[Matthew Amt]

There are written (and pictoral) records from that era from Egypt, the Hittite empire, and Greece at least, and many of them refer to warfare or military preparations and operations. None of them refer to disease, as far as I know.

Funny, all the articles I've read by James et al seem to have been pretty polite, sometimes bending over backwards to be so. I have read at least a couple by the opposition that are more towards the vitriol end of the scale. Of course I haven't read anything! Naturally I can't prove that everything the low chronology people say is true, but I don't believe that they misquoted so many experts in so many fields and cultures about these problems. If even a quarter of the facts in "Centuries of Darkness" are anywhere near true, it's a huge problem. I don't think they ever stated that there were no carbon14 dates for Egypt--can you quote a page number in their book? (Been a couple years since I read it.) They do present evidence that carbon dates were taken for some excavations (not necessarily Egypt) but omitted from official publication because they didn't fit the orthodox dates.

Egypt has its own convolutions because of all the recorded pharaohs and dynasties. So yes, fashions and cultural features will certainly be seen to change over time. And sometimes (as I understand it) there were "revivals" of older styles... Overlap the 21st and 22nd dynasties, though, and everything clicks nicely into place.

There are other mainstream historians starting to make little shifts in certain dates, a few decades or 50 years here and there. It's a start, but it's sort of like seeing that the living room is on fire, and dealing with it by closing the dining room door and carrying on with supper.

Matthew

[John Cooksey]

All of the controversy is not detailed in James' book. His website contains a bit more detailed information.

The key thing here, IMO, is that James is not an archaeologist. He is a historian, educated in a very particular school of thought. He doesn't know enough about the archaeology of any given region, let alone the whole of the eastern Mediterranean basin, to make the sweeping statements that he does.
Yes, the Egyptian king list has problems, but it is supplemented by a great many other, more complete sources.
Personally, I have no problem abandoning the "traditional" chronology altogether, where possible, and going to a "dirt chronology".

We have tons of new dates from the Aegean, dendrochronologically calibrated, that seem to be quite substantiated. The Aegean Dendrochronology Project is almost complete, and we have good RC dates for the Post-Mycenaean destruction levels at long last.
The Giza Plateau Mapping Project has also done some recent, very solid work, that confirms several important pyramid building eras. NB . . I am no fan of Zahi Hawas . . . . but solid calibrated radiocarbon dates are solid dates (given margin of error)

The problem with James et al is that most of them are not archaeologists, and most don't have a clue about the dirt archaeology in specific locales. From a historiographical perspective, they have a point, but their assertion that a *drastic* revision of eastern Mediterranean dates is in order, simply cannot be supported by the meager evidence that they provide.

I know how archaeology is done in the field and in the classroom. Or, better said, I know archaeologists. If the "young guns" thought that there was drastic change to be made in traditional chronologies, they would jump on the opportunity to make their careers. We are cutthroats, always looking to make our names at the expense of the older generation.

Btw, what do you mean that no documents relating to disease are known from ancient Egypt? Do mean regarding epidemic disease, or disease in general? There are several well-known and widely published Egyptian medical texts . . .

Good chatting with you and Dan, as always, my friend!

[Sean Manning]

[Matthew Amt]

[John Cooksey]

Lots of those new dendro profiles have very solid C14 dates directly associated.

And the Egyptian King List is *not* the master chronology these days. I would say that the Mesopotamian king lists are actually more important, and much more complete.
I think it's a huge mistake, in general, to try to date anything based on historical documents of this nature. History hadn't been invented at this point, and the idea of historicity did not exist. Self-aggrandizement and metaphor were far more important, in this era.

Plus or minus a hundred years, I don't see a problem with revisions. That is just a margin of error that we have to deal with, when using either relative or absolute dating techniques, and one that is not important in the grand scheme of things. I just hate to see so much occupational history "collapsed" into a smaller frame of time than it really occupied.

When C14 dates confirm epigraphically-generated historical dates, I don't see any real problems with accepting "conventional chronology".
This is exactly what has happened in the last 2-3 years with independent projects associated with the Aegean Dendro Project and the Giza Plateau mapping project. Are they confirming an exact chronology, or when a particular LB ruler reigned? No----but they do indicate that, across the board, dates for the entire Eastern med. basin do not need to be adjusted downward by as much as 300 years.

I lay this entire problem at the feet of late 19th century and early 20th century archaeologists and epigraphers, most of whom had a definite agenda in their research. One of these agendas was to correlate all other regional histories with that of biblical narrative, and this is a problem that still plagues us. Most of us American archaeologists think that all the early Egyptologists are nut jobs, anyway. Petrie certainly was, but he did some good work despite that.

Again, neither Matt nor I are going to give an inch on this one, I think. Debate is what makes academia go 'round, I think.
I think the reason that I chimed in on this one is that I just don't want to see James' work (and that of the other Glasgow) members) being seen as representing the mainstream of archaeological thought. The mainstream is more interested in specific results from specific sites, aimed at answering very specific research questions.
I may not even agree with the "consensus" on a lot of issues, despite great efforts on the parts of my faculty advisors to convince me of the error of my ways. :-)

Good chatting with y'all, as always!

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Dan Howard]

You need to be more specific about the time period you are talking about. The Battle of Megiddo was almost certainly dominated by chariot archers. The Pharoah is depicted fighting from chariot; Egyptian booty lists record that they captured 2,041 horses and 924 chariots, but only killed 83 men. If there was a pitched infantry battle then casualties would certainly have been much higher. This is evident two centuries later during Egyptian battles with Libya. During the battle between Merneptah and Meryre the Egyptian record notes that 6,359 Libyans and 2,370 non-Libyans were killed. Later Rameses III claims to have killed 12,535 enemy soldiers during another Libyan invasion in which he is the first Pharoah to be depicted not in a chariot but on foot swinging a sword. Clearly there has been a transition during this time from chariot dominated battles to infantry dominated battles.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Maybe so, but then we need to take account of the theory that Megiddo was such a chariot-heavy battle because the Canaanite infantry were off elsewhere, guarding the roads that the Egyptians didn't pass through, so that only the chariots were available to face the Egyptian army when it debouched from the straight but difficult road that just happened to be left unguarded....