The New Chronology is an alternative chronology of the ancient Near East developed by English Egyptologist David Rohl and other researchers beginning with A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History in 1995. It contradicts mainstream Egyptology by proposing a major revision of the established Egyptian chronology, in particular by re-dating Egyptian kings of the Nineteenth through Twenty-fifth Dynasties, bringing forward conventional dating by up to 350 years. Rohl asserts that the New Chronology allows him to identify some of the characters in the Hebrew Bible with people whose names appear in archaeological finds.
The New Chronology, one of several proposed radical revisions of the conventional chronology, has not been accepted in academic Egyptology, where the conventional chronology or small variations of it remains standard. Amélie Kuhrt, head of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College London, in one of the standard reference works of the discipline, notes, Many scholars feel sympathetic to the critique of weaknesses in the existing chronological framework [...], but most archaeologists and ancient historians are not at present convinced that the radical redatings proposed stand up to close examination. Rohl's most vocal critic has been Kenneth Kitchen, one of the leading experts on biblical history and the author of the standard work on the conventional chronology of the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, the period most directly affected by the New Chronology's redating of the Nineteenth to Twenty-fifth Dynasties.
Rohl's New Chronology
David Rohl's published works A Test of Time (1995), Legend (1998), The Lost Testament (2002), and The Lords of Avaris (2007) set forth Rohl's theories for re-dating the major civilisations of the ancient world. A Test of Time proposes a down-dating (bringing closer to the present), by several centuries, of the New Kingdom of Egypt, thus needing a major revision of the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt. Rohl asserts that this would let scholars identify some of the major events in the Hebrew Bible with events in the archaeological record and identify some of the well-known biblical characters with historical figures who appear in contemporary ancient texts. Lowering the Egyptian dates also dramatically affects the dating of dependent chronologies, such as that currently used for the Greek Heroic Age of the Late Bronze Age, removing the Greek Dark Ages, and lowering the dates of the Trojan War to within two generations of a ninth-century-BC Homer and his most famous composition, the Iliad. The New Chronology lowers the Egyptian dates (established within the traditional chronology) by up to 350 years at points before the universally accepted fixed date of 664 BC for the sacking of Thebes by Ashurbanipal. For example, the New Chronology would redate the beginning of Egypt's 19th Dynasty from 1295 BC to 961 BC. Before the 1995 publication of A Test of Time, Thomas L. Thompson, a theologian associated with Biblical Minimalism, had insisted that any attempt to write history based on a direct integration of biblical and extra-biblical sources was "not only dubious but wholly ludicrous". Rohl explained his view on the issue in The Lost Testament (2007): "Is the Old Testament history or myth? The only way to answer that question is to investigate the biblical stories using the archaeological evidence, combined with a study of the ancient texts of the civilisations which had a role to play in the Bible story. But this has to be done with an open mind. In my view the biblical text – just like any other ancient document – should be treated as a potentially reliable historical source until it can be demonstrated to be otherwise." Rohl had previously remarked in A Test of Time (1995) that he "did not originally set out to challenge our current understanding of the Old Testament narratives. This has come about simply because of the need to explore the ramifications of my TIP [Egyptian Third Intermediate Period] research. I have no religious axe to grind – I am simply an historian in search of some historical truth." Rohl's redating is based on criticism of three of the four arguments which he considers are the original foundations of the conventional chronology for the Egyptian New Kingdom:
He asserts that the identification of "Shishaq [Shishak], King of Egypt" (1 Kings 14:25f; 2 Chronicles 12:2-9) with Shoshenq I, first proposed by Jean-François Champollion, is based on incorrect conclusions. Rohl argues instead that Shishaq should be identified with Ramesses II (probably pronounced Riamashisha), which would move the date of Ramesses' reign forward some 300 years. Rohl also asserts that the record in the Ebers Papyrus of the rising of Sirius in the ninth regnal year of Amenhotep I, which is used in conventional chronology to fix that year to either 1542 BC or 1517 BC, has been misread, and instead should be understood as evidence for a reform in the Egyptian calendar. Papyrus Leiden I.350, which dates to the 52nd year of Ramesses II, records a lunar observation which places that year of Ramesses's reign in one of 1278, 1253, 1228 or 1203 BC within the date-range of the conventional chronology. Having questioned the value of the Ebers Papyrus, Rohl argues that, since the lunar cycle repeats itself every 25 years, it is only useful for fine tuning a chronology and could equally apply to dates 300 years later as in the New Chronology. Thus, Rohl is of the opinion that none of these three foundations of the conventional Egyptian chronology are secure, and that the sacking of Thebes by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in 664 BC is the earliest fixed date in Egyptian history.
Evidence adduced Rohl bases his revised chronology (the New Chronology) on his interpretation of numerous archeological finds and genealogical records from Egypt. For example:
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