REVISED ANCIENT CHRONOLOGY
Remove Some Centuries or Many Centuries?
ROHL’S MODERATELY REVISED CHRONOLOGY
In these chapters of my book at zzzzzzz.substack.com/p/ancient-myths-are-planetary-history I presented some of David Rohl’s revised ancient chronology.
15a BRONZE AGE: SODOM & GOMORRAH
15b BRONZE AGE: BIBLICAL JACOB & JOSEPH
15c BRONZE AGE: BIBLICAL MOSES & JOSHUA
15d BRONZE AGE: BIBLICAL EXODUS
SHORT ANCIENT CHRONOLOGY
Nick (a friend from the Thunderbolts.info Forum) then wrote to me as follows.
It is obvious that the consensus ancient chronology is unduly stretched out. Stratigraphy does not justify any history before 1500 BCE.
Are you familiar with The Sun, Moon, and Sothis by Lynn Rose? There is an Egyptian document called the El Lahun Papyrus which is observations of the Moon. It is considered an anchor point (possibly the most important anchor point) in Egyptian history. The document is conventionally dated to the 18th C BCE and is a Middle Kingdom document. Egyptologists have tried to synchronize the observations by retrocalculation and claimed success, but Rose points out that their supposed matches were not accurate. Of course, a cloudy day here or there would prevent 100% accuracy. But still the accepted matches are anything but matches, and in fact are at about 50%.
Rose then, not prejudiced by preconceived assumptions, attempted to find a period of time that matched the observations. He was successful, achieving an accuracy of almost 95%. The time period for the match was in the 4th C BCE! and in fact, ended within a year of the conquest of Egypt by Alexander. This is astronomical evidence that the Middle Kingdom has been misplaced in time by over 1400 years, and whose "kings" never ruled over Egypt but were rather priests and local rulers within Egypt and were synchronous with the New Kingdom. All of conventional Egyptian chronology collapses like a house of cards.
Consensus chronology of Egypt is based upon the unreliable Egyptian Priest Manetho. Manetho lived during the Ptolomaic Dynasty, and was motivated to impress his Greek rulers that Egypt was of much greater antiquity than (and therefore culturally superior to) Greece. He knowingly or unknowingly lengthened Egyptian history by making various Kings and "dynasties" which overlapped and/or were contemporaneous, into a linear progression of made up dynasties. For example, the Assyrians conquered Egypt in 666 BC. In his record of the conquest, Assurbanipal wrote that at the time of his invasion, Egypt had over 20 Kings!
I strongly recommend a reading of Ginenthal's Pillars of History: History, Science, Techonology As These Relate To Chronology. The book is available as an ebook for $8.99 on Kindle or Nook. Hard copies are difficult to come by but occasionally appear on Ebay, but are usually expensive. The book also, has a devastating response to Cardona's published criticisms, to which he never responded.
{NOTE: Cardona did respond in Aeon. I show part of his response below.}
Nick continued.
From..."A Lowered Chonology For The Twelfth Dynasty", Lynn E. Rose; The Velikovskian Vol.II #4 pp 46-52
"Any detailed argument will have to be deferred to other occasions." [that would be Rose's book, Sun, Moon, and Sothis see the link below]
"I have found that the El Lahun papyri contain very strong evidence that the Twelfth Dynasty needs to be lowered by a full Sothic period.
"Thus the so called Middle Kingdom (of which the Twelfth Dynasty is the concluding part) belongs right smack in the middle of the first millenium, instead of straddling the boundary between the third millenium and the second millenium!"
... "Other El Lahun papyri contain references to various lunar situations, with their Egyptian dates. Thirty-six of these reports now seem to be usable for astronomical purposes: that is, they contain enough information to enable us to determine just where the lunar months began."
... "I have found that the New Crescent Feast and the Feast of Sand Moving always occurred on the day of the first sighting of the new crescent. I have also found that the Feast of Draping always occurred two days after new crescent day..."
[Rose goes on to align other feasts with the position of the Moon and describe his table of "Thirty Six Lunar Dates From The Lahun Papyri."]
"On other occasions, such as my book in progress, Sun, Moon, and Sothis, I will be able to discuss these matters in more detail. Here I simply want to list the 36 lunar dates and indicate how they compare to retrocalculation. Thirty four out of the 36 are hits , and two are misses."
[Rose then presents the charts and some analysis. And ends the article with his conclusion.]
"What is very solidly established here is that the reign of Sestrosis III began in -400 and the reign of Amenemhet III began in -381; their subsequent year counts ran from those starting points. Notice that the Twelfth Dynasty was ended by the arrival of Alexander the Great in -331."
Further reading:
"Part Three: Moving the Middle Kingdom", Lynn E. Rose; pp.704 - 727 of STEPHEN J. GOULD AND IMMANUEL VELIKOVSKY - Essays In The Continuing Velikovsky Affair
Stephen J. Gould and Immanuel Velikovsky: Essays in the Continuing Velikovsky Affair
"The Velikovsky Affair is one of the blackest episodes in the history of science."
{I replied to Nick.
"I started reading up on Rose's ideas. It seems like they're based on the assumption that the Sothic cycle is real and that Sothis was the star Sirius. But it's pretty certain that Sothis was Venus and the Sothic cycle was not a 1,400 some year cycle. Did I misunderstand his idea about the Sothic cycle?"}
Nick replied.
Yes, Rose agreed with the conventional equation of Sothis = Sirius. Velikovsky thought that Sothis = Venus.
However, in Rose's work there really is no Sothic cycle as a long term measurement of time in Egypt. In mainstream chronology the ... Sothic cycle began in the 12th Dyn in the 18th M BCE. The El Lahun papyri presents a set of lunar observations which mainstream has assigned to that time period. But Rose presents a better, more accurate match of observations that occurred in the 4th M BCE and ended in -331 the very year Alexander conquered Egypt. In other words the 12th Dyn is not a 2nd M "anchor point" for Egyptian history, but is a late 1st M dynasty that ended with Alexander's conquest.
The Sothic period is irrelevant to the matching of the lunar observations in the El Lahun papyri, and as follows from Rose's work, the Egyptians did not keep time by a Sothic calendar that spanned cycles of 1,400+ years.
So whether Sothis was Venus or Sirius really does not factor into the thesis presented in Rose's Sun, Moon, and Sothis.
{I was already a little familiar with some of the short chronology theories that followed Velikovsky's claims. As can be seen in my free online books, I concluded that David Rohl's moderately shortened Egyptian chronology seems to be correct. But I'll discuss Rose's chronology now. Nick already agrees that Rose is wrong about the Sothic dating theory. Since Sothis is part of the title of Rose's book, that seems to be a major flaw of his.}
{The following excerpts are from literature searchable at https://www.catastrophism.com/intro/search.cgi?zoom_query}
REVIEWS OF ROSE'S BOOK, "SUN, MOON AND SOTHIS"
{These 2 reviews seem to support Rose's short chronology. I’m only showing brief excerpts from them.}
Sun, Moon and Sothis [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:4 (July 1999) A Study of Calendar Reforms in Ancient Egypt Lynn E. Rose. FRESH OFF THE PRESS. The Osiris Series Sponsored by Cosmos & Chronos Series. Volume II. The history of calendars is far from cut-and-dried. Almost every topic that this book addresses has long been the subject of heated controversy. Rose sees Hellenistic and Roman Egypt as of unparalleled importance in the history of calendar development. Even the Julian calendar had its origins in Hellenistic Egypt.
Sun, Moon, and Sothis: A Study of Calendars and Calendar Reforms in Ancient Egypt by Lynn E. Rose [Aeon]
_From: Aeon V:5 (Jan 2000) Kronos Press: Deerfield Beach, Florida 1999). Reviewed by Frederic Jueneman. This book isn't for everyone, as it heavily concentrates on the minutiae of calendrical detail that perhaps only a mathematician or historical specialist in such matters could fully appreciate or even conditionally respect. It is, without doubt, a superbly scholarly book.
SOTHIS IDENTITY
Sothis and the Morning Star in the Pyramid Texts [Aeon]
_From: Aeon III:5 (May 1994) Ev Cochrane.
... The celestial body Spd.t is mentioned several dozen times in the Pyramid Texts, frequently in a formula corresponding to the following pattern: "The King's sister is Sothis [Spd.t], the King's offspring is the Morning Star [Neter Dw3]." (7) At the outset of our investigation it may be relevant to ask upon what basis has Spd.t been identified with Sirius? A summary of the literature on the subject reveals the following reasons cited in favor of the identification:
(1) supposed references in the Pyramid Texts and elsewhere to Sothis' role as a herald of the New Year;
(2) supposed references in the Pyramid Texts and elsewhere to Sothis' association with the annual flooding of the Nile;
(3) various passages in the Pyramid Texts which speak of an intimate relation between Sothis and a star S3h, the latter conventionally identified with Orion, thereby supporting the identification of Sothis with Sirius.
{E.C. then shows that Spd.t and Sothis were not the star, Sirius, but the planet Venus. And Neter Dw3 and S3h were not the constellation, Orion, but the planet Mars. So the Sothic calendar theory is disproved. Instead, the Saturn Theory is supported, in which Sothis/Venus appeared to be involved in some global cataclysms.}
SOTHIC CALENDAR MYTH
The Calendar [Aeon]
_From: Aeon Volume VI, Number 4, Eric Aitchison. ... The Myth Of The Sothic Period {the Sothic period being the theory that the Egyptians had a calendar based on the heliacal rising of the star Sirius}. ... Winlock characterised the situation rather bitingly: The ancient Egyptians, from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period, have not left a single trace of such a fixed calendar. Of the thousands that have survived from dynastic Egypt, not one document gives equivalent dates in the known wandering year and the hypothetical fixed year. Furthermore, by the time that relations with the outside world were such as to result in unprejudiced foreign evidence on the customs of Egypt, we find the Egyptians both ignorant of, and unreceptive to, the idea.
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2 CRITIQUES OF GINENTHAL & THE SHORT CHRONOLOGY
CARDONA'S REPLY TO GINENTHAL
Pillars of Straw [Aeon]
_From: Aeon Volume VI, Number 6 Dwardu Cardona. Charles Ginenthal. (Photograph- 1995- by the author.) Mixed Praises.
_The latest offering from Charles Ginenthal - Pillars of the Past - constitutes a tour de force no matter whether one accepts its conclusions or not. So let me say right off the bat that I, for one, find it most difficult to accept the general conclusion presented in this work to the effect that civilization only originated in the mid-second to the first millennium before the present era. That said, I commend the author of this work for the anomalies he laid bare in the orthodox chronology of history as it pertains to the ancient Near East. It is not that none of these aberrations had ever been presented before. They have - and time and again at that - by various other revisionists of ancient history, including Ginenthal himself. But it is heartening to see these many anomalies stored in an organized manner under one roof. For that reason, if for no other, Ginenthal has done revisionists a great service. ... My intent here is merely to defend myself against the blatant accusations Ginenthal leveled against me and my work.
{AGREED: EGYPTIAN HISTORY IS TOO LONG.}
... Ginenthal and I have been acquainted with each other for quite some years. Despite that, it seems he does not know me very well. This is indicated when, more than once, he accuses me of upholding "the established chronology" of ancient history. [1] Where, if I may ask, has Ginenthal ever seen or heard me state such a thing? Just because I do not agree with the chronological revisions of ancient history that the revisionists he champions have concocted does not mean that I accept "the established chronology." In fact, I do not and have never done so. Like Ginenthal and others, I, too, deem Egyptian history as presently "established" to be far too long. Like Ginenthal and others, I, too, believe that the various dark ages which have been foisted on ancient Near Eastern history by Egyptologists to have been non-existent. Like Ginenthal and others, I, too, would shorten ancient Near Eastern history. And, like Ginenthal and others, I, too, realize that this cannot be done until Egyptian history itself is shortened. But not by the amount that Ginenthal would have us believe. The problem here is that shortening ancient history is one thing; how it is done is quite another. And, personally, I have not yet been satisfied that current revisionists - those whom Ginenthal champions as well as those he does not - have done a good job.
{SHORT CHRONOLOGY THEORISTS DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER.}
... Ginenthal, of course, swears mainly by the revisionist attempts of Velikovsky, Rose, Heinsohn, and Sweeney. One can safely say they are his heroes. But there is no consensus among them either. Lynn Rose, for instance, thinks highly of Gunnar Heinsohn's revision of ancient history, [12] except, of course, when it tends to step on his own toes - the subject of calendrics. Thus, following more than a page in which he lauds Heinsohn's method in what can be considered his opus magnum, Rose ends up with the following remarks: "On the other hand, Heinsohn may be committing too much to the flames. His focus on stratigraphy leaves him with many serious blind spots concerning matters that seem to him to lie out at some irrelevant periphery. Thus he tends to dismiss without further thought or investigation any considerations that are brought to him from the fields of calendrology or astronomy....[13] What this indicates is that even Ginenthal's own revisionist heroes are not all of one mind. He cannot, therefore, blame me for not adhering to any of these reconstructions. But that is not to say that I adhere to the orthodox scheme....
{POSSIBLE METEORIC IRON TOOLS IN EGYPT.}
... Iron And The Pyramids. Ginenthal takes me to task concerning the manner in which the ancient Egyptians were able to hew the "granite or diorite" blocks that went into the building of the pyramids before the invention of iron tools. [15] So let me say at once that, in my original foray into the subject, I myself had already claimed that: "How the Egyptians were able to work these hard stones remains controversial." [16] ... Ginenthal then claims that: "Cardona, however, has offered his own hypothesis to explain how these various hard stones can be cut." [21] This concerns my declaration that meteoric iron, which the Egyptians referred to as "metal of heaven," could have been used in hewing the pyramid stones. [22]
A REVIEW OF GINENTHAL'S BOOK
Science, Technology and the Chronology of the Ancient World [Aeon]
From: Aeon Volume VI, Number 6. Thoughts on Charles Ginenthal's Pillars of the Past, Trevor Palmer.
{CHRONOLOGY.}
... There are two separate claims:
1) that Ginenthal has established, beyond reasonable doubt, that the orthodox chronology is incorrect;
and 2) that the evidence points clearly to the validity of one particular alternative, the short chronology of Gunnar Heinsohn and Emmet Sweeney, from amongst the various models that have been proposed. [2]
{GINENTHAL LACKS KNOWLEDGE.}
... Ginenthal is commendably honest and fair when he has possession of the facts about a particular matter. The problem is that, despite the broad range of his reading, it becomes increasingly apparent as one gets deeper into the book that there are some crucial gaps in his knowledge and even more in his understanding. Thus, whilst he continues to make a range of persuasive criticisms of orthodox interpretations, there is, unfortunately, a point in almost every chapter when it becomes apparent that the arguments which seem to have been stacking up nicely are dependent upon, or at least associated with, a notion that lacks any credibility. Ginenthal is also inclined to accept second-hand information, without checking its accuracy, when it fits in with his view of the world.
... The facts Ginenthal gives about the establishment of the orthodox chronology of Egypt are accurate, if somewhat limited, but his understanding leaves much to be desired. He is right to say that the 3rd century BC priest, Manetho, divided the kings of Ancient Egypt into 31 dynasties, but wrong to imply that Manetho claimed (at least, as far as we know from the remnants of his writings available to us) that all of these were sequential and, furthermore, that this assumption led directly to the orthodox chronology. Much work was carried out during the nineteenth and early twentieth century in trying to piece together a chronology from the surviving fragments of Manetho and other inscriptional evidence, including king lists. Although there continued to be uncertainty about fine detail, it eventually became accepted that Manetho's dynasties generally ruled in sequence, except on three occasions (the Intermediate Periods) when different dynasties ruled in parallel.
{EGYPTIAN LUNAR OBSERVATIONS.}
... Many chronological revisionists, including Immanuel Velikovsky, have questioned the basis of Sothic dating, and even some orthodox historians have expressed doubts about whether the two crucial inscriptions have been interpreted correctly. Nevertheless, Ginenthal accepts the orthodox interpretation of the Senusret III inscription but, disregarding archaeological evidence for the relative positioning of sequences in the orthodox chronology, whatever the precise dates, he follows Lynn Rose in moving forward the entire Middle Kingdom by 1477 years, approximately an entire Sothic cycle, to make the 7th year of Senusret III 395 BC. This is because observations of the lunar cycle from the reign of Senusret III fit this date better than 1872 BC. It also brings the Middle Kingdom within the range of the Heinsohn-Sweeney short chronology. [13] ... Ginenthal adds that Rose has "solved the problem" of reconciling Sothic dating with lunar observations, but the reality is somewhat different. What Rose has done is provide one possible solution. ... David Lappin pointed out in 2002 that the lunar observations in the time of Senusret III are consistent with his reign commencing in 1698 BC, which fits in with the "New Chronology" of David Rohl and his collaborators.
{SO EL LUHAN SUPPORTS ROHL.}
In any case, how could inscriptions from the 18th and 19th Dynasties have referred to 12th and 13th Dynasty rulers, as they appear to do, if Rose is correct in his belief that these came later in time?
{Bing A.I.: One of the sources of information about the Middle Kingdom rulers are the inscriptions from the New Kingdom period, especially from the 18th and 19th Dynasties. Some of these inscriptions mention the names and titles of the 12th and 13th Dynasty kings, either as ancestors or as patrons of certain cults. For example, the tomb of Ahmose, son of Ebana, a naval officer under several 18th Dynasty pharaohs, records his participation in a campaign against the Hyksos, who were identified with the 13th Dynasty rulers. Another example is the stela of Amenhotep II, which lists the names of 16 Middle Kingdom kings, including six from the 12th Dynasty and four from the 13th Dynasty. These inscriptions show that the New Kingdom pharaohs had some interest and knowledge of their Middle Kingdom predecessors, and that they sometimes used them as models or sources of legitimacy.}
If the short chronology is correct, an explanation needs to be found for these inscriptions. So that while there is much of interest in Rose's astronomical arguments, it can hardly be said that they constitute proof of the short chronology. [15]
{INTERRUPTION: The El Luhan papyri lunar observations are thus said to be compatible with Rohl’s chronology and the fact that 18th & 19th dynasty rulers referred to rulers of the 12th and 13th dynasties shows that the former followed the latter, thus undermining the short chronology.}
{POOR ARGUMENT RE CARBON DATING OF WOOD.}
... As with Sothic dating, many revisionists question the basis of radiocarbon dating, and Ginenthal did so in 1997 in his book, The Extinction of the Mammoth. However, in Pillars of the Past he takes a somewhat different line. Although he accuses orthodox historians of double standards because they tend to ignore individual results that fall outside the expected range, he nevertheless joins them in believing that the radiocarbon dates of wood samples, taken as a whole, are meaningful. With characteristic honesty, he acknowledges that there are "very many" such dates from the ancient Near East which fall within the range 3000-4000 BC, and asks how that can be, when, as he believes, there was no civilization anywhere in the region until much later. In answer to his own question, he points out that each test result indicates the date at which a particular growth ring was formed, and there could easily have been a significant passage of time before the tree was cut down. Even then, the wood might have been used for several different purposes before ending up in the context in which it was found. Hence, the radiocarbon date obtained could be several hundred years older than the actual date of the excavation layer, a concept with which few orthodox historians would disagree. [17] However, a consistent discrepancy of not just a few hundred years but well over a thousand years would be required if the theories of Heinsohn and Sweeney are correct. How could such a large discrepancy be explained? Ginenthal draws attention to the shortage of trees in Egypt, a situation that must have existed throughout the historical period, because of the prevailing dry conditions. Where, then, did the Ancient Egyptians get the wood they needed? Ginenthal suggests they used fallen trees from the previous wet period, which had been preserved by being covered in sand for more than a thousand years. Hence the very early radiocarbon dates. [18] It cannot be said that this ingenious suggestion is impossible, but it hardly constitutes positive evidence for the short chronology. Indeed, it makes use of exactly the same kind of semi-circular argument that Ginenthal decries in others. In any case, it is generally believed (as Ginenthal acknowledges) that Egypt imported wood in large quantities. An inscription tells of a consignment of cedar logs arriving in Egypt in forty ships during the 4th Dynasty reign of Sneferu, and archaeologists have found direct evidence of trade between Egypt and Lebanon at this time. [19] And what about fourth millennium BC radiocarbon dates in countries where there has always been an abundance of trees? Is Ginenthal asking us to believe that, rather than making use of them, long-dead wood was imported from Egypt? What other explanation could there be in his scenario?
{EGYPTIAN METALLURGY.}
https://slate.com/technology/2016/06/king-tut-s-dagger-proven-to-be-from-a-meteorite.html
The next aspect of science which Ginenthal claims to provide strong support for the short chronology is metallurgy. Let us start by looking at the Old Kingdom of Egypt, which conventional history places in the Copper Age, but which Ginenthal re-dates from the third millennium BC to the Iron Age in the first millennium BC. To justify that supposition he writes: "Since hardened iron is needed to cut and engrave hard stone such as granite or diorite, the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom could not have built the Giza pyramids and others during the Copper Age." [20] As a general statement, that is clearly untrue, for the Old Kingdom pyramids were constructed of soft limestone, which is easily cut by copper. However, there were some components, including the sarcophagus in the Great Pyramid at Giza, which were made of granite. Copper tools by themselves would not be capable of cutting this hard stone, but, as demonstrated by Denys Stocks in 1999, they could do so in association with an abrasive substance, such as quartz sand (the most common substance in Egypt), at a rate of about 1 inch per 10 hours. ... Ginenthal makes a valid point when he notes that Stocks' experiment did not address the cutting of diorite, which is even harder than granite. [21] Thus, the question of how the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom could have carved diorite statues, such as that of Khafre (now in the Cairo Museum), if they only had copper tools at their disposal, remains to be addressed. [22] Meteoritic iron would be too soft to provide a solution. Smelted iron would be hard enough, and a few pieces have been found at Old and Middle Kingdom sites, but these are generally attributed to intrusions from later periods. The much more elaborate metal artifacts found in isolated instances at New Kingdom sites are usually thought to have been imported, e.g., from the Hittites, who were producing smelted iron before the Egyptians, and there is evidence from cuneiform inscriptions that gifts of iron weapons were sent to New Kingdom pharaohs from rulers of regions to the north of Egypt. ... The main part of Ginenthal's discussion of metallurgy concerns the period which orthodox historians regard as the second millennium BC, the centre of the Bronze Age in Egypt and elsewhere. According to Ginenthal, this scenario cannot be sustained, even on its own terms. The manufacture of bronze requires a supply of tin to add to copper.... {Regarding} where tin for use in Egypt would have come from ... {t}he possible sources were Bohemia ... and Cornwall.... Cornish tin was mined from around 2200 BC onwards, and from this time was traded and used for bronze manufacture down the Atlantic coast of Brittany and France, towards Spain. ... That may or may not have been so, but Egypt had other possible sources of tin. ... Extensive tin mines have been located at Göltepe, in the central Taurus region of Turkey, and in Afghanistan. The latter is of particular relevance because inscriptions from the Levant and Mesopotamia, dating from 2000 BC onwards in the conventional scheme, tell of tin being imported from the East, via Susa, and then traded by Assyrian merchants into Anatolia and elsewhere. Trading links between Egypt and the Levant were also well established by the start of the second millennium BC. A shipwreck off Ulu Burum, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor, dated at 1350 BC, has revealed a cargo including ingots of tin, ingots of copper, ceramics from Cyprus, scarabs from Egypt, cylinder seals from the Near East, and ebony, ivory, and hippopotamus teeth from Africa.
{ARCHEOLOGY.}
... Ginenthal also points to similarities between the Sumerian civilization, based at Ur and other cities in southern Mesopotamian, supposedly in the third millennium BC, and the Scythians of the first millennium BC, arguing that they must be from the same period. Indeed, he follows Heinsohn in claiming that some of the graves in the Royal Cemetery of Ur are of Scythian princes. In contrast, Dwardu Cardona, editor of AEON (and by no stretch of the imagination a die-hard supporter of orthodoxy), has maintained that the similarities are superficial and, furthermore, that significant differences between the supposed-Scythian burials at Ur and those in the Scythian homeland (in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia) rule out the possibility that they were products of the same culture. ... Ginenthal correctly points out that the archaeology of Tell Munbaqa should not be considered in isolation, but compared with that of other sites in the region. However, he appears unaware of the fact that, at Tell Brak, a site close to Tell Munbaqa, evidence has been found of Neo-Sumerian and Old Assyrian settlements between those of the Akkadians and the Mitannians, whilst at Alalakh, to the west, this same period is marked by six separate occupation levels. [62] Instead of referring to this and other information, which has been established for some considerable time, and possibly pointing out alternative interpretations, Ginenthal argues that, following the publication of Rösner's paper in 1993, archaeologists have entered into a conspiracy, refusing to dig at other sites in the area.... Surely it should be obvious that there are other, more compelling, reasons why there have been few excavations in the Iraq/Syria border region during the past ten years. ... Although he claims that findings at Tell Munbaqa provide clear proof of the short chronology, that only looks plausible if they are considered in isolation, because evidence from other parts of the same site and from other sites supports the more conventional view of history.
NOTES.
... Ginenthal undeniably casts doubt on some aspects of the conventional chronology, but manifestly fails to demonstrate that the short chronology of Heinsohn and Sweeney is a more plausible alternative than other revised chronologies. Even so, there is much to commend in Pillars of the Past. Although the book does not disprove the orthodox chronology, it is of value in pointing out the limitations of some of the evidence supporting it, as well as drawing attention to findings which suggest that this chronology may need to be modified beyond the range of variation generally accepted.