dr. Pishwasser's email address"] than any actual forum for the exchange of ideas or viewpoints. Egyptologists tend to hold their cards pretty tightly to their chests, anyway. They would rather put their views and ideas in journals before somebody else can steal them. Added to that, it appears to me that the EEF maintains an attitude of conservative self-importance that, in my opinion, is rather comical when one considers the lack of conservative self-importance attached to Egyptology elsewhere these days, with both extremes attempting to exert control in their own fashion.

It's been my opinion, for a long time, that the modus operandi of the individual running the EEF makes it seem like one false move on the part of any poster could bring down the fatal scorn of the Egyptologists of the planet--as if that discipline didn't have its share of strange squirrels but consists only of well-adjusted brilliants who never serve up a lame theory or squabble among themselves. And, actually, many Egyptologists are never heard from on the EEF, although I don't know if they are on the membership roster. Few people now recall exactly how the EEF got started. I do! At one time, in the later '90's, the only Internet discussion forum exclusively devoted to ancient Egypt was run by me. It was called the Osirislist and had a substantial membership, some of it extremely knowledgeable, and even a grad student or two. Maybe even a couple of Egyptologists. I'm not sure anymore. It was my goal just to forward the posts and engage in no strict moderation, but a certain clique of hostile people kept on re-subscribing under false monikers as soon as they were booted off the list for being rude or otherwise causing trouble. Other ultra-conservative types objected to my telling these people off on-list or making it plain what I thought of them. Oh, well, I could perhaps have handled things better--but it was a prototype and quite civil compared to the Usenet groups. At least it wasn't dull but I, personally, could have done without the disruptions. Most of the members were nice folks.

Meanwhile, the current moderator of the EEF, Aayko Eyma, who was an Osirislist subscriber, wrote to me privately that he thought I should make him a co-moderator. I liked the man and admired his keen intellect but declined because I didn't know how that was going to work under the system the posts were being forwarded to the membership [shifts?] Then Eyma made it plain to me that, if there wasn't another moderator, certain parties were going to break away and begin a different forum. My response was "I am not stopping them". Thus was born the EEF, a totally different operation from the free and [mostly] unchecked exchange of ideas that took place on the Osirislist. Since I was experiencing severe health problems at this period [it's never been too good this past decade] I asked the membership for a volunteer to take over the Osirislist completely and at some point it died away. But, perhaps not suprisingly, when the EEF began to function I noticed that persons who had aided in setting it up and were on its "Advisory Board" were some of my worst defamers in the unruly Usenet groups. It started, at least, to become clear who some of the "certain parties" were who wished another moderator and who were only too happy to come to the assistance of Eyma even though they really did not have the expertise to participate on the EEF as posters. Some of them had been banned from the Osirislist, which evidently frustrated them no end. I think it was because one of its founders was a grad student at Yale University that the EEF became associated with it and has a Yale email address. But the charter of the forum makes it clear that "the postings and moderation of this list are not Yale-sponsored" and that the forum is owned and operated by Aayko Eyma.

What I do know is that the EEF has a very large membership, over a thousand subscribers. In the main, I have had nothing against it, despite how it began, and enjoyed participating, myself, but there were certainly times when I though it was over-moderated, hyper-controlled. When I received an email, over the years, from Aayko Eyma, always entitled "Your Moderated Message", I usually heeded his suggestions, sometimes even welcomed them, and rarely protested. My guess, however, was that members who had PhD after their names never received this "moderated message" email--but I can't swear to it. Moreover, long ago, Eyma gave the order that a certain party and I were never to reply to each others posts because we were involved in a lengthy dispute. This seemed a wise decision to me and I seldom found myself interested in replying, anyway. But I noticed, from time to time, that the other party managed to get around the edict by replying to another member who had responded to me, lending the impression that I was not worthy of a direct response, myself. The other subscribers were not aware of the moderator's rule. This tactic did not seem to trouble Mr. Eyma--and I still said nothing. After all, it had seemed to me that Aayko was a far superior moderator, a lot more sensible, knowledgeable and equitable, to any other I had encountered on other Internet fora--and most of them were really terrible. One could not mention them and Aayko in the same breath. And that's why, until recently, I gave up trying to discuss anything about Near eastern topics with anyone save on the EEF.

However, I have now been forced to re-evaluate the positive aspect of the EEF in my life versus the negative influence of having to "keep mum" too many times. Why should I? I may not have a degree relative to Egyptology but I have been studying and researching for decades. I have educated myself extensively in those areas that interest me. I have been able to hold my own on that EEF just fine for how many years now? If Aayko Eyma, himself, has a degree, I would have no idea in what field. I have never seen it mentioned. In the past couple of days I received a "Your Moderated Message" email from Eyma, saying he planned to take a URL out of my post to which I was directing the membership for references and images "in case another subscriber [whom I leave nameless] wishes to post the information first". In the past, people have sometimes posted the exact same information in response to a query, as they would be bound to do. What would happen if each one waited for someone else to supply the info? Nothing at all. That "excision" really made no sense to me whatsoever--and this time I protested. Not that it did any good--no more than it would ever have done. I think I will take my protest one step farther, though, because when it comes right down to it, the EEF and I can live without one another just fine. Enough is enough. Time to say goodbye.

The End of the Minoan Civilization

2010-11-22T16:54:00.000-08:00

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/episodes/sinking-atlantis/90/

If you ignore the distracting suggestions that Crete could be Atlantis, this is a very interesting documentary, setting forth very strong evidence that it was tsunamis created by the devastating eruption of the Thera volcano that ended the Minoan civilization. Scientists have estimated, by the evidence, that a tsunami 20 meters high crashed into the island at 10-20 mph and was, in fact, just one of a series of great waves generated by the blast. You can watch the entire program on your computer.

Meanwhile, I'm still of the opinion that some of the peoples of the Aegean had time to flee between the initial eruption and the cataclysmic one and were refugees in Egypt near the time of Ahmose I and that is why his mother was called "the mistress of the Hau-nebu", the foreigners who came from the islands of the sea.

The Plight of the Samaritans

2010-11-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

The Samaritans are a small and ancient sect, half of them living near Nablus, Jordan, and the other in Holon, Israel. They are growing now in number but, around the time of WW I, there were less than 200 souls existing among them. The Samaritans broke with the Jews many centuries ago when the tribes split into separate kingdoms, that of Israel/Samaria [north] and that of Judah [south] but. like the Jews, they continue to revere the Torah.

Because the Samaritan people rejected the idea of marrying anyone outside their own group for a very long time, when their number began to dwindle precariously all this inbreeding began to take a terrible toll. Although I have studied the Samaritan culture for many years and knew there were some problems, I never realized how many severely handicapped persons were living within the culture until I saw a fascinating documentary, "New Samaritans", ten minutes of which can be seen on You Tube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SoIwOI6ddk&feature=fvw

High Priest Shalom Cohen [above] was part of the documentary and dies during it. This was about seven years ago and a relative is now the High Priest or Cohen Gadol of the Samaritans, their undisputed leader. Shalom Cohen was a very remarkable man who looked like someone who had just stepped out of the Old Testament. He was fluent in several languages and a member of the Palestinian Parliament. According to the documentary, it was up to him to decide whether Samaritan men could marry foreign women and his answer was apparently "yes". However, quite a few years ago, once the state of Israel was established, there were so many more Samaritan males than females that it was deemed justifiable for the men to marry Jewish women as long as the wives were amenable to living according to Samaritan ways. But there were not very many modern Israeli girls who were willing to accept the terms which included living in seclusion during menstruation. Now, it appears, some Samaritan men are beginning to marry Ukrainian women who are much farther removed from their culture than Israeli women ever could be and this worries some of the Samaritans considerably. Even watching ten minutes of the documentary will make one aware of the dilemma these people face.

The DNA of Moses?

2010-11-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

This gets complicated as everything to do with DNA seems to be. Not that long ago scientists decided to see if men with the surname of Cohen [or its variants] really did have a common ancestor. It turns out, in many cases, that

they did. However, their exact same Y-DNA was also borne by males who had other surnames. Why this is can be explained by the fact that Jews did not have last names until fairly recently in the history of the world and had to purchase them or acquired one by some means or another. Therefore, one can conclude that many Jewish men knew they were cohanim, descended from the priestly caste, and took the name Cohen, accordingly, but other of their co-religionists had lost track of their ancestry or simply preferred another surname. Also, in more modern times, some Jews changed their last names to ones which were not so obviously Jewish.

Moreover, not all men with the surname of Cohen belong to the same DNA haplogroup and those, also, share Y-DNA with other Jewish males with different last names. If one man is of a different haplogroup than another, there is a good chance they are not related or that, even if they once had a common ancestor, the Y-DNA of their lines became altered at some point. There are several means by which this can happen, one of which is that a man who has no son adopts one, perhaps a child of his wife from a previous marriage or one of her relatives. If that man had a brother who had natural sons, there are now two collateral branches of the same family with the capability of propagating themselves into the future, but the scions of each having a different Y-DNA.

Statistically, however, it has been determined that the most likely haplogroup for a cohen who is really a descendant of Aaron the Priest is J1[with a refinement of J1c3, also called J-P58], this haplogroup definitely having its roots in the Middle East. Since Moses was the younger brother of Aaron and the Bible does not say they had different fathers, the following is his predicted 12 marker DNA, matching that of the modern J1 Cohens who were tested by Family Tree DNA:

/12/23/14/10/13/15/11/16/12/13/11/30/ with additional markers seeming to be:

/17/8/9/11/11/26/14/21/26/12/14/16/17/

"And Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses; and the length of Amram’s life was one hundred and thirty-seven years." Exodus 6:20

Thutmose IV Only Reigned About A Decade

2010-11-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

Below is my painting of Sennefer and his wife, Hatshepsut, the remains of a dyad in the Paris Louvre. My conclusion is that this sculpture was begun in the reign of Amenhotep II and finished in that of Thutmose IV.

Just how much the face of Thutmose differed from that of his sire, Amenhotep, is clearly illustrated in the pair statue. How charming this couple is--and how somehow very modern! In the New Kingdom, it was quite usual for the nobility to be portrayed with the face of the current sovereign, men and women alike. That is why so many husbands and wives in Egyptian art seem to have the same face. But not Sennefer and Hatshepsut.

Arthur Weigall saw the lower parts of five statues in a certain cenotaph at Gebel Silsileh, which he describes in his "A Guide To the Antiquities of Egypt":

"(West Bank) A roofless tomb is now reached, in which the lower parts of five statues can be seen. These and the scenes on the walls show that a certain Sennefer was buried here with his wife, Hatshepsut, these names dating them to the 18th Dynasty. Sennefer was a libation priest of Amen attached to the palace at Thebes, and seems to have been the son of the "Royal Son, Governor of the lands of the South", Usersatet and of Anun his wife. The Lady Hatshepsut was the daughter of the chief nurse of the king, named Hemttaui, and her husband Seninefer, a priest.[More recent Egyptologists have interpreted these relationships differently.] Other relatives were a High Priest of Horuar and Sebek of Ombo, a High Priest of Nekheb (at El Kab), a Priest of Khnum, and others whose names and titles are now lost. On the north wall Sennefer and his wife are seen seated before a table of offerings, while before them a male harper plays upon a large harp and two nude women, one playing a stringed instrument, dance for the amusement of these dead persons, etc., etc...."

Sennefer, then , was a very grand person, indeed, the son of a Viceroy of Kush. The countenance of Sennefer first struck me by its beauty and by the fact that it looks enough like the face of the mummy of King Thutmose IV to be his twin! Whether the priest was an actual relative of Menkheperure cannot be known for certain but the cenotaph definitely indicates that it was begun in the time of Amenhotep II. In fact, the Lady Hatshepsut has features that match those of that pharaoh's mummy. So, what may have happened is that the sculptor began the group with the figure of the wife during one reign and finished Sennefer's image in the next. Such is the twist of fate that give Hatshepsut the more rugged face of Amenhotep and her husband the beauty of Thutmose IV. In my view, this much-damaged work of art is a powerful argument that the king was already a grown man upon the death of his father (at least in oriental terms) and was, indeed, thirteen years old at minimum. Since we have numerous tomb paintings from the time of Thutmose IV, we can easily recognize the full lips that sit so closely beneath the blunt , slightly aquiline nose of Sennefer--as we have seen these features drawn many times before, almost in caricature. Yet Sennefer's portrait shows us, for the first time, how attractive they were in actuality. The features certainly do not suggest those of a lad of thirteen. Since Thutmose IV is thought to have reign about nine years and his mummy seems to be one of a man of around thirty, a twenty-year-old is more likely portrayed. The name of Sennefer's wife is also significant. While Queen Hatshepsut reigned, there were probably a number of Egyptian girls called after her, including a young wife of Thutmose III. Therefore, the spouse of Sennefer had to be born previous to the proscription of the name of Hatshepsut, which began sometime at the end of the reign of Menkheperre T III. This indicates that the dyad was begun when Hatshepsut, Sennefer's lady, was more than forty years old, around the time of the death of Amenhotep II. The cenotaph may be seen here

http://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/gebel-silsila/

The Hand On Tut's Crown

2010-10-27T11:48:00.000-07:00

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are some photos that seem to refute the conventional wisdom that Metropolitan artifact 50.6

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/50.6

shows the hand of the god, Amun, resting upon the khepresh-crown of a diminuative child king, Tutankhamun, formerly Tutankhaten. I maintain the hand is that of a female, having the pointed thumb of a woman and her slender fingers. I submit my own thumb for comparison.

The Hardy Family Forever

2010-08-07T13:40:00.001-07:00

Time-traveling back to the 1930's and 40's is easy and stress-free because the mores, fashions, and automobiles are captured on films we can pop right into our video players. For a little while, we are "right there", especially if the movies are good enough to draw us in, even wish we could be there. As I am now suffering from a debilitating illness and can't do much, I am watching my collection of "Andy Hardy" movies, which I have loved since I was a kid and which still have the ability to make me laugh out loud. Even at this not very good time in my life. Depicted above is the family of Judge James Hardy of Carvel, except the woman on the left is not the regular "Aunt Milly", a spinster and school teacher who lived in the household [usually played by the likeable Sara Haden]. Next to her is Marian, Andy's older sister, the Judge, Andy and Mrs. Hardy.

While many things about the film series, which began in the late '30's and ended in 1947 with "Love Laughs At Andy Hardy", seem quaint, corny and dated, the pictures also have a timeless quality due to pretty good scripts with clever, funny dialogue and top-notch emoting by the principle characters. Mickey Rooney as Andy was a young prodigy of an actor who could do just about anything, including singing and dancing. Rooney seemed to be bursting with energy and, as his cinematic father told someone in "Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever", "We have that volcano for breakfast, lunch and dinner." Andy, of course, is always in trouble of some kind and it usually involves a transient romance in some fashion. A lot of the time he is at odds with his home-town sweetheart, Polly Benedict, played by Ann Rutherford. But his father, the Judge, is always there to counsel him. In a way, Lewis Stone was the cement that held these MGM movies together. And they raked in millions for the studio. One of the most popular men in America of the era, Stone got even more fan mail than Mickey Rooney. He was the dad everybody wished they had, unless the person was so lucky as to have a father with a beautiful smile and twinkling eyes, who was as wise and good-humored as James Hardy. Stone, who made numerous films beginning in the Silent Era, was a master who made acting look easy and spoke dialogue like it was just natural conversation he was thinking up as he went along. Every facial expression, every vocal inflection was perfect. Lewis Stone acted with his whole being and his scenes with Mickey Rooney are especially wonderful.

Exactly where the small town of Carvel was supposed to be is not very clear. It seems to be not very far from New York City as in several pictures of the series it wasn't a great undertaking to get there but in "Love Finds Andy Hardy" a young ham radio operator gives West Coast call letters. Still, there is snow on the ground in winter. Even though Lewis Stone was only in his late 50's when the series began and quite a handsome guy in a distinguished, white-haired way, [he had been Greta Garbo's most frequent leading man] Mickey Rooney kissed Mrs. Hardy, played by Fay Holden, with a lot more enthusiasm than the Judge. Andy kisses his mom on the lips and hugs her lovingly while she has to be mostly content with a distracted peck on the cheek from her husband. In fact, with the exception of occasional bursts of insight, Mrs. Hardy is normally a ditz, even though the intellectual Judge seems eternally amused by this fact. Perhaps that's the way Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, who personally supervised the Hardy pictures, visualized family life. The wife is just dedicated to her family and the kitchen and the husband is paternal but sexless. Judge Hardy calls his wife "Mother" a lot [ he wasn't the only one and why this did not drive wives of the time crazy I don't know] and his beautiful twenty-ish daughter "Honey". Oddly, the Judge always stands very near Marian when they have a conversation and seldom fails to place an arm around her. Was a man supposed to feel closer to, have more affection for his daughter than his spouse? Even the photo above tells the same story. Marian is nearly cheek-to-cheek with her father while Andy has an arm about his mother's neck. A little Oedipus and Electra, anyone? Andrew, being a highschool boy for most of the series is naturally oversexed, but never really gets excited and his passion for kissing Polly and a string of other girls [Hollywood starlets got their start in these movies] is regarded by himself and everyone else as "good, clean fun". Andy's only reaction seems to be "Woo! Woo!" Well, times have changed, no question, and while life in Carvel pre and during World War II seemed a lot less complex than it is today, there are some odd family dynamics in the Andy Hardy series. Oh, well, no matter. Most people never noticed--or thought it was perfectly ordinary--and the pictures hold up as entertainment gems that tickle the funnybone and evoke the whole gamut of emotions. Like when Andy maintains boys don't hate their fathers no matter how much they punish them and Judge Hardy quietly wonders "Don't they, Andy?", regarding his son in such a way that can hardly fail to bring a tear to the eye. In the same 1939 film the Judge says, "Heaven only knows what this generation has coming." Prophetic words, indeed.

Ironically, the man who was America's favorite dad during the late 30's until after the war barely knew his own father. Bertrand Stone, a shoemaker, died of blood poisoning in Worcester, MA, when he was only forty and his little son, Lewis, only six. After a brief stay in Boston, Lewis Stone grew up in New York City. When he was already a young man in 1911, a distant cousin of Lewis was born in the state of New York and her name was Lucille Ball.

And there is the sight of a very young, adorable Judy Garland in three of the Hardy films, with her little girl speaking voice which can suddenly sing like a grown woman makes a lump form in the throats of those of us who know what her future was to bring.

Imitation Is Pure Flattery

2010-07-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

In the previous post I mentioned the kinds of ancient portraiture I use in my artistic reconstructions of the faces of the royal mummies. Now I am taking the opportunity to discuss one of them, perhaps the most fortuitous. For some reason it was the custom for the nobles and officials of Egypt to have themselves portrayed with the face of the current monarch--and their wives as well. The down side of this convention is that we have missed knowing what these ladies and gentlemen looked like, themselves. On the other hand, it would happen that the artisans who created these portraits often did not trouble to flatter [or perhaps idealize] the pharaoh as much as they did when executing his own likenesses. Therefore the statues, etc., of the nobles provide very helpful insight into how these kings really appeared. Also, it is often possible to date this art to a certain reign just by studying the features.

Those of us who have studied the faces of the pharaohs at length recognize them when we see them--even spot modern ringers for these defunct Egyptian kings. As you can see the face of Seti I, below, you might be interested in a dyad that I have assigned to his reign. Both husband and wife, while looking a bit different, serve to highlight various aspects of the king's face--his large eyes, flaring nostrils, full lips and rather full cheeks. Compare their faces to that of their master.

Forensic Method Reconstructions--Hate Them

2010-07-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's a fad that has been going on for some time now--creating skulls from radiological images of Egyptian mummies, royal or common, and then making so-called "portraits" of these defunct people using the forensic method. This method has certain guidelines for how much "flesh" [be that clay or just while doing a virtual image] goes onto certain parts of the skull. It was always meant to be a "better than nothing" approximation of the appearance of a dead individual in hopes someone might be able to identify him or her from it. And the result always looks pretty lifeless, too, and only marginally accurate. From the forensic method, there is no way to know what the shape of the nose was [except perhaps how high the bridge] or that of the lips or eyes.

One needs only see the results some reconstructors got using the method from a manufactured skull of Tutankhamun without being told who the subject was. None of them looked alike and none resembled ancient portraits of the pharaoh.

I maintain that, without using ancient portraits for guidelines, these reconstructions are simply useless and to pass them off as how the person once looked a travesty. I have done artistic reconstructions of mummies utilizing large photos of the heads and tracing over them in order to obtain the correct dimensions. One of the best ones I have done is of King Seti I. But I also used likenesses of him executed by the artists of his reign. They were crucial in obtaining a pretty accurate and life-like portrait. Judge for yourself and compare my method to the forensic one. The perspective or angle of the face is the same as the photograph of the head of Seti I in the book, "The Royal Mummies" by Prof. Elliot Smith. Obviously, the photographer was crouched down and so the chin is closest to the camera. I didn't bother with royal headgear as the face is magnificent by itself. The head of the mummy is shaved.

A Beauty of the Cairo Egyptian Museum

2010-07-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

At left is one of the most wonderfully executed pieces of sculpture in the Cairo Egyptian Museum. What you see is the wife of Nakhtmin, part of a dyad with her husband, at right. The work was created during the reign of the pharaoh, Ay, and, as was the fashion, the faces of Nakhtmin and his spouse were carved as beautified versions of the features of Ay, himself. That is why, facially, Nakhtmin and the lady appear very much alike, although the face of the female is considerably destroyed. However, placing a sheet of transparent paper over a larger image of the ruined face, I was able to restore it to its former dimensions. The nose is nearly wholly missing, but I was able to realize how it had appeared from the general shape of the one of Nakhtmin. Had it been found intact, this dyad would have been one of the most breath-taking artistic masterpieces in the museum. Actually, it still is.

Another Wife For King Tut?

2010-06-19T10:17:00.000-07:00

The scene at left is from the tomb of Amenhotep [also called Huy] and depicts Nubians bringing tribute to Tutankhamun. This section of the longer scene shows a lady accompanied by some men and the caption next to them reads " children of the chiefs of all countries" [of the southern regions]. These are, unlike the other foreigners in the painting, dressed in Egyptian-style costume and jewelry. Note, however, that a new style seems to be involved as the people from the south have straps on the heels of their white sandals and beads descend from their upper armlets. The lady appears to be wearing a golden diadem, which perhaps has golden elements hanging from it that cover her hair. Either that, or she is wearing a blonde wig or has had her own hair bleached by some method. Perhaps this woman and her companions are part of the tribute, a suit for peace that includes much gold and the children of some chieftain--especially the young woman, as females were not emissaries, normally. It would not be far fetched to conclude that the lady is intended as a wife of the pharaoh, Tutankhamun, and there is no other conceivable reason for her presence.

The status of the female is further indicated by the fact that she stands alone, here and in her ox-drawn chariot farther back in the scene, while her compatriots are shown in groups.

Tutankhamun, as we know, already had a wife named Ankhesenamun, his close relative, but the kings of Egypt were not monogamous as a rule. If this Kushite girl was given to Tut in a political marriage, she would have been secondary to the Great Wife, Ankhesenamun, however. That we do not see this girl depicted with Tutankhamun in a wifely role would not have been unusual, either. In the 18th Dynasty, lesser wives were not depicted with their royal husbands.

Thutmose IV

2010-06-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

Talk about your "wayback machine", there is ReoCities, who were nice enough to save some of my articles, including this one about Thutmose IV, which addresses his age upon accession:

http://www.reocities.com/scribelist/artthut4.htm

I think you'll like my rendering of a dyad in the Louvre, which shows the husband of the couple with the features of Thutmose IV:

Coincidences? Beware--weird stuff!

2010-06-15T12:25:00.001-07:00

About the curse of King Tut...well...I am not a believer in curses but I have to admit there are some strange coincidences there. For one thing, has anybody ever noticed how much Lord Carnarvon resembles Ay, the man who succeeded Tutankhamun as pharaoh? I don't have a good photo of the plaster mask from Amarna that is surely Ay but everybody knows what it looks like. Compare it to this photo of the Earl. Same little narrow eyes, long thin face and nose. Many members of the Amarna family had large heads and someone once wrote that Lord Carnarvon had such an elongated skull that he had to have his hats specially made.

Some believe that Amenhotep III, Tut's grandfather, married a woman of Semitic ancestry and, judging by the face of the mummy of Queen Tiye's father, Yuya, there's a good possibility that's so. Lord Carnarvon's wife, Lady Almina, was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Alfred Rothschild. The wealthy Earl of Carnarvon died in Egypt of systemic poisoning caused by an infected mosquito bite on his face. It is now known that Tutankhamun's death was probably hastened by a mosquito, too--one that gave him malaria. At the time of Carnarvon's death, his dog back at his home, Highclere Castle, supposedly keeled over and died, as well. Hmmm...looks like Anubis decided to finish off the man's best friend while he was at it :-( Or maybe Tut's ghost took one look at Lord Carnarvon and thought it was the return of Ay, the man who had the nerve to have himself portrayed as pharaoh in the young king's own tomb, a liberty never before taken. In fact, the tomb was a cramped, shoddy affair, totally unfit for a royal spectre. Others have written of strange coincidences surrounding the discovery of KV62. Thought I'd just add to the nonsense...er...mystique.

Deal On "The Pharaoh's Barber"

2010-06-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

I am not here primarily to sell books but I would like to give the "heads up" that my murder mystery, "The Pharaoh's Barber", set in the court of the great warrior pharaoh, Thutmose III, has been reduced to the lowest price on Amazon since it was published--under $13 dollars--when it usually sells for $16. Look at the very bottom of this page and click on the appropriate link. This low price may not last, so take advantage if you can. There's a review of the novel at

http://heritage-key.com/review/pharaoh%E2%80%99s-barber

Understanding Manetho's 18th Dynasty

2010-05-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

I go into much more detail about all this in my book, "The Exodus Chronicles", but here's something useful for those who have been puzzled by the apparent "mess" that is Manetho's 18th Dynasty. Actually, it is rather a mess, indeed, but if you read on it will become obvious that the belief in an exodus by Jewish and Christian chronographers caused soome confusion within the dynasty as a kinglist. More specifically, it was the need to identify only a single expulsion, that is the one described in the Bible, that resulted in the following situations or problems that I will outline one at a time:

1. Manetho, himself, evidently did not believe that the war between the Hyksos and the Theban princes had anything to do with the Biblical event. As to the Hyksos or “Shepherds”, he makes the comment “Some say they were Arabs.” Nor, judging by Josephus, does Manetho give the names of any of the Thebans, even Ahmose, although, of course, he does name some of the Hyksos.

2. If any Biblical personage is connected to this period, it is Joseph for, according to Eusebius, “It was in their time [the 17th Dynasty “Shepherds”] that Joseph was appointed king of Egypt.” Whether or not this is original to Manetho is not known to me.

3. According to Flavius Josephus, the name of the king who drove out the Shepherds was “Tethmosis”, who, after a reign of more than 25 years, was succeeded by his son, “Chebron”. These would appear to be Thutmose I and his successor, Aakheperenre Thutmose II, but they come before an “Amenophis” [Amenhotep], which is incorrect. Other purported epitomes of Manetho [Africanus and Eusebius] place “Amos” as the first king of the Theban 18th Dynasty and there he remains for modern purposes, even though Ahmose I really belonged to the Theban 17th Dynasty of Egyptology. Africanus claims Moses went forth from Egypt during that reign but it seems probable Syncellus the Monk adds to Africanus that he had seen convincing evidence that Moses was still young at the time. Africanus names the second king as being “Chebros” with “Amenophis” still coming in third. The same thing occurs in the epitome of Eusebius, except that he does not mention Moses in connection with Amosis/Ahmose and supplies the successor of this last as being “Chebron”.

4. Josephus is the only ancient historian who purports to quote at any length from Manetho's work. However, a discrepancy appears between his version of the routing of the Hyksos and his version of Manetho's 18th Dynasty. When Josephus writes of the wars with the Shepherds, he suddenly says that a king named “Misphragmoutosis” had defeated them, penned them up in the walled city of Avaris in the eastern Delta—where they remained with “all their spoils” until “Thummosis”, a son of Misphragmoutosis, besieged them and, finally, let them depart from Egypt without blood-letting. This, of course, is more in keeping with the story of the Book of Exodus and seems to have nothing to do with the earlier wars between the Thebans and the Hyksos. Most importantly, “Misphragmoutosis” or a name that is very similar comes in the middle of the dynasty and has been equated with Menkheperre Thutmose III for some time now—rightly or wrongly.

5. Clearly, then, “Tethmosis”, who is put at the beginning of the Dynasty, cannot be the same as the “Thummosis” who follows “Misphragmoutosis” in Josephus's version of Manetho. Besides, “Tethmosis” “drove them out” while “Thummosis” merely allowed them to depart due to getting weary of besieging these undesirables. Now it is possible Josephus made some sort of blunder when it came to all this but it is just as possible Manetho knew something about conflicts with a foreign element in Egypt that we do not. Being a pagan, the Egyptian was not working under any Biblical constraints and had no reason to keep to any “single exodus” belief.

6. One problem with “Misphragmoutosis” is that, in the version of Africanus, it is said of him, “In his reign the flood of Deucalion's time occurred”. Now anyone who could view the “Tempest Stele” of King Ahmose at Karnak [same text on recto and verso of the same slab] and read Egyptian would realize that terrible flooding had happened in his reign. Unless a similar phenomenon occurred during a subsequent reign, we are faced with the problematic possibility that Ahmose and “Misphragmoutosis” may have been confused. The reference to "Deucalion's flood" would have to point to something truly catastrophic happening in the known world or simply within Egypt proper.

7. Eusebius, having more or less given the same account of the 18th Dynasty as the others, gets past a pharaoh who is obviously Amenhotep III. However then he does something quite divergent by interposing a ruler named “Cencheres” with his 16 years of reign, claiming at the same time he was the pharaoh of the Biblical exodus. Syncellus adds the comment that Eusebius was alone in this belief—but that was not really so. This was the notion of an author named Artapanus, as well, which was later adopted by Bar Hebraeus, a scholar who wrote a history of the world in Syriac.

8. Josephus, for his part, becomes perturbed with Manetho for claiming that Moses opposed a king of Egypt called “Amenophis”. Because he feels compelled to stick to the belief that only one exodus from Egypt can have occurred on any sort of large scale, he becomes upset with the Egyptian historian for placing Moses contra “Amenophis” when he had already written that a king “Tethmosis” was on the throne when some Shepherds departed. So Josephus accuses Manetho of having invented “Amenophis” and is, moreover, very scornful of the idea that Moses was once an Egyptian priest named Osirseph, and was the leader of some lepers, besides. However, Josephus contradicts himself when he acknowledges that some “previously expelled Shepherds” came back to Egypt to help Osirseph/Moses and his followers oust the pharaoh. But there are more problems with this narrative that even Josephus does not mention. Even though a man who appears to be Amenhotep son of Hapu [who flourished within the reign of Amenhotep III] is the advisor to “Amenophis—who, coming in the succession after a ruler called “Or” or “Orus” [which was the case with the “Cencheres” of Artapanus and Eusebius, too]--it would seem that “Amenophis” might actually represent King Merneptah, who is also called “Amenophis” in the kinglist. The reason for that being that he has a son named “Sethos, also called Ramesses” after his grandfather Ra[m]pses. This certainly cannot hold true of any pharaoh who was or used to be called Amenhotep but can certainly be the case with Merneptah. "Orus" has been construed as being merely a repetition of Amenhotep III in the kinglist. Thus ends the fascinating saga of the 18th Dynasty, which just happens to incorporate some kings from the 19th, both in list form and perhaps in mnemohistory, as well.

Mandatory Celibacy

2010-05-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

Having now written two books about Catholic priests, one fiction and one historical, I have given some thought to mandatory celibacy, of course. Even though I think the imposition does far more harm than good, I would not normally write about it on this blog but I recently read an article by James Carroll that is arguably the most excellent piece on the topic I have yet seen.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/05/16/celibacy_and_the_catholic_priest/

It is well worth a look for those who are trying to wrap their minds around what is happening with the Roman Catholic clergy and its recently publicized abuse scandals.

King Setnakht and the Trojan Wars

2010-04-30T13:54:00.000-07:00

Among the many articles on my defunct Geocities website was the one equating the 20th Dynasty pharaoh, Userkhaure Setnakht, with the legendary Proteios of the Greeks, the one who gave sanctuary to the beauteous Helen of Troy and her lover, Paris, in Egypt. Thanks to the Internet "Wayback Machine" an older version of my paper [before I changed it somewhat] still survives.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031213002055/www.geocities.com/scribelist/setnakht.html

I think the date ca. 1185 BCE is still good for King Setnakht and the advent of the 20th Dynasty--and a good datum for the Trojan Wars, as well. According to Manetho, the Egyptian historian of the Late Period, those rulers of the twilight years of the 19th Dynasty also reigned about the time of these wars. Unfortunately he rather garbled their names, even assuming Akhenre Siptah [prenomen vocalized "Alkandia" due to a "tapped r", a phenomenon that caused Usermaatre to sound like "Ozymandias] was a feminine name "Alkandra", and rendered this short-lived puppet pharaoh a wife of King Polybos. Polybos, meaning "rich in cattle" in Greek was a misinterpretation of the combination of "wsr" or "rich" in Egyptian and "kAw", which does mean "cattle"--but not in a prenomen such as "Userkaure Setepenre"--that of Setnakht, where "xAw" stands for "manifestations" and "wsr" has the connotation of "great".

The Trials of Father Lucien Galtier

2010-04-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

I am happy to announce that my latest book, "Lucien Galtier-Pioneer Priest" has finally been published and is for sale at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. This is the general description: "In the spring of 1840, a riverboat stopped at Fort Snelling in the Minnesota Territory, dropping off a Frenchman named Lucien Galtier. No one expected the young priest in this small settlement of fur traders, farmers, and whiskey sellers. The local Indian tribes were involved in a bloody feud, the fort commander was battling the purveyors of drink and, in the midst of this strife, an inexperienced Catholic clergyman attempted to establish a congregation and build a place of worship. In this remote region, the sound of a church bell had never been heard. This is the first biography of Father Galtier, the story of his struggle to survive physically and spiritually in the frontier towns of the Mississippi. It begins in the future city of St. Paul, the place with which Lucien Galtier will always be associated as it was he who provided its name."

Lucien Galtier did, indeed, begin his missionary career in Minnesota, but he also served in Keokuk, Iowa and Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Life was rough and even corrupt and dissolute, drinking, gambling, and also prostitution being quite common in these Midwestern towns of the 19th Century. Survival was especially difficult for a poor, lonely priest whose bishop seldom payed him his salary in a timely manner. But Galtier was a man whose "head sat on his shoulders like that of a military chieftain" and he took nothing lying down, thought nothing of telling off his own superior. For this French priest there was only one God, in His trinity, and the bishop didn't even come a close second.

Now That We Know...

2010-03-19T16:31:00.000-07:00

DNA testing has not been able to provide the answers to some of the mysteries surrounding the mid 18th Dynasty mummies, but at least now we know that the remains labelled as Amenhotep III is that pharaoh and the "Elder Lady" from KV35 his chief queen, Tiye. As a result, we see that some of the ancient artists portrayed them both with good accuracy and know some more about the royal couple in hindsight. For one thing, both were extremely short. Amenhotep III was not much over five feet in height and Queen Tiye was under five feet. On her gilded funerary shrine found in KV55, she is portrayed as a very little woman with short legs. The king was a roly-poly man and at least one statue shows him as such. The embalmers attempted to fill out the form of his corpse once the natron had deprived it of the fat. Now we know exactly why G. Elliot Smith, the professor of anatomy who wrote "The Royal Mummies" 1912 could say "Resinous material such as this is not known to have been employed at any other period for packing underneath the skin. In the time of the XXIth-XXIInd Dynasties, linen, mud, sand, sawdust and cheese-like substances (mixtures of fat and soda) were the stuffing materials employed." So there was never any real reason to doubt A III's identity due to the stuffing beneath his skin.

Neither of this pair was elderly at death. Tiye did not even have gray hair. The fine bone-structure of the face of her mummy evidences that she was more beautiful than art demonstrates. There is evidence that the royal lady died a lingering death, however. She had ulcers on both her heels, a kind of bed-sore caused by lying on her back with her head raised for too long. Her husband's cause of death is unknown but his obesity shows he wasn't in good shape and he may have suffered from diabetes, as well. This ailment can cause a person to be more prone to having tartar form on the teeth near the gumline and Amenhotep III had a lot of calculus on his choppers, especially on the right side of his mouth. His peridontal disease was quite severe and he may have died of systemic poisoning from abcessed teeth. The man obviously did not brush,lacked a hygenic tendancy, although he could have cleaned his teeth with one or more methods the ancients used. A rag dipped in sodium would have been sufficient. The teeth of his successor, the person discovered in KV55 were pretty good. Some are missing because they crumbled to the touch, dampness in the tomb having caused the preservation of the body to fail.

Because Amenhotep III reigned for at least 38 years and Queen Tiye died a youngish woman, it means she was a child bride [nothing unusual in ancient Egypt]. Either she was no more than ten when she married A III or the much-debated co-regency between her husband and son was longer than a year or two,

The Genealogy of Tutankhamun

2010-02-20T06:53:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, the DNA announcements from Egypt were accompanied this time by a paper in the scientific journal, JAMA. The disputed identities of the mummies of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye [Elder Lady from KV35] have now been confirmed. The father of the pharaoh, Tutankhamun is the KV55 individual [probably Akhenaten] and his mother the "Younger Lady" from KV35. The surprise is that Tutankhamun's parents were siblings--in other words they are both offsprings of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. The microbiologists who worked on the study are apparently still going to try to find out if the "Younger Lady" could still possibly be Nefertiti. They know the path to the identification [a foetus from Tutankhamun's tomb, of which he is probably the father and whose mother would then be Ankhesenamun, a daughter of Nefertiti, sharing her mtDNA]and, while, the JAMA paper claims this couldn't be achieved, another source says it's already been done.

Joyce Tyldesley seemed to be quite familiar with the DNA work of Scott Woodward and his BYU team, who first sampled some of the royal mummies, and mentions it several times in her 2000 book, "The Private Lives of the Pharaohs", which corresponded to a TV documentary by the same name with Woodward et al. On page 143 she writes: "While it has not been possible to extract a genetic profile for the smaller foetus,the larger baby has yielded a mitochondrial DNA sequence through which the scientists may be able to trace the maternal DNA of Ankhesenamun and her mother, Nefertiti."

There is one more possibility that would make the "Younger Lady" have the same DNA as any daughter of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye [and therefore appear a full sister to the KV55 person] and that is if Amenhotep III had a daughter with a full sister of Tiye. However, Tiye and that hypothetical sibling would have had to be twins. That could be problematic. Also awkward is trying to find a full sister for Akhenaten with whom he could have had Tutankhamun later in his reign rather than sooner. Akhenaten is seen with Nefertiti from his earliest days as king. There is a briefly attested secondary wife, Kiya, but she is no more styled "king's daughter" than Nefertiti. On the other hand, once Ankhesenamun became the wife of Tutankhamun, she is not styled "king's daughter", either, even though we know she really was one. Her attestations are few, as well. As for
Smenkhkare, if he was a full brother of Akhenaten [with the same DNA] and he was married to Meritaten, who would only have the same DNA as he if both her parents had the same--if this couple engendered Tutankhamun. There is also Baketaten,
but she is shown as a child at Amarna, and some people have postulated her as a daughter of Akhenaten and not his sister, as she is not styled "snt nsw" but "sAt nsw".

As for the parentage of Nefertiti, it is never mentioned anywhere to my knowledge. Some have believed Ay to be her father Some have believed Ay to be her father but
that was not written in his commoner tomb at Amarna. The only thing that is pertinent there is that Ay's wife, Tey, was a "nurse of the goddess", meaning Nefertiti. Meanwhile, Akhenaten and Nefertiti identified themselves with Shu and Tefnut, siblings who sprang from Ra and formed a kind of "Holy Trinity" with him.
This was Akhenaten's version of "sA ra" and part of his kingly formula. This never occurred to me previously, but the notion of he and Nefertiti as Shu and Tefnut would have fallen rather flat had she been only the offspring of commoners. Therefore Nefertiti is still the best candidate for the mother of Tutankhamun.

The Price of History

2010-02-09T12:58:00.001-08:00

If you ever get a chance to travel back in time, don't forget to bring a good camera. Many people would be amazed at how much historical societies charge for scans of old photos from the 19th Century the rights to which are owned by nobody. But that's not all--you need to pay another fee per image in order to be able to use it commercially--once. I know historical societies need funds to operate but most writers are not wealthy and can end up forking over several hundreds of dollars to illustrate a book not very profusely.

Then there are old letters. These are invaluable for their historic content but most of the institutions that house them seem to believe they own them and demand permission to reproduce them or publish any of their content. A fee for photocopying and mailing is understandable but these places need to learn the concept of "public domain". Having something in ones possession does not mean owning the copyright. Every letter or even email an individual writes is his or her intellectual property and an automatic copyright is attached to it for as long as the law allows. The recipient or keeper of the communication has no rights--cannot reproduce it, publish it without permission of the author. Until such day as the communication outlasts its copyright. There is no letter written, say, in the mid-19th Century that is not in the public domain. One institution with which I recently dealt forced one to sign an online agreement while ordering a copy of old letters in its archives. In other words, if they are so clueless as to sue you for copyright volations regarding these antique papers and they lose, they are still held harmless for your attorney fees under the agreement! And this is a religious organization. Pretty sad.

The SCA and Pharaonic DNA

2010-02-01T07:47:00.000-08:00

http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/12880

I am not much in favor of Dr. Hawass making this announcement. Nothing will do but a paper by a qualified microbiologist in this instance,I am afraid, as few others are capable of explaining the intricacies of DNA. Rather than supplying the paternity of Tutankhamun, any positive yDNA match with the putative Amenhotep III will do more to confirm the questioned identity of the latter. A shared yDNA will not guarantee
that Tut is the son of Amenhotep III. He could still be his grandfather as yDNA is passed on from father to son and Akhnaten could still be the middle man there. Ditto if Tutankhamun is the offspring of another son of Amenhotep III--like Smenkhkare, for example, if that happensto be Smenkhkare's filiation.

One of the websites mentions that a priority of Dr. Hawass is to find the mummy of Nefertiti. Well, that is what the little babies from KV62 have the potential to show, as I have mentioned several times in the past. In order to learn the parentage of Tutankhamun on the maternal side, the two tiny mummies could come in handy as well. That is, if they happen to have the same mtDNA as Tutankhamun.
That makes it more likely that Tut and his wife, Ankhesenamun, had the same mother. Otherwise, nuclear DNA, if viable, can prove Tut to have been the father of the children. yDNA is not passed on to female offspring. Nor could Tut pass on his own mtDNA. That could only come from the babies' mother and grandmother--all the way back indefinitely. If there is a female mummy who also has that same mtDNA, then very good. But her identity cannot be positively ascertained because a mother, all her daughters and granddaughters have the same mtDNA. People can be ruled out much more easily than positively identified. If a mummy of a pharaoh of a given dynasty does not have the same yDNA as the other kings of the dynasty, he has either been misidentified or is a cookoo in the nest, the latter not being very likely. But then the way that dynasties are established in Egyptology is a little confusing, too.

I wish we could have an end to this "Egyptological announcements" via news media and Zahi Hawass" and get back to publication of findings in journals. They don't have to be the most scholarly ones---just guarantee detailed explanations that have lately been lacking. As a for instance, Hawass seemed sure that a certain mummy from
KV60 is Hatshepsut--but where is the publication of scientific proof? To ride on the coat-tails of a cliche---"show me the DNA!" Don't assume we are too clueless to digest it. If this is going to be a new frontier of Egyptology, we've all got to learn to deal with it, become educated in it.

He Talks Like An Egyptian

2010-01-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

Right now, the next best thing to traveling back into the distant past to hear ancient Egyptian speech is to listen to Italian actor, Orlando Mezzabotta, do it. Here is his audio version [mp3 file] of the Kamose Stela:

http://digilander.libero.it/ormez/

I did the research for the vocalization. It's based on Coptic and other sources. Orlando is great, well worth a listen.

Changing the Past

2009-12-24T06:40:00.000-08:00

It has been the plot of more than one novel or motion picture that someone travels back in time in order to change the course of history. Getting back there is, of course, the trick but Egypt is attempting to circumvent such technicalities by demanding that certain masterpieces of ancient art be returned by the foreign museums which now house them. I am all for the return of stolen art but some of the artifacts have been out of Egypt for a very long time. They were taken because the Egyptian government was too weak or apathetic at the time to prevent their removal. Once, Egypt ruled the East, had an empire. The great warrior pharaohs exploited their conquered lands--gold from the territories to the south, slaves and other valuables from the east. Like every conquering nation, the ancient Egyptians operated on the philosophies of "might makes right" or "if you can't stop us you must serve us".

But the day came when the Egyptians became the conquered and, despite efforts to throw off the yoke of various stronger nations, fell into a lengthy state of decline. Egypt lost her own language and finally no one in the land could read a graphic system that had lasted for thousands of years. The Egyptian language became a liturgical one--like Latin--and even the majority of Egyptian Christians did not really comprehend it. Arabic had taken the place of Egyptian. The people of Egypt lived amid the ruins of their splendid past but did not study or treasure it--unless it really was their idea of treasure, in the form of gold. And so, in more modern times, impoverished Egypt became overrun by European imperialists, some among them having an interest in history and antiquities. The latter were removed or sold by the Egyptians, themselves, and there was nothing to prevent the process. By the time of the British occupation, it was difficult to control even the natives who looted the tombs of the ancients--much less the foreigners. Egypt had become powerless and backward, although it had once been considered the seat of wisdom and every science that existed. The Europeans who served wisdom made a point of studying what there was to be found in Egypt. They figured out how to decode the old writing and started a discipline they called "Egyptology". This was their domain for some decades and the Egyptians did not join it until they were able to form their own government again. For the most part, the Egyptians learned every modern science from other nations--even *in* other lands. At the start of the 20th Century, the universities of Egypt were staffed by foreigners.

Now the situation is different, of course. Egypt is, if not exactly mighty, at least autonomous. It is understandable that the defeated past with foreign masters would like to be forgotten--but the Egyptians seem to want to undo it. They are now pleading "might makes wrong" and demanding the former imperialists return what was taken or even purchased--and in some cases claiming they were removed illegally--having drawn up a list of what they consider masterworks or just works of fame or importance. The Egyptians hold the trump card. They know they can prevent foreign nationals from doing research in Egypt now. But who really wins at this game? Probably, the main loser will be the science of archaeology.

Somehow, art manages to become dispersed one way or another. It is coveted by those who appreciate it and the talent that enabled its creation--or simply the monetary worth that greatness sometimes acquires. It has always been bought, sold, plundered, taken away. Old things, if not destroyed, can eventually end up at the opposite side of the world from their place of creation. Everything cannot revert to its place of origin, no matter how unique or common. Should the Mona Lisa go back to the homeland of its artist? Should every Spanish coin found in every shipwreck be returned to Spain? Any time traveler can tell you that history cannot be altered. And any list of booty drawn up by the scribes of the pharaohs of Egypt can inform that Egypt is not just in the position of an innocent victim. Some of those lists have survived. They were meant to. They were carved in stone--so that people would know the facts forever. To the victor go the spoils. It is not necessarily ethical, but that's how it's always been. When people stop trying to dominate one another, things of beauty have a better chance of remaining where they were made. It happens, also, in the way of international relations, that a former enemy becomes an ally or at least someone who is willing to peacefully co-exist. Dominators lose their dominion and become harmlessly benevolent. To make enemies of them again over a lifeless object makes scant sense--unless it really was obtained by deception. One need not necessarily become a bully just because one can.

How Long Did Horemheb Reign?

2009-12-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

The answer seems to be leaning toward the shorter theory. During the recent symposium "The Valley of the Kings Since Howard Carter", Dr. Geoffrey Martin of Cambridge University discussed his team's clearance of KV57, the royal tomb of Horemheb [his commoner one is at Saqqara]. The tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found by Theodore Davis in 1908 but the well chamber and some back rooms had evidently never been fully cleared. Martin's team has now seen some ostraca that indicate the length of Horemheb's reign was around 14 years--and not the 27 that some wished to attribute to him.

However, we will have to wait for publication of those ostraca to find out what they say. I, personally, have written in the past that, given the unfinished status of KV57, the duration of 27 years was not very likely. Even 13 or 14 years seem long enough to have finished that tomb. Even the excavators' debris had not been removed and was still present in KV57 when Davis and crew discovered it. A wall in the burial chamber had not been painted but left in its state of excellent line drawings. [What was the great hurry so that this wall could not be finished?] Horemheb has been accused, now and then, of having appropriated the reigns of some other kings, mainly in order to account for the longer-reign-theory. Now it would appear that the only possibility is that of Ay, whose own duration was short. We know that in Year 8 of Horemheb Maya the Treasurer was inspecting the robbed tomb of Thutmose IV--and I believe that is the earliest date of any activity in the reign of Horemheb, who usurped some of the monuments of a predecessor, Tutankhamun.

The Last Days of King Tut--A Scenario

2009-11-29T12:15:00.000-08:00

Recently, a CT scan of the mummified remains of young King Tutankhamun showed that a slow, lingering death was possible due to a severe knee-cap injury which might have become infected. At any rate, the pharaoh appears to have died of some kind of trauma and even have gone into a coma leaving no one at Egypt's helm. That this situation was quickly remedied, however, seems to be indicated by a scene in KV62, the tomb of Tutankhamun. There Ay, already crowned with the khepresh, performs the "opening of the mouth" ceremony on a depiction of Tut as Osiris. This is an unprecedented portrayal of the successor as king in a royal tomb and, in my opinion, strongly suggests that Ay had become co-regent prior to the demise of Tutankhamun. Because, once sealed, it was not expected--or at leat hoped--that anyone would enter the king's tomb again, it is not likely that Ay had himself portrayed as the new ruler for propaganda purposes. He was merely shown performing the ritual in a capacity in which he had already been serving prior to the death of Tutankhamun and could no longer be depicted as a commoner sans diadem.

Since Tutankhamun ruled for about nine years, it stands to reason that his tomb had already begun to be excavated. However, the small KV62 hardly evidences years of work. That is why scholars of the past, even though they did not see a co-regency of the successor, postulated that Ay took the larger tomb of the young king for himself and had another excavated for Tutankhamun where he could even insert his own image. There is no reason why Tutankhamun, the ruler of the return to the orthodox religion, should not have opted for a burial in the West Valley where the last great pharaoh prior to the Atenist supremacy was interred--namely Amenhotep III. Therefore, WV23, the ultimate royal tomb of Ay, probably had originally been intended for Nebkheperure Tutankhamun. It seems probable, also, that both KV62 and WV23 had been painted by the same outline-artist at about the same time, the poorly executed images are so alike. However, in the case of WV23, this artist seems to have been a bit confused as to how he should decorate this tomb for Ay. It is difficult to know why WV23 ended up a kind of compromise between a royal tomb and that of a commoner, including elements not normally seen in a kingly burial. In the aftermath of his brief reign, Ay's images were simply hacked away by a totally unsentimental someone, leaving only one "ka figure" which was let alone on account of respect for royal ancestors fused into this ka [per Nicholas Reeves].

One item that was usually placed in a pharaoh's tomb time far in advance of his burial was his stone sarcophagus. In fact, that of Tutankhamun might already have stood in WV23--and had to be moved into the make-shift KV62. Was that why the lid of yellow granite had been broken beyond repair in a moving accident and why another lid of red granite, discarded because it had been cracked in half, was repaired with gypsum and pressed into service, painted yellow to match the color of the orginal sarcophagus? One cannot really know for certain, but various irregularities at the end of the reign of the unfortunate Tutankhamun certainly exist, not the least of which is the fact of his widow writing to the king of the Hittites asking for a prince to become her husband and ruler of Egypt beside her. Many have doubted that the widow was Queen Ankhesenamun but it is a plain fact that only the throne name of Tutankhamun fits to the "Nibhurryia" written in cuneiform as the name of the king of Egypt who had recently died. The bottom line is, Tutankhamun having no children, his wife Ankhesenamun, a king's daughter, had a legitimate claim to the throne and, insofar as we know, far better than that of the presumptuous Ay.

A Whole Lotta Sickness Goin' On

2009-10-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

This Time Traveler is spending a lot of time in the 19th Century these days. Yes, writing another book. With the Swine Flu and the seasonal one breathing down our necks this winter of 2009/2010 and vaccine shortages [I couldn't get mine yesterday--all out] a source of irritation, stop and consider that Americans have been sicker in the past. While we now tend to think that cholera is something that happens in Asia, outbreaks of this disease, caused by Salmonella Typhi, occurred repeatedly in the America of the 1800s. You got cholera, you didn't have much chance as it deprived your body of all fluids within the first 36 hours. And it spread fast! In addition to the nasty cholera, there was typhoid fever [then called "bilious fever"], not as deadly as cholera but also exhibiting some of the same foul symptoms. Then there was Yellow Fever in the swampy southern states, an acute viral infection caused by the bite of mosquitoes called Aedes Aegypti. If you ever saw the classic film, "Jezebel", with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda, you got an education in Yellow Fever. The post WW I enfluenza contagion was a horror, often killing whole families. Then there was all that polio following WW II...well, you get the picture and I'll stop. Life on this planet is just plain hostile to the human species and medicine wages a seemingly endless war on microbes.

This King Needs DNA Testing

2009-10-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

Some time ago Zahi Hawass indicated an interest in the mummy, the putative Seti II, and said he might be tested for compatibility with the Thutmosid Dynasty, which he appears to resemble

far more than any of the Ramessides. Was the DNA testing ever done? If so, what were the results? That the so-called Seti II looked like none of what ought to be his mummified forebears has been remarked upon ever since he was unwrapped at the start of the last century. To the left is what I got when I did a reconstruction of the face in profile. Looks like Akhenaten, doesn't he, right down to the bump on the back of his neck [due to a very odd skeletal configuration very evident in the remains] shown in some of the pharaoh's portraits. Moreover, from a frontal view, the mummy also has the identical longish neck shape of the "unbeautiful" likenesses, tapering upward in an unusual way from a set of narrow shoulders. However, the pelvis of "Seti II" is quite wide--just as one would expect that of Akhenaten to be. The bite [as in dental terminology] of the Ramessides is characteristically straight, so how did Seti II end up with the Thutmosid overbite, not to mention that long, underslung jaw that nobody had as noticeably as the heretic king? I think there must have been a mistake in labeling on the part of the ancient reburial commission. In the lineup of the coffins in KV35, the first one in the back row was Thutmose IV, the next Amenhotep III and next to them--Seti II! But it is really Akhenaten who ought to be next in that line. Many people have assumed his mummy must have been destroyed due to a rebellion against his religious policies--but who knows? And the fact that the mummy was wrapped in a shirt supposedly belonging to King Merneptah [shirt no longer to be found in the Cairo Museum] is not necessarily fatal to this mummy belonging to the Tutmosids. These corpses were rewrapped to varying degrees after the 19th Dynasty died out.

Can Thutmose III Have Been Hatshepsut's Brother?

2009-09-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not all would agree, but to me the filiation of Thutmose III seems couched, when it is alluded to, in rather ambiguous--and sometimes very confusing--terms. To my knowledge, no one has ever proposed this--but I am now of the opinion that the vagueness may have been intentional and perhaps even the ancient Egyptians did not know for certain just who was the father of the young man who became the greatest pharaoh who ever sat on Egypt's throne. The fact that the Egyptians used the term “sA” for both “son” and “successor” and “it” for both “father” and “predecessor” may seem lamentable to us on account of the lack of precision, but is it possible that sometimes the ancients found all that an expedient?

For the sake of argument, let us assume there was a young woman who lived on the margin of the royal family, headed by king Thutmose I. She may have been a servant or a harem inmate and her name was Isis. There is no attestation of a queen by that name during the reigns of either Thutmose I or II, but Isis is awarded the queenly title during the rule of her son, Thutmose III--and this may only be a posthumous fiction. At any rate, this Isis may have received the attentions of both the pharaoh, Thutmose I, and his grown son. And why not--if Isis was of no significance? Thutmose I already had several sons by royal ladies and was not without heirs. Nobody imagined that any son of this inconsequential Isis would ever succeed. When the future Thutmose II followed his father as king, he was still a young man of whom it was was surely thought he had plenty of time to sire male children by Hatshepsut, a king's daughter who was his chief queen. But, as it transpired Thutmose II died at around the age of 30 without any offspring by Hatshepsut except a girl, Neferura. So the unimagined became the reality.

However, it was no secret that Isis had conceived, by a royal male, a son who was probably around 13 years old by this time. No matter who exactly his father had been, he was the only remaining male of the Thutmosid dynasty and could not be overlooked in the succession. Hatshepsut would just as soon have disregarded him, having her own ambitions, but, for a time, this was not possible. The crown was placed on the boy's head and he became Thutmose III. Some scholars have concluded that this Menkheperra Thutmose was a mere toddler when this occurred and that he needed a regent, Hatshepsut filling that role. But Thutmose's own account, an inscription at Karnak, belies this supposition. He says that he was an “iwn-mwt=f” priest in the temple when a pharaoh, presumably Thutmose II, came there to make offerings to the god and recognized him. Outside of a funerary context, an “iwn-mwt=f” is thought to be a priest who “conducted”[ sSm] processions of whatever kind, draped with the characteristic leopard or cheetah pelt. In this instance, it was ceremonies having to do with the god, Amun, and the young Thutmose had to be old enough to act the part of a procession leader.

But, as he tells it, this time Thutmose was not leading the procession of the image of the deity but was merely standing in the northern Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. Though he does not say so, it had to have happened [if there is any truth to the story at all] that one of the boy's priestly colleagues was leading this time and pointedly had the statue halt before Thutmose, thereby making it seem as though the god had found Thutmose in the shadows and was singling him out for recognition. At that point the pharaoh decided to let everybody know that the priest/prince was his heir this being “the plan of the gods” and allowed him to stand with him in the spot in the temple called “the station of the king”. Then Thutmose says “I flew to heaven as a divine hawk” [meaning he was incarnated as Horus, the usual name for the royal successor]...Ra himself established me. I was dignified with the diadems that were upon his head.” He is probably referring to his coronation, but it may even be that Thutmose II supposedly set his own circlet upon the boy's head right there in the temple of Karnak. But, reading between the lines, what Thutmose III is really saying is that he was just a priest and nobody expected him to succeed until Amun intervened. Had he been the true crown prince, a recognized only son and heir of Thutmose II, nothing like this narrative would have been necessary.

The whole incident may never have occurred, but the insignificance of Thutmose before he became king is the underlying theme, something unthinkable had all eyes been upon him as next in line to the throne. The other implication is that Thutmose II didn't even want to recognize the young man as his successor until Amun practically forced him to in front of everybody. In reality, the only explanation is that Thutmose II didn't care a thing about the future Thutmose III and that the youth became pharaoh only as a last resort in an effort to avoid having a female ruler. But, of course, that plan became upset in due course.

The first text that seems confusing comes from the tomb of Ineni. Ineni seems to have served Thutmose II and it is the latter he appears to be referring to when he says, “After he had joined among the gods, his son was set up in his place as the King of the Two Lands. While he ruled from the throne of him who begat him, his sister, the god's wife, Hatshepsut took care of the land...” This is rather odd because, were the text to be really clear, it should have said, “After he had joined among the gods, his sister, the god's wife, Hatshepsut, took care of the land while his son was set upon the throne of his father...” As it stands, it is not exactly clear if Hatshepsut was just the sister of the dead ruler [and we know she was] or also the sister of the new king! We could dismiss that entirely if it were not for the cube statue of Inebni, in the British Museum. Inebni was a servant of Hatshepsut after she had assumed the kingly titles. They are on the statue, [her cartouche having been erased] where she is styled “good goddess, mistress of the Two Lands” and then in secondary mention comes “with her brother, the good god, lord of doing things, Menkheperra”. The cartouche of Thutmose III remains unharmed. “sn=s” definitely means “her brother” and could also mean “her husband” in the parlance of the day. But, from indications, it seems to have been Neferura, the daughter of Hatshepsut, who was the first wife of Thutmose III--and not the woman-king, herself. Therefore, on balance, “sn=s” is best construed as “her brother”, written by someone who was certainly of the opinion that Hatshepsut and her younger male counterpart had the same father. If one chalks this up to a scribal mistake, it would certainly be a strange one as the inscription can certainly survive without the “sn=s” element and all that's needed is the word “Hna” meaning “with” or “also”. Of course, in official texts, where Hatshepsut and Thutmose III are shown together, there is no mention of “sn=s”--but then Inebni's statue was not an official one.

Egyptians Equated "Israel" with Hebrews

2009-08-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

In the Book of Exodus, the Egyptians refer to a foreign group within their land as "Hebrews" while the same call themselves "Children of Israel" [Jacob]. When Moses addresses Pharaoh, he, himself, employs "Hebrews" when speaking about his people.

This can be construed as an indication that even the author[s] of this Biblical text realized that "Hebrew" could be a commonly used Egyptian word. Josephus, the historian, wrote that the Hebrews were first called "Ermuth" but, after the time of Abraham, they became referred to by the more familiar appellation. Tell el Mukayyar can be identified with the Sumerian city of Ur, which in ancient texts was called Uriwa or Urima--hence perhaps Urima can be connected to "Ermuth". I am aware of the Biblical "Eber", [Gen. 10:24] whose name seems to mean "beyond", but I don't think this has anything to do with him. I do find it plausible to connect "Hebrew" " to Hurrian because in that language "apiri" has the meaning of "wanderer". Therefore, the followers of Abraham had been named by a Hurrian people somewhere in northern Mesopotamia.

And, yet, the term "Hebrew" seems more complex. Far removed from the time of Abraham and the fall of Ur, in the earlier part of the 18th Dynasty, Amenhotep II [who had inherited an empire] captured "aprw"or "apwiryw" [spelled variously] and at the same time some warriors known as "maryanna", some Indic elite class who, at one period, seemed to be the rulers of the Hurrians in a place called Mitanni. However, by the time of Akhenaten of the same dynasty, the leader of the "aprw" was called "Labayu", evidently a Semitic name. These "aprw" caused a great deal of difficulty for the Egyptian king and his Canaanite vassals--and ultimately seem to have killed all those princes loyal to Egypt.

By then, it seems to me, the notion of who was an "aprw", in its foreign context, seems to have changed. It is perhaps too facile to conclude that, while once many of the Hebrews were Hurrians, after they were enslaved in Egypt, became involved with the descendant of a "wandering Aramean" ("aAmw", actually pronounced "Aramu")--Moses--, came to Canaan, and began to be Semitic speakers, adopting the language of the territory. But it is as good an explanation as any, in my opinion. However, that would have had to have happened in the interim between Amenhotep II [who, from the records, brought back more captives to Egypt than is otherwise known] and Akhenaten. That involves a period of less than a century and, if some attempt at ethnic cleansing was perpetrated in Egypt, little distinction between "Aramean" and whomever else would have occurred. That may have included "an undesirable portion" of the older Egyptian populace, itself, a veritable "mixed multitude". And, yes, there are indications of a Hurrian element in Egypt in this very interim, including many coming to Egypt due to the Mitanni brides of Thutmose IV and his son, Amenhotep III. But, by the era of Akhenaten, relations between these two nations seem to have broken down. And the word "aprw" seems to have become a synonym for "rebel".

There is, however, a 19th Dynasty text that demonstrates that "Israel" and "aprw" was synonymous. That is the "Israel Stela" of King Merneptah, son of Ramesses the Great. There is a section of the text, rife with puns and rhymes, mentioning certain defeated Canaanite towns--even Canaan, itself. And then there is "wn YziriAr fkt bn prtw" or "Israel is laid waste; it's seed is no more". This would have been vocalized as "oun Yisrael foke ban apriou", the last word being a pun on "Hebrews".

Have You Seen My Green Donkey?

2009-08-13T20:38:00.000-07:00

One doesn't have to be a Time Traveler to know how vivid some of the colors that were used by ancient Egyptian artists appeared--because many times they have stayed that way to this very day. In the more recent past [but not too recent] a brown paint was made from powdered mummy, a thing that would have scandalized the heck out of the old Egyptians. Anyway, they, themselves, didn't even have a specific word for that hue. If that seems odd, consider that Arabic doesn't have "brown", either, nor "gray". If one happens to own a gray donkey, one calls it "green".

Everybody knows by now that the Egyptians painted the skin of their men with red ochre and that of the women with yellow. But, sometimes, the people were shown with whitish skin--and their garments were white, usually . How did the artist or his assistant make white paint? Well, he could grind up chalk, if he had access to some. Or...he could cover lead bars with the dregs of old wine and seal them up in a shed filled with animal dung. Blue paint was horribly expensive because lapis lazuli, a stone that had to come all the way from Afghanistan, had to be ground up for it. I don't know any other way for the Egyptians to have been able to get blue. If anyone else can think of another way, I wish you would post that here in a comment. Green could be likewise obtained from malachite, a stone, but possibly also from vegetable dye. I would tend to believe the latter was the most practical as green was commonly used.

I have noticed that, in a few tombs, a real crimson was employed--and this is a color easily distinguishable from red ochre. This shade of red could be made from a worm, "tola'at shani" in Hebrew. One could crush up some tree-dwelling insects and boil them in lye. Addition of sulfur and mercury make vermilicum--or vermillion--and one can see why the producing of paints might not be too good for the health. Anyway, the bright red is rare in Egyptian painting and probably cost the dear earth. Too much trouble and difficult to afford. The ancient Egyptians didn't know purple or couldn't reproduce it. Later on, the island of Tyre became famous for a shade of purple obtained from mollusks. Black was cheap--basically just soot. But the way the Egyptians blended their colors, shaded them, makes one forget they had nothing but the basic hues with which to work. One never tires of looking at some of their best efforts, true masterworks even given the restructions of the Egyptian artistic canon.

Could They Still Make Lemonade?

2009-08-11T09:53:00.000-07:00

Traveling in the Middle Ages was not that much fun but that didn't stop men like Meshullam ben Menachem of Volterra, who went to the Middle East, including Egypt. His account of his travels is fascinating. Meshullam left "Misr" [a name for Cairo] on the 4th of July, 1481. It is interesting that, in his time, certain Biblical toponyms were thought to be identified. "Bilibis" or Bilbeis was thought to be Goshen. El-Arish was Succoth because, as Meshullam mentions, "for in Arabic arish means hut. This is the place built by our father, Jacob, peace to his memory, and there is only one little house there in ruins and a well of brackish water; and, behold, at night there came upon us a swarm of insects found in the sand of the desert as large as two flies and rather red. They say that these are the lice with which Pharaoh was plagued, and they bit me big bites, but fortunately we had lemons which we brought with us from Misr, because we knew about them, that there is no remedy to their bite except lemon juice, for the juice prevents the wound festering in a man's flesh, and I swear that in all my days I never had so much pain as that night..."

Meshullam further says there was nothing but brackish water until they arrived at a place called "Asika, in Arabic called Azan" but then it's possible he gives us a clue as to who one of the Sea Peoples might have been . This Azan was about "four miles from the sea and the Moslems keep guard there because of the corsairs [pirates] from the sea. They are mostly corsairs of Rhodes who come mostly to levy booty from the travellers there...the corsair robbers were about four hundred men...all those who were in al-Khan fled when they heard about them and left all their property and went to Gaza...From Misr to Gaza is 298 miles..." Meshullam and his caravan made it to Gaza by July 21st--17 days in all. Since the people of ancient Rhodes were connected to a character named Danaeus, perhaps they can have been the "Danuna".

Science Needs To Be Shared

2009-08-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

Anybody out there besides me who is very annoyed by the silence on the part of the Egyptians when it comes to the DNA-testing of the Royal Mummies? They keep announcing they plan to test this one and that, even give a finish date for the project, and we wait, filled with hope for some confirmation of something NEW [finally] in the discipline of Egyptology. But it never comes and I'm afraid we can all count on growing a long, white beard before it does. Did the mummy from KV60 ever fulfill the requirements to be confirmed as Queen Hatshepsut? Enquiring Time Travelers want to know, Dr. Zahi Hawass. Now I hear the DNA search is on for the parents of Tutankhamun. Great, but that's been a question in people's minds since 1922. Isn't it about time we got some info--even if it's only the admission "We were not able to discover the truth." Of course, any inter-disciplinary effort is problematic. The microbiologists don't know the intricacies of the pharaonic genealogies and the Egyptologists don't comprehend the terminology of microbiology--much less how it works. Still, all it would take is for the microbiologist to announce, "Mummy A shares a certain allele with Mummy B" and explain what that is. Some of us can figure out the rest.

Who Chased the Hebrews?

2009-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Readers of my book, "The Exodus Chronicles", sometimes ask me my "private" opinion as to the identity of the Pharaoh of the Exodus. I remind them that I don't believe just one expulsion or migration of a foreign element was enough in antiquity--no more than it has been in more modern times. For instance, Moses Maimonides, scholar and physician, was doing quite well with his co-religionists along the Nile but, by 1200 AD, that period of tolerance by the Moslems came to an end. However, by 1950 AD, events like the Spanish Inquisition [and expulsion] of the 15th Century had brought Jews back to Egypt where they had grown very numerous once more. Enter Nasser--exit Jews.

But, okay, going by ancient sources, I'll name a king whom I believe to be an excellent candidate--Aakheperkare Thutmose I. In Urkunden IV 269, 7-8 there it says of him "xsr Snw m-q3b kmt Haaw m irt.n=f nbt" or "who drives [xzr] troubles away from within [m-q3b] Egypt, over all whose deeds one rejoices". This is something apart from the dealings of Aakheperkare with enemies in the foreign lands. Prior to Thutmose I, there was a Theban prince who battled the Hyksos, named Ahmose I. Most Egyptologists take it for granted that Ahmose had chased the foreigners totally out of Egypt but, actually, a contemporary account mentions that they had been driven only as far as Sharuhen at the southernmost tip of Canaan--not very far at all. And then Ahmose was forced to go to Khenty-hen-nefer to deal with the Nubians. Did the Hyksos or "shepherd kings" return to their stronghold, Avaris, once the Theban was gone? Manetho, an Egyptian historian of the Hellenic era, thought so and, according to Flavius Josephus, wrote:

"Under a king named Misphragmoutosis, the shepherds were defeated and were, indeed, driven out of other parts of Egypt, but were shut up in a place called Avaris...According to Manetho, the shepherds encircled the whole of this place with a great, thick wall in order to keep all ther possessions and their spoils, but that Thummosis, the son of Misphragmoutosis, attempted to take them by force and by siege, with four hundred and eighty thousand men. Despairing of the success of this siege, they came to a composition with them, that they should leave Egypt, and go, without any harm done to them, whatsoever; and that, after this treaty was formed, they went away with their whole families and chattels..."

Even though the name of the ruler "Misphragmoutosis" appears in the middle of Manetho's 18th Dynasty rather than at the start of it, there is evidence that "Misphragmoutosis" was confused with Ahmose I--such as a great flood occuring in his reign--which we know did happen in the time of Ahmose. Thutmose I was not the son of Ahmose [that we know of] but the Egyptian language employs the term "son" for "successor", as well. Thutmose I was the second pharaoh after Ahmose I, Amenhotep I ruling between them. Just as a veteran who served under Ahmose had no reason to lie when he said there was fighting going on between the Egyptians and the Hyksos in his day [he having been an eye witness], there was no reason why Manetho would have said that "Thummosis/Thutmosis" allowed them to depart without bloodshed--had it not been so. It must also be remembered that "Hyksos" was a generic term and could very well have included the members of the tribe of the patriarch, Jacob, dwelling with their flocks in the eastern delta, not very far from Avaris. Why would Thutmose I have gone there with so many men? The answer is obvious. He had to pass that way to start his campaigning in the eastern lands.

Serious About Sirius

2009-08-02T13:30:00.001-07:00

It didn't take me long to get back to Ancient Egypt--but that's the joy of Time Travel. One can cover plenty of past, scoot back and forth, in a single day. All over the Web there are persons who insist on believing that the Sothic Dating is out of whack--mostly those who are proponents of some untenable chronology or another. For those who know nothing much about the topic, the Sothic Dating System is an attempt to create a timeline for Ancient Egyptian history from some concordances that mention on what date within the wandering Civil Calendar the star Sirius [spdt-Sothis] was sighted or was expected to be sighted.
Sirius was viewed at a certain latitude at about the time of the commencement of the annual flooding of the Nile. I admit that the concordances for the 18th Dynasty don't seem so secure, but it looks increasingly to me that the most important one, the pEbers, has been correctly interpreted and that Sothis was, indeed, viewed on the 9th Day of the 3rd month of Shomu in Year 9 of Amenhotep I.

I have already gathered from agricultural indices that, in the time of Thutmose III's first Asiatic campaign, the civil dating was pretty much in sync with the seasons. Now there is another indication--the date of Hatshepsut's obelisk. I must own I had never considered the significance of it, but a History Channel program woke me up to the sensible fact that moving an obelisk north from the quarry at Aswan was easiest at the time of the flood, mainly to insure the depth of the water needed to transport such a heavy object. That led me to check the obelisk text of Hatshepsut and, by golly, there it is. It was finished by the season of the inundation, according to the civil calendar. Here's what the inscription says: "My Majesty commissioned it [the obelisk]in Year 15, Day 1 of the second month of Winter, ending in Year 16, the last day of the fourth month of Summer, making seven months from the commissioning in the quarry."

After Year 9 of Amenhotep I, that king ruled about 20 more years. The civil calendar slipping by one year every four years, Sothis should have been sighted about the 14th day of the 3rd month of Shomu by the end of the reign of Djeserkare Amenhotep. In order for the sighting to get around to 1 Akhet or thereabouts again, many more years would need to go by but not too many for the sighting to edge its way to the beginning of the 4th month of Shomu. Well, actually 64 years would be needed for that. If one takes away the current date of the obelisk of Year 16 of the joint reign of T III/Hatshepsut, the difference is 48 years--and we are probably not going to find them in the interim between this and the end of Amenhotep I. The best compromise would be that, by Year 16 of Hatshepsut, Sothis should probably be sighted sometime toward the end of the 3rd month of Shomu, signalling the start of the flood season, and that, by the end of the 4th month, the inundation should be REALLY high in time to float the obelisk downstream. So the main points are:

1. We have the concordance that says Sothis was sighted, in Year 9 of Amenhotep I on the 9th Day of the 3rd month of Shomu. We also know that, by the end of the reign of that king, the sighting should have moved to Day 14 [in a four-year window]. So this is the time of the beginning of the flood season when Thutmose I takes the throne.

2. We can't know for certain on what day in the 3rd month of Shomu the sighting of the star was expected in Year I of Thutmose III because we don't have any certainty regarding the lengths of the reigns of TI and TII. All we have is that text, the Elephantine stela, that says Sirius was sighted on the 29th Day of III Shomu. That means that 60 years have lapsed since the death of Amenhotep I and that the unnamed king of the Elephantine stela must be T III with his long reign of 54 years, no matter how long the reigns of TI and TII were in the interim. Because it is doubtful that the two predecessors of TIII ruled even as long as 40 years in that interim.

3. The obelisk took seven months to complete. I think the engineers of Hatshepsut knew approximately how long it would take to be quarried [and it was a very laborious process, indeed, as granite was a very hard stone for the Egyptians to work with] and, as their deadline, shot for the time when the river would be high. The obelisk text mentions that the monument was completed by the end of the 4th month of Shomu. By that time it HAD to be high-flood because, somewhere in the second half of the 3RD MONTH OF SHOMU the star signalling the advent of the flood season should have been sighted in this very year of the joint reign--16. I am not talking about any specific year in the history of the world, the moving of the obelisk. All I am saying that the date of the completion of the obelisk seems to corroborate the Sothic concordances of the early 18th Dynasty. The obelisk was finished at a time of high flood [and even the Medieval travelers claimed that the flood was high in August] and this would be especially true if the higher accession date for Thutmose III is adopted. I'm saying that, at least by the start of the 19th Dynasty there was a new Sothic Cycle, with the natural seasons being in sync with the civil calendar and that had to be so. The obelisk text of Hatshepsut is just another confirmation of all that. Nothing more.

It Takes A While To Get Back To This Century

2009-08-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

And that's why it's taken me so long to start blogging! Okay, it might be fun. We'll see. Those of you who know me realize that I've mostly been stuck in Ancient Egypt due to mechanical failure but some wizard there recently fixed my dial and I was able to fastforward to the 19th Century AD. From there to the 21st is an easy hop so I'll be traveling back and forth a lot.

Why the 19th? Ever since I lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, I've been traveling to the Nile Valley but, suddenly, I cracked open an old history of St. Paul and got into it. Even though I live far away from Minnesota now, I like the fact that it has a colorful past and am trying to turn myself into an expert on it. So that's what my next book will be about. [To see what's in my others, you can do a search on my name at Amazon.com. ] I'll be writing about a low character, Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant , notorious purveyor of whiskey, and his complete opposite, Father Lucien Galtier, who named the future city. There is no photo of "Pig's Eye", whose description makes him seem pretty unphotogenic, anyway, but here's Father Galtier, who was. Below him is his log church, the first one in the area where the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers meet. So that's my current project, even though you know I'll be whizzing back to old Egypt a lot. Maybe there'll be time for comments on current events, as well, although they never seem to interest us Time Travelers for too long. We're always pulled backward, one foot in the past and the other on a banana peel or the remains of whatever we eat on the fly.