Evidence of a drought believed to have caused the fall of Egypt's Old Kingdom

[Mark]

Also see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/world/middleeast/pollen-study-points-to-culprit-in-bronze-era-mystery.html

[Patrick Waterson]

Thanks for posting these items, Mark.

Unfortunately for the 'drought' theory Puduhepa, Ramses II and their correspondence belong in the 6th century BC so do not reflect climatic conditions in the 13th.  However the drop in tree cover between 1250 and 1100 BC would be real, if they have the dating correct - and would be but one of many, as according to Velikovsky's findings this was in the middle of the period 1629 BC - c.1077 BC in which Venus would have been making repeated passes close to the Earth.  Curiously, the study does not comment on the prolonged drought mentioned in I Kings 17.7, 14 and 18.1-5, which should have had serious effects on the local flora in the 9th century BC.  It would seem that a much more radical meterological phenomenon was required to affect the pollen count to the degree seen in the study.

I might as well air my understanding that the idea of a 'Bronze Age Collapse' c.1200-1100 BC is a misconception brought about by incorrect Egyptian dating - the 19th (663-525 BC) and 20th (c.395-343 BC) Dynasties are wrongly placed directly after the 18th (c.1100-820 BC), which was actually followed by the Libyan (c.820-720 BC) and then the Ethiopian (c.720-663 BC).  The problem is that Egyptian dating is used as the benchmark for everyone else's (except Assyria), so the picture that emerges is of several cultures correctly identified as contemporary with the 18th Dynasty and hence erroneously assigned to c.1600-1300, and then a huge apparent blank in which nothing exists until c.800 or so, when recognised cultures of the 9th century are found in the stratum directly above the stratum relating to the 18th Dynasty.

The stratigraphic picture thus is:

18th Dynasty (assumed c.1600-1300) = Mycenaean Greece, Ugarit, Minoan Crete, etc.
19th, 20th, 21st Dynasties (assumed c.1300-950) = [no match, not even empty soil]
22nd (Libyan) Dynasty = no match for c.100 years, then Geometric Greece, colonies period and so on.

The real picture is:

18th Dynasty (c.1100-820 BC) = Mycenaean Greece, Ugarit, Minoan Crete, etc.
Libyan Dynasty (c.820-720 BC) = Geometric Greece, colonies period and so on. [Trojan War c.817-807 BC]

Hence it is wrongly assumed that there was a gap in which nothing lived or moved from c.1300-800 BC except in Egypt.  I shall not even begin to try and describe the chronological mess which arises when trying to date sites in the Holy Land by matching strata with 19th and 20th Dynasty materials.

There was far more going on to affect climate and flora than just the odd prolonged drought - a quick look through the Book of Joel ("... it has laid waste my vines, and splintered my fig trees ... fire has devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and fame has burned all the trees of the field ... the earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened ...") indicates that the common explanation of 'locusts' is not what is happening: locusts do not splinter fig trees, nor burn pastures and trees, nor darken the moon (they fly by day), nor cause earthquakes.  Joel was writing, or having his utterances recorded, during the Mars period of c.837-687* BC, and his descriptions of blight and fire accord with Babylonian designations of Nergal (Mars) as 'the burner' and the bringer of blight that withers crops.

*687 BC was Mars' last visit: Esarhaddon confirms this in a little-regarded passage when he writes that the beginning of his reign (681 BC and ff.) was marked by "the most favourable of omens: the planets all followed their proper courses".  Nevertheless, when he took an army against Egypt in 673 Mars came close enough to frighten his troops and he had to abandon the expedition.  However the lack of devastation that year perked their confidence and he was able to repeat the venture - successfully - in 672 BC.  Babylonian oracular records of the 8th-early 7th centuries BC repeatedly ask when the time will be 'right' to re-erect temples the gods have thrown down, indicating that a good deal of earth-shaking was going on around then.

People who think that climate brought down Mediterranean civilisations seem to have no idea what a Mediterranean civilisation could - and did - stand, or what was affecting the climate.

Don't they have records of 'high' and 'low' niles somewhere, or is this something they were trying to put together

Jim

Curiously, the Nilometers of the Middle Kingdom record Nile heights about 20 feet higher than those in the New Kingdom.  Tying this in with Josephus' passing reference to the 'shrunken Nile' while listing events of the Exodus, one might conclude that parts of central Africa underwent an upthrust around the time of the Exodus or shortly thereafter, choking the Nile to a relative trickle until it could once more cut its way through in full flow.  This would incidentally have allowed the Hyksos to cross the Nile and subdue the attenuated but tenacious 14th Dynasty in the western delta.