Part Three: In Egypt and Ethiopia
by
Damien F. Mackey
As Hatshepsut
Hatshepsut: Whose name means “foremost of noble women”.
Damien Mackey BPhil
(1985), MA (1994), MA (2007) has two Master of Arts Degrees, from the
University of Sydney (Australia). His first thesis ‘The Sothic Star Theory of
the Egyptian Calendar’ (preceded by the study of Hieroglyphics at Macquarie
University), scrutinized the documentary and astronomical basis of the
conventional Egyptian dating. Mackey’s second thesis, ‘A Revised History of the
Era of King Hezekiah of Judah and its Background’ (preceded by a year of
ancient Hebrew study), was his attempt to develop a more acceptable alternative
to the conventional chronology.
Introduction
Patrick Clarke has recently written for
the Journal of Creation two articles claiming that, contrary to Drs. Immanuel
Velikovsky, Donovan Courville and David Down, and also Emmet Sweeney, the 18th
dynasty pharaohs, Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, could not have been,
respectively, the biblical ‘Queen of Sheba’, and ‘King Shishak of Egypt’.
Clarke has devoted a fair space in his
‘Hatshepsut’ article to pointing out Velikovsky’s apparent deficiencies, his
lack of belief in the Scriptures (“who would not call himself a
Bible-believer”), and his shortcomings in regard to ancient languages. But more
suitably qualified scholars since (e.g. J. Bimson, P. James, D. Rohl) have
also, basing themselves on Velikovsky’s
(i) rejection of Sothic theory, and
(ii) his lowering of the secular dates
by several centuries,
arrived at revised systems more akin to
Velikovsky’s original than to the conventional structure. Along the way,
though, some of them, seemingly embarrassed by any suggestion of having been
influenced by Velikovsky, will drop terms like ‘maverick’ and ‘wayward
polymath’ with regard to him. Some will even claim their revision as a ‘New
Chronology’.
Two points here. Firstly, ‘give credit
where credit is due’; and, secondly, no need today to waste precious article
space pointing out Velikovsky’s well-known deficiencies.
However, to dispose satisfactorily of
Velikovsky’s 18th Egyptian dynasty reconstruction, complemented by that of
Courville and others - all looming as a vast elabo-structure by now - it does
not suffice for one simply to take pot-shots at three supposed ‘pillars’
(Clarke’s ‘all these pillars’ ) supporting this combination (namely,
Hatshesput/Sheba and the sub-set of Punt, and Thutmose III/Shishak). There is
to be considered a significant whole (some 200 years revised), with an
underlying methodology. Thus:
(a) the significant Sothic theory, with
resultant ‘Dark Ages’, that all leading revisionists reject - these, coupled
with the ‘collection of rags and tatters’ admission of honest conventional
Egyptology. And
(b) the correlations between the early
18th Egyptian dynasty and early Monarchy of Israel. Then, after
(c) the detailed theses of Hatshepsut,
and
(d) Thutmose III, we arrive at
(e) the El-Amarna [EA] period with all
of its many correlations with the Divided Monarchy (e.g. ‘Bit Šulman’, ‘House
of Solomon’; ‘son of Zuchru’ and ‘son of Zichri’; captain Ianhamu as Syrian
captain Naaman, the succession of Syrian kings, etc., etc).
Before some of the sharpest minds of
the ‘Glasgow’ School to which Clarke refers went their own ways, some teaming
up but then separating, they had, by modifying Velikovsky, brought the revision
of the 18th dynasty to an impressive peak. Peter James showed that an excellent
fit could be achieved by newly identifying EA’s idolatrous king of Jerusalem,
Abdi-hiba, with King Jehoram of Judah, rather than with his pious father,
Jehoshaphat, as according to Velikovsky. And Bimson, who had written
impressively on the need for a revised stratigraphy, would later add a third
Syrian king to Velikovsky’s EA succession of
(i) Abdi-ashirta = biblical Ben-Hadad
I, and
(ii) Aziru = biblical Hazael; namely,
(iii) Du-Teshub, the post-EA son of
Aziru, as Ben-Hadad II, thus further consolidating Velikovsky's Syrian sequence
for both EA and the mid-C9th BC.
And I still fully concur with James’s
1977/78 view re Abdi-ashirta and Aziru, that:
“With [these] two identifications
[Velikovsky] seems to be on the firmest ground, in that we have a succession of
two rulers, both of whom are characterised in the letters and the Scriptures as
powerful rulers who made frequent armed excursions - and conquests - in the
territories to the south of their own kingdom. In the letters their domain is
described as "Amurru" - a term used, as Velikovsky has pointed out
... by Shalmaneser III for Syria in general, the whole area being dominated by
the two successive kings in "both" the el-Amarna period and the
mid-9th century …”.
- so much so that these two kings
became the very foundation of my thesis on the ‘Background’ section of the era
of King Hezekiah of Judah.
Dr. Eva Danelius would also correct
Velikovsky’s unconvincing geographical reconstruction of Thutmose III’s first
campaign, which Velikovsky - though identifying it as the biblical foray,
Shishak’s, nonetheless had it ending up at Megiddo in the north - by her
showing that it was actually directed right at Jerusalem itself.
This (a-e above) is by now already a
formidable package (and I have only just touched upon it). Some very solid
‘pillars’ indeed to be found here with a modified Velikovsky.
By contrast, the conventional
chronology with its underlying stratigraphy has led to archaeologists
systematically deleting ancient Israel (Moses; Exodus; Conquest; David,
Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, etc.) from the history books … the leading Israeli
archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, was quoted as saying: “Now Solomon. I think
I destroyed Solomon, so to speak. Sorry for that!” Not only Solomon, but all
the others as well. That is because the likes of professor Finkelstein and his
colleagues are always constrained by the erroneous Sothic chronology to look at
the wrong strata for the Conquest, David and Solomon (Iron Age instead of Late
Bronze Age in the latter case). Thanks to the conventional scheme, it is
biblical history that is currently losing just about every battle.
And to set the 18th Egyptian dynasty
back to somewhere near where the text books have it, in the c. C16th-C15th’s
BC, then one is forced also to return to the standard view that it was Egyptian
thought that had influenced the c. C10th BC biblical writings, instead of the
other way around.
Clarke refers to “Liberal Christianity”
in connection with Egyptologist Budge. Is it not this liberalism that always
gives precedence to the pagan nations (e.g. the Mesopotamians and the
Egyptians), by claiming that their myths and literature supposedly influenced
the biblical texts? Thus we are told, for instance, that King David drew his
inspiration for Psalm 104 from the ‘Sun Hymn’ of the heretic pharaoh, Akhnaton.
All agree that these two texts are very similar in places. That is the wrong
conclusion, however, if David preceded Akhnaton by more than a century as
according to a Velikovskian context. Or they say that the Bible-like and
sapiential writings of Hatshepsut, and the love poems of the 18th Egyptian
dynasty, had influenced King Solomon’s writings. Some of Hatshepsut's own
inscriptions are clearly like those of Israel’s - especially Genesis, the
Psalms and, most interestingly, the writings generally attributed to Solomon
(Proverbs, Wisdom, Song of Songs). But that is just a further argument, I would
suggest, in favour of the view that this great woman had visited him and had
drunk in Solomon’s wisdom - Israel influencing Egypt, and not the other way
around.
Here are just a few examples of:
Scriptural Influences on Hatshepsut
(i) An Image from Genesis
After Hatshepsut had completed her Punt
expedition, she gathered her nobles and proclaimed the great things she had
done. Hatshepsut reminded them of Amon's oracle commanding her to ‘...
establish for him a Punt in his house, to plant the trees of God's Land beside
his temple in his garden, according as he commanded’. At the conclusion of her
speech there is further scriptural image ‘I have made for [Amon-Ra] a Punt in
his garden at Thebes ... it is big enough for him to walk about in’. J. Baikie
noted that this is ‘a phrase which seems to take one back to the Book of
Genesis and its picture of God walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the
evening’. This inscription speaks of Amon-Ra's love for Hatshepsut in terms
almost identical to those used by the Queen of Sheba about the God of Israel's
love for Solomon and his nation.
Compare the italicised parts of
Hatshepsut's
‘... according to the command of ...
Amon ... in order to bring for him the marvels of every country, because he so
much loves the King of ... Egypt, Maatkara [i.e. Hatshepsut], for his father
Amen-Ra, Lord of Heaven, Lord of Earth, more than the other kings who have been
in this land for ever ...’.
with the italicised words in a song of
praise spoken to Solomon by the Queen of Sheba ‘Blessed be the Lord your God,
who has delighted in you and set you on the throne as king for the Lord your
God! Because your God loved Israel and would establish them for ever ...’ (II
Chronicles 98).
(ii) An Image from the Psalms
When Hatshepsut's commemorative
obelisks were com¬pleted, she had the usual formal words inscribed on them.
However, Baikie states that, in language that ‘might have come straight out of
the Book Psalms’, the queen continues:
‘I did it under [Amon-Ra's] command; it
was he who led me. I conceived no works without his doing .... I slept not
because of his temple; I erred not from that which he commanded. ... I entered
into the affairs of his heart. I turned not my back on the City of the
All-Lord; but turned to it the face. I know that Karnak is God's dwelling upon
earth; ... the Place of his Heart; Which wears his beauty ...’.
Baikie goes on, unaware that it really
was the Psalms and the sapiential words of David and Solomon, that had
influenced Hatshepsut's prayer:
‘The sleepless eagerness of the queen
for the glory of the temple of her god, and her assurance of the unspeakable
sanctity of Karnak as the divine dwelling-place, find expression in almost the
very words which the Psalmist used to express his ... duty towards the
habitation of the God of Israel, and his certainty of Zion's sanctity as the
abiding-place of Jehovah.
‘Surely I will not come into the
tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine
eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids. Until I find out a place for the Lord, an
habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
- For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he
hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever; here will I
dwell; for I have desired it’.’
(iii) An Image from Proverbs
In another related verse of the Punt
reliefs about Amon-Ra leading the expedition to ‘the Myrrh-terraces ... a
glorious region of God's Land’, the god speaks of creating the fabled Land of
Punt in playful terms reminiscent of Solomon's words about Wisdom's playful
rôle in the work of Creation (Proverbs 8:12, 30-31). In the Egyptian version
there is also reference to Hathor, the personification of wisdom: ‘... it is
indeed a place of delight. I have made it for myself, in order to divert my heart,
together with ... Hathor ... mistress of Punt …’.
(iv) Images from the Song of Songs
In the weighing scene of the goods
acquired from Punt (i.e. Lebanon, see below), Hatshepsut boasts:
‘[Her] Majesty [herself] is acting with
her two hands, the best of myrrh is upon all her limbs, her fragrance is divine
dew, her odour is mingled with that of Punt, her skin is gilded with electrum,
shining as do the stars in the midst of the festival-hall, before the whole
land’.
Compare this with verses from King
Solomon's love poem, Song of Songs (also called the Song of Solomon), e.g. ‘My
hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh; Sweeter your love than
wine, the scent of your perfume than any spice; Your lips drip honey, and the
scent of your robes is like the scent of Lebanon’ (4:10-11; 55). (cf. 4:6, 14;
5:1, 5).
This Hatshepsut’s saturation with
Davidic and Solomonic scriptural imagery is further strong support for the
Egyptian queen’s visit to Jerusalem.
About the Woman Herself
…. from Josephus Flavius we learn that
she was the ruler of Egypt and Ethiopia, as Queen Hatshepsut was, who is the
only woman to have remained on the throne of Egypt for an extended period of
time. ….
And Metzler adds that (as Velikovsky
had already noted): ‘In Ethiopian tradition, her name is Makeda, which is
derived from Hatshepsut’s prenomen Maatkare [Makera]’.
Bimson had argued, though - and Clarke
would affirm this - that the biblical description had an Arabian, not Egyptian,
flavour, with camels, gold, spices and precious stones. But, again, all the
monarchs who came to hear Solomon's wisdom brought ‘silver and gold ... myrrh,
spices ...’ (cf. I Kings 10:25 & II Chronicles 10:24). Ever since the time
of Joseph, an Arabian camel train had operated between Egypt and northern
Palestine, carrying similar types of gifts (Genesis 37:25).
….
Still, Bimson had suggested that the
biblical queen was from Yemen in Arabia. Likewise, Clarke has her from
“somewhere around modern-day Yemen”. G. van Beek, however, has described the
geographical isolation of Yemen and the severe hazards of a journey from there
to Palestine. And none of the numerous inscriptions from this southern part of
Arabia refers to the famous queen. Civilisation in southern Arabia may not
really have begun to flourish until some two to three centuries after Solomon's
era, as Bimson himself had noted - and no 10th century BC Arabian queen has
ever been named or proposed as the Queen of Sheba. If she hailed from Yemen,
who was she?
Creating a Vacuum
Clarke is certainly right that: ‘The
chronology debate is a serious issue’. But he is also mindful that: ‘There is
always the risk that believers may base their thinking more on secular history
rather than the Bible’. He is ‘very sympathetic’ towards revisionists. And in
his Shishak article, Clarke tells: ‘I support the need for chronological revision
…’. It will be very interesting, though, to see for whom Clarke opts in the
future as Shishak, now that he has rejected Thutmose III as a candidate. And
with what secular history will he align the Monarchy of Israel? And, with what
biblical era, EA?
Critics who only take pot-shots at
Velikovsky’s ‘pillars’, but who do not offer any sort of substitute system, are
creating the sort of vacuum which allows free rein to the conventionalists and
which must bewilder readers. Neither Bimson, nor Rohl with Ramesses II as his
Shishak - and I suspect that Clarke will run into the very same problem - can
propose any appropriately situated woman to take Hatshepsut’s place as the
Queen of Sheba, who, surely, must have been a woman of some significance.
Alasdair Beal, editor of SIS in 1997, wrote of the effect that Bimson’s 1986
critique had had on readers:
“Probably few articles caused more
disappointment in SIS circles than John Bimson's 1986 ‘Hatshepsut and the Queen
of Sheba’, which presented strong evidence and argument against Velikovsky's
proposal that the mysterious and exotic queen who visited King Solomon was none
other than the famous Egyptian female pharaoh. This removed one of the key
identifications in Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos historical reconstruction and was
a key factor in the rejection of his proposed chronology by Bimson and others
in favour of the more moderate ‘New Chronology’. It also took away what had
seemed a romantic and satisfactory solution to the mystery of the identity and
origins of Solomon's visitor, leaving her once more as an historical enigma. …”.
Such efforts that offer no replacements
cause ‘disappointment’ amongst readers who at least know enough to mistrust the
conventional system. It is not even sufficient to do as some have done after
having tossed aside certain ‘pillars’, and pick in isolation a few historical
characters as biblical candidates (e.g. for Shishak). One needs at least to
replace any set of discarded ‘pillars’ with a revised system, complete with a
basic stratigraphy, that can accommodate major biblical events and persons -
most notably, the Conquest (and Jericho), but also David and Solomon, the Queen
of Sheba and King Shishak, and later ‘So King of Egypt’ (2 Kings 17:4). And
definitely one must be able to find a suitable place for the very long-reigning
(66-67 years) Ramesses II of Egypt’s 19th dynasty.
In 1997, about a decade after Bimson’s
critique, I wrote an article for SIS, in which I acknowledged the excellent
points that Bimson had made, but I also endeavoured to answer them. I fully
concurred with Bimson that the Punt expedition could not have been the same as
the biblical visit. Whereas the latter was made by a ‘queen’, Hatshepsut was
then no longer a queen. She was now in her 9th year as Pharaoh. The title of
Clarke’s article is thus suggestive by its juxtaposing of Pharaoh Hatshepsut
and the biblical Queen.
The Punt Expedition
Bimson, from an in situ study of
Pharaoh Hatshepsut’s Punt inscriptions at Deir el-Bahri, concluded for various
reasons - and rightly so - that these texts could not be referring to the
celebrated visit by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in Jerusalem. Clarke has
again raised some of these objections. Bimson's analysis of the Punt expedition
constituted his most formidable argument against Velikovsky's thesis. However,
on the basis of P. Dorman's chronology of Hatshepsut's era, I suggested that
the Punt expedition was a venture entirely separate from the Queen of Sheba's
visit to Jerusalem, undertaken years later, after Hatshepsut had made herself
Pharaoh. Its chief purpose was to obtain myrrh trees for the garden (or park)
surrounding the temple of Amon-Ra at Deir el-Bahri, to provide a continuous
supply of this rare plant in Thebes. Hatshepsut, recalling the magnificent
parks and gardens she had seen in Jerusalem, wanted to create the same for her
capital city. Hatshepsut would also have noticed Solomon's magnificent fleet (I
Kings 10:11), and the parks and gardens in Jerusalem with their exotic myrrh
trees (Song of Songs 5:1; 6:2). Presumably these were what later inspired her
Punt expedition. Furthermore, Bimson had noted most significantly that
Hatshepsut herself did not accompany this trip, as the Queen of Sheba obviously
had hers. The purpose of the Punt venture was not to partake of the wisdom of
the King of Jerusalem - we have found above that she had already done that
years before.
And the miserable ‘gifts’ given by the
Egyptian party to the reception committee at Punt, ‘an axe, a poignard in its
sheath, two leg bangles, eleven necklaces and five large rings’, obviously bore
no comparison with the lavish gifts brought by the Queen of Sheba: ‘The poverty
and meanness of the Egyptian gifts’, wrote Mariette, ‘are in striking contrast
to the value of those which they receive’.
The Egyptian inscriptions show Punt as
a land of trees - e.g. the c-s tree that A. Nibbi equates with the pine. This
is consistent with the view that Punt was Phoenicia/Lebanon; Lebanon being the
most noteworthy place for trees in the ancient Near East. Solomon had a free
hand building in Lebanon (I Kings (9:19, 20), where he used forced labour. The
Song of Songs refers to a ‘mountain of myrrh’, apparently in Lebanon (cf. 4:6
& 4:8). Solomon's palace was actually called ‘The House of the Forest of
Lebanon’, because it was ‘built upon three rows of cedar pillars, with cedar
beams upon the pillars’ (1 Kings 7:2). All this priceless timber could have
been obtained from the Phoenicians.
Accordingly, Velikovsky had referred to
Mariette's view that Hatshepsut's fine building betrayed ‘a foreign influence’,
possibly from ‘the land of [Punt]’. If the Puntites were the Phoenicians - and
(according to the Bible) Phoenician craftsmen had assisted Solomon in his
building of Yahweh's Temple - then it is most interesting that Mariette had
observed that Hatshepsut's temple ‘probably represents ... a Phoenician
influence’. From this, Velikovsky had concluded that the design of the latter
was based on the Jerusalem model.
According to the Bible, the Queen of
Sheba made at least the latter part of her journey to Jerusalem by camel train
…. The gifts she brought were of enormous value but Solomon allowed her to take
them all back with her (II Chronicles 9:12).
Bimson - whilst favouring Velikovsky's
chronological view that Hatshepsut's Punt expedition dated to about the time of
King Solomon - had argued that the expedition had travelled southwards on the
Red Sea, to NE Africa (modern Eritrea). Clarke gives ‘Ethiopia [as] the
probable location of Punt…’. Bimson claimed that myrrh trees were to be found
there, and he explained how the fauna and flora of the Punt reliefs reflected a
NE African location. Interestingly, in Solomon's own naval expeditions to Ophir
(which certainly were southward bound voyages on the Red Sea) his servants
brought back mainly gold (1 Kings 10: 11), and there is no mention at all of
myrrh trees.
I would consider the logistics of the
Punt expedition in the light of points raised by Nibbi, especially her
insistence that the Egyptians did not travel on the open seas. This helps solve
a problem with which both Velikovsky and Bimson had grappled: namely, that the
Punt reliefs provide no evidence that the Egyptian fleet had at any stage been
transported overland, from the Nile to the Red Sea. And this affects Clarke
also, of course, with his Punt as Ethiopia. This led Bimson to assume that
something must have been left out of the reliefs. In my scenario this would no
longer be a problem, as the Red Sea was not involved at all. If Hatshepsut's
fleet had never left the Nile, there would have been no need for overland
transportation of boats. I suggest that Hatshepsut's expedition was northward
bound, for Lebanon, but it was an expedition ‘on water and on land’. The fleet
simply sailed northwards to the Nile Delta. There, Nehesi and his small army
disembarked and marched northward through friendly territory to Lebanon.
‘Sailing in the sea, beginning the goodly way towards God's Land, journeying in
peace to the land of Punt ...’; the naval leg being only the ‘beginning’ of the
trip to Punt.
Early Egyptian expeditions to Punt were
generally connected with a place they called kpn; commonly thought to be Byblos
on the Phoenician coast. Nibbi has disputed this and has identified this kpn
with a port in northern Egypt. She first mentions Canopus but prefers El Gibali
in Sinai. Canopus, though, would have been an ideal place for the Egyptian
fleet to have dropped anchor, close to the Mediterranean.
Hatshepsut stressed that the travelling
was peaceful.
Any maritime venture would have needed
the co-operation of the Phoenicians, making King Hiram of Tyre a third
important power. And Velikovsky had claimed that King Hiram’s men had figured
in Hatshepsut’s Punt inscriptions as ‘the chiefs of Irem [Hiram]’. The
Phoenician ports were international marts where all sorts of exotic merchandise
could be acquired - all that Hatshepsut did in fact acquire from Punt. I
suggest that Hatshepsut's fleet would have laid anchor at the mouth of the Nile,
awaiting the outcome of Nehesi’s negotiations with the Puntite/ Phoenicians,
who then transported the goods via barges or rafts to Egypt, to be loaded on to
Hatshepsut's ships. It is clear from Hiram's own words to Solomon (I Kings
5:8-9) that the Phoenicians did transport cedar and cypress timber in this
fashion to southern ports.
It seems that, today, everyone wants to
create his own ‘New Chronology’. This article urges those who at least take the
Bible seriously to pause and consider all that has gone before, to modify by
all means wherever the evidence demands, but to be extremely wary about barging
off in a completely new direction that means abandoning some by now very well
established biblical and historical connections.
This
thesis can be accessed at: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1632
This
thesis can be accessed at: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/5973
‘Why
Pharaoh Hatshepsut is not to be equated to the Queen of Sheba’, Journal of
Creation, 24/2, August 2010, pp. 62-68.
‘Was Thutmose III the biblical Shishak? – Claims of the ‘Jerusalem’ bas-relief at Karnak investigated’, Journal of Creation, 25/1, April 2011, pp. 48-56.
