Is There an Extra Century in Second Millennium BCE Middle Eastern Chronology?

The short answer to this title’s question is “Yes.” Researchers mistakenly shifted part of the second millennium BCE historical timeline forward by a century. Therefore, they must find justifications for that offset against reality before that misplaced period. The scholarly conventional understanding is that they can accurately determine when the synchronous Amarna Period occurred by counting backward from the first to the second millennium BCE using the Assyrian King List (AKL). The extant letters from El Amarna identify the three kings of Egypt, Assyria, and Babylonia who all succeeded their fathers around the same time: Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), Aššur-uballiṭ I, and Burna-Buriaš II. Thus, conventionalists’ fundamental premise is that they can determine when these contemporary kings reigned using the AKL.

This premise is false. These scholars have shifted forward the Amarna Period because the AKL had one or more gaps during that interim. Since the conventionalists assign the Amarna Period over a century too late, their Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian timelines have a missing or added century before that crucial synchronism. How do they compensate for these time shifts?

The last post, “The Ironic Accuracy of the Venus Tablets Middle Chronology Model,” introduced overwhelming evidence that the Babylonian Middle Chronology is correct. The alternate models, the Low and Ultra-Low Chronologies, place the Babylonian Amorite Dynasty 64 and 96 years too late. Those who accept these interpretations reject the evidence proving the Middle Chronology’s accuracy. Nevertheless, they legitimately observe that the archaeological evidence does not support a four-century interim between the Hammurabi–Šamši-Adad I synchronism and the Amarna Period. Instead, this interval must be closer to three centuries. Ironically, instead of recognizing that the Fourteenth Century BCE placement of the Amarna Period is the problem, advocates of all three models unquestionably accept that erroneous conclusion. Middle Chronology believers try to justify their interpretation of a four-century interval by artificially adding a century to the period between the Amorite Dynasty and the Amarna Period.

The AKL between these two crucial synchronous periods is almost complete. Nevertheless, one regnal period is about three decades too long because the king list compilers conflated a vassal king’s ruling period with his short reign as the monarch of Assyria. Two rulers’ reign lengths are missing entirely from all extant copies of the AKL. However, a generational study shows the sum of their reigns could not have been more than a few years. (See The Six Pillars {soon to be published}, Appendix E and Chapter 5.) Advocates of the Middle Chronology try to artificially inflate this period by many decades or argue that the AKL is missing other kings during this interim.

Some Egyptologists find their “missing century” by expanding the Second Intermediate Period far beyond what the evidence justifies. Multiple incompatible Sothic date records (of the heliacal rising of Sirius in July) demonstrate that the Egyptians had regional calendar systems and reforms. With extreme confirmation bias, many researchers believe that the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties’ Sothic dates and one from 139 or 140 CE used the same calendar system. On the contrary, these dates represent three distinct calendar systems.

The Egyptian solar calendar without a leap year shifted one day per four years. Sothic date records of the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties include IV prt 16, Year 7 of Senusret III and III šmw 9, Year 9 of Amenhotep I. If these dates had been in one calendar system, their separation of 83 days would represent around 332 years (83 days x 4 years/day) between these observations. However, the actual interval was much shorter.

Thus, with differing justifications, scholars find reasons to support their fallacious chronological models.