"Lords of Avaris" is David Rohl's third book about the New Chronology, as the author calls his rather bold reinterpretation of ancient history. The two previous books were titled "A Test of Time" (or "Pharaohs and Kings" in the United States) and "Legend". Strictly speaking, there is also a fourth book, "The Lost Testament" which summarizes and expands the arguments from the two first books.
Originally, the New Chronology focused on revising Egyptian chronology in order
to synchronize it with the Biblical history of the Israelites. By shortening
the chronology of the ancient world with about 300 years, Rohl believed he had
found stunning parallels between the archaeological record and events mentioned
in the "Old Testament". Thus, he claimed that the careers of
Israelite kings Saul and David were described in the Amarna letters, that a
fresco showing Solomon have been found, and that Jericho and other Canaanite
towns were indeed destroyed at the exact time when Joshua is supposed to have
lived. The high point of "A Test of Time" was Rohl's discovery of a
defaced Egyptian statue which he believed was none other than Joseph the
Wizier.
I was deeply intrigued when I read "A Test of Time" about 15 years
ago. However, I also suspected that the whole thing may be a bit too good to be
true! Indeed, established archaeology has rejected most of Rohl's claims (at
least so far). Ironically, his fiercest critic was Kenneth Kitchen, who argued
that the Bible can be proven without chronological revisionism. See his equally
fascinating "The historical reliability of the Old Testament". Of
course, the fact that Kitchen is one of the scholars responsible for the
standard chronology was another reason for his sharp rebuttals to Rohl.
I admit that the revisionist idea of shortening the chronology by dispensing
with the "dark ages" between the end of the Bronze Age and the start
of the Iron Age sounds interesting, although my reasons for so thinking might
be somewhat different from Rohl's. After reading "Legend" and "Lords
of Avaris", however, I feel a strong dislike, even distaste, to the New
Chronology overall. It's extremely Euro-centrist, based on an antiquated
"great man" view of history, and frequently makes no sense! I also
get the impression that Rohl had his grand idea dogmatically ready from the
start (early 1980's?) and that the rest of his decades-long project was simply
one long attempt to squeeze the facts into the original schema. If this sounds
a bit like Immanuel Velikovsky, it's probably no coincidence, since Rohl is a
runaway Velikovskian of sorts (perhaps we can call him proto-Velikovskian).
Velikovsky seems to have developed his all-encompassing and super-revisionist
theories after a sudden flash of insight which took less than a week. The rest
of his life's work was just commentary. While everyone this side of Wikipedia
has a love-hate relation to Velikovsky (including yours truly), new Theories of
Everything are seldom born fully-fledged, like Minerva from the head of
Jupiter...
"Lord of Avaris" is really a kind of alternative mythology for
Western Civilization (Rohl's spelling, caps and all). It's "our"
civilization, apparently, making you wonder who Rohl's intended audience might
be? Perhaps Rohl wants to succeed where J.R.R. Tolkien failed...
The mythos of "Lords of Avaris" goes something like this:
The original homeland of the brave Indo-European warriors and lords was eastern
Anatolia, close to the original Garden of Eden in eastern Iran, and
sufficiently close to the landing of the Ark after a cataclysmic flood in
Mesopotamia. Therefore, the legend of Noah's son Japheth being the ancestor of
the Indo-Europeans might have some basis in fact, although there apparently
were Indo-Europeans already before the Flood. Meanwhile, the sons of Ham (who weren't
Black but some kind of quasi-Semites) became Phoenicians, conquered Egypt and
imposed civilization on the primitive natives (who presumably were Black). The
sons of Shem represent that branch of the Semites who eventually gave birth to
the Biblical Israelites. The later Phoenicians were apparently Indo-European,
and so were many Canaanites, including the Jebusites who founded Jerusalem. The
Minoans were Indo-Europeans as well, and so was the pre-Hellene population of
Greece, the Divine Pelasgians. The Hyksos consisted of several different
groups. First, the Amalekites who were Semites but in some sense Indo-European
anyway. Next, the Greater Hyksos, who were more clearly Indo-European. They
conquered and ruled Egypt, until the Egyptians threw them out after a prolonged
war of liberation. The Hyksos then founded Mykene. Troy was somehow
Indo-European, too, and the story of how Aeneas founded Rome is based on fact.
Julius Caesar and the Roman emperors really did hail from the Divine
Pelasgians, whose descendants thus founded and ruled Western Civilization until
the fall of Rome. However, due to the crucifixion of an obscure Jewish
philosopher on a lone hill outside Jerusalem, a new civilization took over and
the world would never be the same again...
Amen.
The only non-controversial part of this story, is the existence of the
Hyksos...
Martin Bernal would presumably call this "The *Really* Extreme Aryanist
Model". He would have a point. Rohl attempts to harmonize the two founding
myths of so-called Western Civilization: the Bible and the heroic epics of the
Greeks and Romans. Rohl has no problem with Indo-Europeans being Semitized or
Egyptianized, but only because the three peoples are somehow ethnic siblings.
To Rohl, the Egyptians aren't Africans, but descendants of a quasi-Semitic
"Dynastic Race". Indeed, Rohl claims that the Egyptian dynasty which
defeated the Hyksos was dominated by the Greek princess Io, so somehow the
Egyptians were really the brothers of the Indo-Europeans they kicked out. He
explicitly says this in a polemic with Bernal, who (of course) regards the
Egyptians as Africans. The ferocious war between Egyptians and Hyksos can thus
be kept safely within "our" family, the family of Western
Civilization. Rohl seems to admit that the Greater Hyksos who founded Mykene
were Egyptianized, but since Egypt isn't African, this is no problem either.
Naturally, The Cradle of the West can't have been founded by blackened
Indo-Europeans! The Indo-Europeans are constantly described in a very "essentialist"
manner, and they seem to be all over place: Phoenicians, Jebusites, Hurrians,
Minoans, Pelasgians, everyone is Indo-European. Nor are there any distinctions
between Indo-Europeans and Anatolians. Occasionally, the sibling status of the
Semites comes in handy, as when Rohl traces the Biblical legends back to
Sumeria in his previous book "Legend". In this, he is correct, but
the Sumerians were neither Semites nor Indo-Europeans. However, by somehow
turning them into Semites anyway (or something to that effect), the Sumerian
legends can also be safely assimilated into "our" Western
Civilization.
Rohl's harmonization isn't entirely successful, however. At one point, he
writes that the "Aryan" Jebusites founded Jerusalem until the city
was conquered by David. At another point, he calls Joshua's attack on the
Canaan "an ethnic cleansing operation". Since Rohl believes that
Jericho had an Indo-European population, he is essentially saying that the Jews
massacred the Aryans! And no, I don't think the author is a racist or
anti-Semite. In fact, he seems to have an ambivalent and somewhat tragic view
of the heroes and great men he believes drives history. However, I get a strong
feeling that he sometimes doesn't understand the uses his theories can be put
to...
The archaeological details of Rohl's scenario are perhaps best left to
archaeologists, but a few things does strike me as extremely implausible. Rohl
believes that the Biblical stories of the Sojourn, Exodus and Conquest are
essentially correct. However, it's extremely difficult to see how these stories
can be defended on a naturalistic assumption. They make sense only if a whole
series of miraculous, divine interventions are postulated. Thus, Rohl believes
that the large Israelite population in Egypt, concentrated to the land of
Goshen, was forcibly enslaved by the Egyptians after first having experienced
both prosperity and power. The bondage was so hard, that the Egyptians even
culled the Israelites by killing their first-born sons. However, is it really
plausible that the Egyptian state was so strong, that it could forcibly enslave
about two and a half million people who enjoyed power and prestige, lived
together and even wore arms? Perhaps wisely, Rohl never calculates the exact
size of the proto-Israelite population based on the Biblical figures...
Further, Rohl believes that there is evidence for a plague at Avaris at the
exact time when the Exodus should have happened according to the New
Chronology. He connects this to the ten plagues of Egypt. But how does he know
that the people killed in the plague were Egyptians? Has he made skull
measurements, comparing Israelite skulls with Egyptian skulls? Apparently not,
yet the whole point of the Biblical story is that the ten plagues only affected
the Egyptian overlords, not the Israelite slaves. Further, Rohl believes that
the Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for 30 years ("A Test of
Time") or 40 years ("Lords of Avaris"). But Rohl knows very well
that "40" is a symbolic number, so why accept it here? And how on
earth could a large Israelite army spend 40 years in the Sinai desert, and then
carry out a successful blixtkrieg in Transjordan and Canaan, destroying heavily
fortified towns? Once again, there is no discussion of the impossibly large
number of Israelites who wandered through the desert, the logistical problems
of even a relatively small army in such a situation, etc. And no, Rohl can't
hide behind the argument that it may all be just "freely" based on a
true story, since he explicitly criticizes those who call the Exodus a
"folk memory" as a way of avoiding to deal with its historicity. But
the only proof for the historicity of the Sojourn, Exodus and Conquest is the
Biblical record, which is absurd (from a naturalist angle) if read literally rather
than as a "folk memory".
Here, I think we have found a real problem with the New Chronology, not in the
chronology itself perhaps, but in the very record it attempts to prove.
However, my main objection to "Lords of Avaris" is its blatant
bleaching of ancient history. For all we know, many Biblical legends, the
notion of Hades and the mystery cults have Sumerian origins. Mathematics,
geometry and advanced architecture might be Egyptian. But neither Sumer nor
Egypt were White, Indo-European or "Western". They weren't even
Semites! Nor were they close ethno-siblings to Semites and Indo-Europeans in
the Rohlian sense. (In another sense, Egyptians were "siblings" to
the Semites, since the Afro-asiatic languages originated in Ethiopia, but
somehow that doesn't fit the Euro-centrist scenario either, does it?) But yes,
even the ancient Indo-Europeans contributed to "our" civilization.
Thus, the Indo-European preacher Zarathustra invented the apocalypse, the idea
that world history inexorably moves towards a final conflagration between good
or evil forces. This idea, together with the later idea of Progress, does
indeed seem to be an Indo-European invention.
But ironically, Zarathustra is never mentioned in "Lords of Avaris",
let alone the Bible...
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