Broken Timelines: Recent Episodes
Jack Stornoway
Egypt is unique among Earth’s ancient cultures, as the Egyptians kept records longer than most cultures existed. Around 300 BC the Egyptian historian Manetho compiled a record of Egyptian History for the Greeks. It was the height of Greek cultural influence. The Greeks were ruling everything from southern Italy to northwest India, and had established colonies as far west as France, and as far north as Crimea. Manetho’s book Aegyptiaca, circulated far and wide within the Greek world, and then the Roman and Sassanian Empires that rose up to consume the Greek world.
The most enigmatic Greek god, Dionysus, was steeped in Dumuzid-Tammuz lore. For the Greeks, he was always the foreign god, even though being part of the Greek pantheon since the Mycenaean era, circa 1500 to 1100 BC, when they called him Disonuso. This foreign god, was also worshiped by the Minoans under the name Diwonijo, although it is unclear when they started worshiping him.
The Minoans built a major civilization in the Aegean, long before the Greeks. Their civilization was devastated by the volcanic eruption of Thera, sometime between 1650 and 1500 BC, however, dating systems all disagree on when. Archaeologists working in Crete, generally claim it was circa 1500 BC, due to the style of pottery being made at the time. Carbon dating places it, between 1627 and 1600 BC, by examining the remains of plants buried at the time. Egyptologists have found a layer of pumice they think is related to Thera, at Tel el Dab’a, that is dated to the reign of King Ahmose I, and places the Thera eruption circa 1540 BC. Meanwhile, ice core samples from Greenland, show evidence of a large volcanic eruption circa 1642 BC, and dendrochronology, shows a disruption of the normal growth cycles of trees circa 1628 BC, in both North America and Europe. Additionally, Chinese records of the year 1618 BC, imply a large volcanic eruption somewhere in the northern hemisphere.
This eruption of Thera, didn’t destroy the Minoans but did cause a great deal of damage throughout the Aegean. The eruption caused tsunamis and ash-fall across the region, damaging their economy and causing their civilization’s decline. In the longer term, the decline of the Minoans ultimately allowed the rise of the Greeks. Like the history of other nearby cultures, the Minoans timeline is based on how it correlates with Egypt, however, unlike the Middle Eastern cultures, there is no complex written histories, or invasions by other cultures before the Greeks invaded, near the end of Minoan history.
If one accepts the Recent Out-of-Africa theory for modern-human origins in Africa, then the lifespan of Dumuzid, was during the first phase of modern-human migrations out of Africa into the Middle East and South Asia. The current version of the Recent Out of Africa theory, proposes that modern-humans first migrated into southern Eurasia, between 110,000 and 95,000 years ago, and by 100,000 years ago, modern-humans and Neanderthals had begun interbreeding. Meanwhile, Dumuzid’s lifespan was listed as approximately 129,600 to 93,600 years ago.
Given that Cain was leaving Eden traveling east, the original Garden-of-the-Gods must have been in North Africa somewhere. As Zimbir was required to still exist between 65,000 and 44,000 years ago, the City of Enoch would have to have been in South Asia. This would then suggest that Cain settling in Nod, and being ‘marked’ as different from other people, was the first wave of modern-humans settling in southern Eurasia and creating light-skinned children with the native Neanderthals. The light-skin genes in modern Eurasian and Native American populations are believed to be inherited from Neanderthal ancestors.
This is of course, only valid if the current version of the Recent Out-of-Africa theory is correct. Modern-human remains have been found in Eurasia, long predating the current version of the Recent Out of Africa theory, indicating that modern-humans either ventured out of Africa earlier than previously thought, or that they originated elsewhere. The immediate ancestor of the modern humans, was thought to be homo-heidelbergensis, until genetic analysis of the Sima de los Huesos fossils showed homo-heidelbergensis to be primitive Neanderthals, and pushed back the splitting of the modern-human and heidelbergensis-neanderthal bloodlines, to roughly 600,000 to 800,000 years ago. This raises the question of who our primary ancestors were, if they weren’t homo-heidelbergensis. The ancestor species of homo-heidelbergensis, is currently believed to be homo-erectus, which could be the last common ancestor the modern-human bloodline had with the Neanderthal and Denisovan bloodlines.
In the Sumerian King List, before the kingship was in Zimbir, it was in the city of Larak, which fell approximately 64,800 years ago, after being around for 28,800 years, meaning it was founded circa 93,600 years ago. So far, no ruins have been found in Iraq associated with a dynastic city called Larak, however, it is believed they may lie somewhere near the ruins if Isin. Almost nothing is known about Larak. The King of Larak was said to be En-Sipadzidana of which there are no surviving stories. The name En-Sipadzidana translates approximately as ‘time of the shepherd for the faithful of heaven,’ which doesn’t really enlighten us as to what Larak was, other than that they were apparently shepherding.
Sheep are believed to have been domesticated in the Middle East, approximately 13,000 years ago, however, the wild mouflon species which sheep were domesticated from, have been around for approximately four million years, and therefore sheep could have been domesticated earlier than 13,000 years ago. In fact, some studies have suggested that sheep may have been domesticated up to three times from three different wild mouflon species. Of course, the term shepherd could have been used metaphorically, as it is being used within the concept ‘shepherd for the faithful of heaven,’ which sounds like something a Christian minister might describe himself as being.
The world was different between 94,000 and 65,000 years ago, and modern-humans weren’t the only people on it. The Neanderthals and Denisovans of Eurasia were the other humans on the planet at the time. Modern-humans are believed to have initially left Africa sometime between 110,000 and 95,000 years ago, and by 100,000 years ago humans and Neanderthals had begun interbreeding. While modern-human remains are found in the Middle East earlier than 80,000 years ago, after 80,000 years ago they were replaced by Neanderthals. It is believed that modern-humans left the region because the world was cooling, which allowed the neanderthals to migrate down into the area from Eastern Europe or Central Asia. Somewhere in Eurasia, a group of modern-humans with some Neanderthal DNA did survive, presumably in South Asia. Between 55,000 and 45,000 years ago these modern-humans returned to the Middle East, as the neanderthals withdrew to Europe and Siberia.
Like the Egyptians, the Sumerians recorded a long pre-dynastic history. The Sumerians recorded a series of king lists for different cities, which they claimed ruled Mesopotamia in sequence, with the kingship being taken from city to city. Modern Assyriologists generally disregard the idea that the kingship passed from city to city in a long line of dynasties, as this would push the foundation of Sumer back to approximately 23,645 BC, after the Flood of Ziusudra. Adding the dynasties listed before the flood, human history would have begun approximately 264,845 BC.
This is a tremendous period of time and is generally disregarded by both Assyriologists and historians as being nothing more than myths. However, humans were around at the time, and the brief records of the time-periods in question do correlate with significant events in human prehistory as determined by research into geology, paleoclimatology, and archaeogenetics.
The fourth period in the Mesopotamian timeline is the Late Era, which includes the Babylonian, Assyrian, and later civilizations. The Babylonian timeline is derived from the Babylonian King Lists and continues where the Sumerian King Lists end. The Babylonian civilization was largely a continuation of the Akkadian civilization, however, the capital city of Babylon was north of the marshlands. The fact that the Babylonian King Hammurabi was around at the same time as the Egyptian King Neferhotep I requires moving the entire Old Babylonian Empire to circa 3352 to 3038 BC ULT.
This does not affect the dating of the later periods, as there was a dark age after the Fall of Babylon at the end of the Old Babylonian Empire. The Hittite sacking of Babylon is considered one of the most important events in the Babylonian timeline and generally dated to somewhere between 1499 and 1736 BC depending on the version of the CMT used. If the ULT is used then the Fall of Babylon took place around 3038 BC, around 200 years after the collapse of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. The ULT also sees the reign of the last Neo-Sumerian King, Damiq-ilishu, ending in 3227 BC, around the same time the Egyptian Middle Kingdom collapsed, shortly after the Great Shock of 3250 BC. This is the point in time that the world’s climate changed significantly into a neo-glacial period that lasted until around 1500 BC.
The timelines of Mesopotamia and Egypt are the two pillars that ancient history is built around, unfortunately, as the Egyptian timeline was more developed by the early-1900s it has traditionally taken precedence over the Mesopotamian timeline. This means whenever the Egyptian timeline is changed by Egyptologists, the Mesopotamian timeline needs to be adjusted by Assyriologists to keep the two timelines in sync. Unlike Egypt, where one civilization rose and fell repeatedly for thousands of years, in Mesopotamia various civilizations rose and fell. The oldest known culture in the region was the Sumerian culture, which was ultimately supplanted by the Akkadian civilization. The Akkadian civilization then devolved into the Babylonian and Assyrian cultures.
When the academic study of ancient Mesopotamian cultures began in the 1600s, Assyria was the oldest known Mesopotamian civilization, and as a result, the field of study is still known as Assyriology. Through the 1700s and 1800s, early excavations in Iraq uncovered the ruins of Babylon, and evidence of the Akkadian language, and by the 1850s evidence of the Sumerian language, although it was not translated until the early 1900s. The Sumerian civilization was established in history books by the 1910s, followed by the earlier Jamdet Nasr, Uruk, and Ubaid periods in 1930.
The records that have survived from the Sumerian and Akkadian periods, list a series of ancient dynasties going back tens of thousands of years, which might have been considered history if Egypt did not exist. Unfortunately for Assyriologists, Egypt does exist. The similarities between the early dynastic periods of both cultures were documented by 1900, which essentially proved that one culture influenced the other. The question was which culture influenced the other. Both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform had been translated by the late-1800s, and both have the same unique logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic elements, which indicate that both derive from a common ancestor, and the question again was which one? Likewise, both cultures built flat-topped buildings in the early period, and then started building pyramidal structures, again, which culture influenced which? The common elements go far beyond writing forms and structural design, the two cultures even shared mythical animals, such as the serpopard.
Before the 30 kings of Memphis, Manetho listed the rule of another group of kings for 1,817 years. Very little is known about this period that apparently existed between approximately 17,280 to 15,463 years ago. This was deep into the glacial drought when Egypt was extremely dry. During the period of around 17,000 years ago Lake Tana in the Ethiopian highlands dried out, which was the source for 80% of the Nile’s water during the later dynastic period. This led to the Nile’s water level falling to one of its all-time lowest points. Lake Tana did not recover until sometime after 15,100 years ago.
The other primary source of water for the Nile has traditionally been the White Nile, which flows from Lake Victoria in central Africa. The White Nile is currently the source for around 20% of the Nile’s water, however, during the time when Lake Tana was dried out, it would have been the source for most of the Nile’s water. However, Lake Victoria was very low at this time as well, ultimately drying out entirely by 15,000 years ago, meaning that the Nile itself, had almost dried out by the end of this very ancient dynasty. It is theorized that the Nile was a seasonal river during this period, flowing only part of the year, and possibly dammed by sand dunes in multiple places, where lakes would have formed behind the dams. There is very little that has been discovered dating from this period. Some stone tools have been found along the higher banks of the Nile, however, the majority of artifacts from this period would likely be buried under the Nile’s riverbed, as people would have clustered around the water, not at the top of the surrounding cliffs.
According to Manetho, before the rule of the 10 Kings of Thinis, there was a dynasty of 30 kings based in Memphis, who ruled for 1,790 years. The location of the dynastic city of Memphis is known, it’s near the modern town of Mit Rahina, 20 km south of Giza. The city of Memphis was the capital of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, said to have been founded by King Menes after he unified Egypt circa 5510 BC ULT (or 3100 BC CET). It was a major city throughout most of Egyptian history and is the root of where the name ‘Egypt’ is derived. While the city of Memphis founded by Menes, could be at the location of the earlier city of Memphis, it is not necessarily the case.
The name Memphis is derived from the ancient Egyptian words ‘Hut-ka-Ptah,’ meaning ‘Enclosure of the ka of Patah.’ The term ‘ka of Patah’ translates as essentially the ‘spirit of Ptah,’ or more literally ‘craftsmen,’ as Ptah was the patron deity of craftsmen. Therefore the name of the city could be read as the ‘enclosure,’ or ‘fortress’ of the craftsmen. This basic term is found in several ancient cultures across the region, such as the ancient Sumerian Bad-tibira, which also meant ‘fortress’ of the smiths or craftsmen. Like the Egyptian city of Memphis, Bad-tibira was both a historic city in Iraq, and an ancient mythical city from a time period thousands of years before the foundation of Sumer. This concept of the ‘city of the smiths,’ whatever it might have originally meant, is so ingrained in the ancient Middle Eastern culture that it even found its way into the Tanakh, (the Biblical Old Testament). In the earliest part of the Bible, the first city was built by Cain, the first metalsmith.
Naturally it is possible that King Menes built his capital where he thought the ancient city of Memphis was, however, there is no reason to assume that he did. If one does assume that Menes’ Memphis was in the vicinity of the ancient Memphis, then one faces the fact that Menes’ Memphis was in the area that is today covered by modern Greater Cairo. Finding the original Memphis under all that might not be possible.
Before the dynastic period, Manetho and other ancient sources stated there was a series of older civilizations in the Nile. Little has been found from the period, however, some findings do support his claims. While much of the Pre-Dynastic era may be fiction, it would be irresponsible to propose returning to Manetho’s timeline without looking at what the Egyptians believed came before.
One might read the history of Christian scholars re-writing Egyptian history, and wonder: why? What difference does it make when the Ancient Egyptians thought their civilization was founded to a Christian? If someone believes the world was created in 4004 BC, what difference does it make if ancient Egyptians thought their civilization was founded in 5510 BC? After all, they weren’t Christian. The reason early Christians were so insistent on re-dating the ancient Egyptian timeline, was because it was tied directly to the Egyptian concept of Zep Tepi, or the First Time.
The First Time was what came before the unification of Egypt at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty. Zep Tepi was a time when Gods and Spirits ruled Egypt, and this brought it into direct conflict with early Christianity, and the idea that there was only one God. This obsession with ‘proving Christianity’ continued to be mainstream thought well into the 1900s, although it is now generally not a concern to academics, other than to the ‘agnostic’ David Rohl.
Nevertheless, modern Egyptologists continue to ignore Zep Tepi, as their Christian precursors did, using the same reasoning: those gods and spirits didn’t exist, so why bother studying them? It seems strange, that people who have dedicated their lives to studying ancient Egypt, would simply not bother studying parts of Egyptian history, based on their personal assumptions that these parts of history didn’t happen, yet that is the state of current Egyptology. Whatever the ancient Egyptians were trying to remember and record in their history, is apparently not important to modern Egyptologists, which is why the C.E.T. can be not only the dominant timeline, but the only timeline studied by Egyptologists, when it directly contradicts the records of the ancient Egyptians.
So if the ULT fits the geological and paleoclimatological evidence far better than the CET, why has the C.E.T. become ubiquitous in Egyptology? In a word: Christianity.
Egyptologists were divided into two camps during the late 1800s, some supporting the long timeline, and others supporting the short timeline. The long timeline proponents based their views of Egyptian history on the ancient records of Egypt, while the short timeline proponents based their view of Egyptian history on the version of the Bible they were using at the time. The pattern was identical for Iraqi, Indian, and Chinese history, where the dates of the ancient Mesopotamian, Harappan, and the early Chinese civilizations, were all simply moved to after the Great Flood.
The Great Flood is a story from Jewish folklore, in which a massive global flood was once sent by one of the ancient Jewish gods, to massacre all of humanity and some rebellious angels, that were living on the planet at that time, along with a group of giants, the angels had made by impregnating human women. There are dozens of known versions and variations of the story found in the early Christian, Jewish, and Gnostic texts, however, one was adopted into the Christian Bible, and so Christian fundamentalists need for all of history to conform to the Biblical timeline, or accept that the writers of the Bible weren’t omniscient.
The reason there are so many options when dating Egyptian history is due to its complexity. Ancient Egypt wasn’t a kingdom that built a bunch of pyramids and was then conquered by the Greeks. What we today call Ancient Egypt was, in fact, a series of kingdoms that rose and fell in the Nile region over several thousand years. They are called the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms by Egyptologists. Separating these kingdoms were dark ages, which Egyptologists call the First, Second, and Third Intermediate Periods. Following the Third Intermediate Period, or Third Egyptian Dark Age, was the Late Period when Egypt attempted to rebuild for the fourth time, but then fell under the control of foreigners.
Followers of both the short and long timelines agreed when the New Kingdom was founded, and pretty much everything that happened afterward. The New Kingdom was founded approximately 1580 BC ULT (1549 BC CET) and is the Kingdom of Egypt referenced in the Tanakh (Bible’s Old Testament), where the Jews were apparently enslaved for some time. It is also the Egypt of Greek mythology, where Helen had apparently been during the Battle of Troy, according to Herodotus and later writers. This was also the Egypt that fought the Hittites for control of Canaan, and can, therefore, be found in Hittite, Assyrian, and Babylonian records from that period. Additionally, radiocarbon dating has firmly placed the beginning of the New Kingdom between 1570 and 1544 BC. The dating of this kingdom is simply not in doubt, other than a few decades one way or the other.
The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that the original Egyptian timeline, as recorded by Manetho and the ancient Egyptian King Lists, and as documented by the foremost Egyptologist of the British Empire, Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie, actually make far more sense than the Conventional Egyptian Timeline. The original timeline is herein called the Unified Long Timeline (or the ULT) as it also takes into account the dynastic records of Mesopotamia, and the various lines of scientific evidence amassed in the past century such as dendrochronology, paleoclimatology, and carbon-dating.
The dates used in the ULT are taken from Petrie’s Researches In Sinai from 1906, and should not be misconstrued as exact dates. Petrie himself states that the earlier dates could be up to a century off, due to the limited amounts of records and artifacts dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Likewise, the CET used herein is the ‘Middle Chronology’ of Egyptology. Egyptologists have worked out several variations of the short timeline, with each generation seeming to want to distinguish itself by erasing more of Egypt’s ancient history. And it is history, it was written down. There were Kings and Queens recorded, yet the way Egyptologists are going, by the year 3000, the Great Pyramids of Giza will probably have been designed by Archimedes and built by Cleopatra. The various versions of the CET proposed the past century can deviate by up to 630 years for the foundation of the 1st Dynasty, therefore the CET dates given should also be considered relative.
Egypt is unique among Earth’s ancient cultures, as the Egyptians kept records longer than most cultures existed. Around 300 BC the Egyptian historian Manetho compiled a record of Egyptian History for the Greeks. It was the height of Greek cultural influence. The Greeks were ruling everything from southern Italy to northwest India, and had established colonies as far west as France, and as far north as Crimea. Manetho’s book Aegyptiaca, circulated far and wide within the Greek world, and then the Roman and Sassanian Empires that rose up to consume the Greek world. Within Aegyptiaca, the dynastic history of Egypt was divided into 30 dynasties, the same dynasties Egyptologists use today. Manetho was the first to refer to the ancient Egyptian royal families as dynasties, however, his account matches the Turin King List dating to the New Kingdom era a thousand years earlier and is believed to be an accurate account of what the Egyptians of his period believed. The Turin King List only listed the kings and queens up until the time of the New Kingdom, and Manetho only listed the kings and queens up until the last independent Egyptian royal family. Subsequently, the 31st Dynasty was added, which was the last Persian period of rule, which was followed by the Greek and Roman eras.
While Manetho and modern Egyptologists do agree on the general outline of Egyptian history, there are some striking differences, modern Egyptologists have removed over a hundred kings from Manetho’s timeline, compressing Egyptian history from a dynastic period that should have started in 5510 BC, to a dynastic period that starts in 3100 BC. There are also ongoing efforts to change the foundation date of the 1st Dynasty of Egypt to 3000 BC (Ian Shaw) or 2770 BC (David Rohl). These ongoing attemptsto revise Egyptian ‘history’ create more and more fictional history, as dynasties are either forced to coexist or erases them entirely from the timeline. Manetho’s 7th Dynasty is now considered fictitious by Egyptologists,1even though it was mentioned in the Turin King List, and the names of the kings were recorded in the Abydos King Lists, both lists dating from the New Kingdom era.