Customer center

We are a boutique essay service, not a mass production custom writing factory. Let us create a perfect paper for you today!

Example research essay topic: Test Of Time Ancient Egypt - 2,076 words

NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote

A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History by David M. Rohl Century Ltd. , London, 1995 426 pp. , 51 color and 424 b / w photos and graphic illustrations sterling 17. 99 hardcover (available at this time only in the U. K. ) ISBN 0 - 7126 - 5913 - 7 Where to start in discussing this piece of work? David M. Rohl s A Test of Time is quite unlike any other history book that I ve ever read from forward to final appendix. Without question since the author says so it was produced with a popular audience in mind and employs an informal, almost conversational, writing style (with the author s voice always in the first person, addressing his reader directly, with such teacher speak statements as Now let me remind you...

or Let us look in a little more detail at... , etc. ). And he regularly summarizes, point by point, the information and arguments he has been presenting, which in some instances is useful and others merely cloying. However, at the same time, the wide-ranging, multi-discipline material which Rohl deals with is often complex (even rather dense) by its very nature, and a sizable portion of it despite the author s best effort to be crystal clear surely will be lost on many non-specialist readers. This leads to the bottom-line conclusion that Test was written with the ulterior motive of finally persuading the phalanx of orthodox Egyptologists in Britain who already have rejected and others elsewhere who likely will (once they are aware of it) the author s underlying thesis.

And this, simply enough, is that, by adjusting both upward and downward rather dramatically the pivotal chronology of ancient Egypt, it is possible (easy even) to place in real time those biblical personalities and events which most often are regarded (except by the fundamentalist devout) as more likely mythic than historical: namely Joseph, the Sojourn, the Bondage, Moses and the Exodus. Rohl protests in Time that he did not purposely set out to prove the historicity of Genesis and Exodus, that this result was merely the unavoidable consequence of his original investigations into what he and others perceived some years ago as serious problems with the accepted orthodox chronology of ancient Egypt. That Rohl s studies shifted to a biblical focus, however, very likely were a root cause of his having parted company with fellow New Chronologists in 1989. Before detailing the provocative textual contents of Time, a few words need to be said about the physical makeup of the book itself, as it is also one of the most unusually designed trade books I ve ever seen. In fact, it has a distinct affinity with college-textbook layout, which may not be all that unintentional (considering the author s propensity to teach, if not preach).

Generally speaking, the crisp 424 (! ) black-and-white photos and graphics are quite excellent, even though a good number of the former are reproduced the size of largish postage stamps and relegated to to the book s wide margins. Chief appeal of Time s layout is the very generous use of computer-generated dramatic graphics (charts, graphs, maps, plans, etc. ) and numerous sidebars or mini-essays of extra information to the main narrative, which are set off in framed boxes. The sometimes-smallish fifty-one full-color photos (and one plan) which are ganged together in three groups evenly interspersed through the volume work less well, and seem almost addenda, as if the publisher felt A Test of Time would not sell to its intended popular audience unless it had color in it. It might be noted that a majority of the photographs, both color and b / w are the author s own; and an excellent photographer he is, it can be said. David Rohl makes a very seductive case in his lengthy Test of Time revision of ancient Egyptian chronology and the inevitable consequences thereof (i. e. , revelation of the historical reality of early-Old Testament personalities and events).

If in the end he does not succeed in persuading every reader of the correctness of his readings of the facts offered, it certainly is not for lack of exhaustive argument. Rohl divides his book (following a brief preface by free-lance American Egyptologist Robert S. Bianchi, and the author s lengthy, thirty-six-page introduction), into six parts composed of fifteen chapters, five appendices and a reference section (notes, bibliography, index, etc. ). Parts One and Two contain the chapters likely to be of most interest to students of ancient Egypt and anyone with a particular curiosity in how the New Chronology is rationalized.

Parts Three and Four are concerned mostly with biblical history and the identification of the historical Joseph, Moses, Saul, David, Solomon and others. Part Five, Additional Research wherein the author focuses in on such esoteric subjects as dating the reign of Shoshenq I (Appendix A), Third Intermediate Period genealogies (B), radiocarbon dating (C), Sothic dating (D) and Assyrian chronology (E) is guaranteed tough plowing for most non-specialist readers, some of whom will surely elect to skip this material altogether. Following Rohl s long introduction his condensed accounts of the histories of pharaonic Egypt and Old Testament Israel A Test of Time, Part One, Conundrums of the Pharaohs, deals with The Search for Apis (Chapter One), Secret of the Pharaohs (Two) and The Royal Tombs of San [Tanis] (Three). These chapters cover, respectively, (1) the discovery of the Serapeum at Sakkara by Marietta (1851) and subsequent confusions over the dating's of many of the bull-burials therein; (2) the unofficial (1871) and official (1881) discoveries of the Royal-Mummies Cache at Deir el Bahai, which housed the salvaged reburials of numerous New Kingdom royalty and associated individuals, plus the family-interments of the Twenty-first Dynasty priest-kings who ruled at Thebes, as well as the puzzling presence among them of a Twenty-second Dynasty high-priest of Amen; and (3) Money s discovery of the royal necropolis at Tanis (1939), with its gold-rich burials of kings of both the Twenty-first and Twenty-second dynasties, at least one of the latter arguably pre-dating the others. I shall return to Chapter Two, further on.

A Test of Time's Part Two, Unravelling the Gordian Knot is subtitled Making Sense of Egyptian Chronology. Here the author first discusses the Victorian need to find biblical proofs in the newly readable ancient Egyptian records, and the eagerness of scholars of those early years of the discipline of Egyptology to identify Rameses II with the Oppression and his successor, Merenptah, with the Exodus. Then Rohl presents in some considerable detail The Four Great Pillars on which the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt is supported: (1) the 664 B. C.

date of the sacking of Thebes by the Assyrians; (2) the identification of Shoshenq I of the Twenty-second Dynasty with Shishak, king of Egypt, who, according to the biblical account, despoiled the Temple of Solomon in 925 B. C. ; (3) the Sothic date revealed in the Papyrus Ebers of 1517 B. C. as Year 9 of Amenhotep I; and (4) another astronomical dating (in Papyrus Leiden) placing Year 52 of Rameses II in exactly 1228 B. C. , thus giving him an accession date of 1279. Rohl proceeds to demonstrate that just one of these pillars is in his view sound, the 664 B.

C. Assyrian sacking of Thebes. As he will argue at length in Time s Chapter Seven, The Historical Shishak, the Shishak/ Shoshenq synchronism is historically untenable. He claims many Egypologists dispute the interpretation of the Papyrus Ebers Sothic dating of Amenhotep I, and so concludes that the Year 52 lunar date of Rameses II Pillar Four is in error, being entirely dependent on the same debated Sothic dating. Therefore Rohl concludes that the only safe date in ancient Egyptian chronology is 664 B.

C. Chapter Six, Towards a New Chronology, is the heart of Rohl s case for rating the Third Intermediate Period, and deals chiefly (but not exclusively) with a Genealogy of Royal Architects discovered in a schist quarry of the Wadi Hammamat. This rock-cut inscription apparently lists in succession the names of twenty-two generations of a family of architects, as recorded by one Khnemibre in Year 26 of Darius I (496 B. C. ) and extending back to his ancestor, Rahotep, who is indicated in the inscription as having flourished early in the reign of Rameses II. By allowing twenty years per generation (admittedly an arbitrary given by the author), this would place Rahotep in 936 B. C. , rather than in ca. 1270 B.

C. , as would be the case for the dating of early-Rameses II according to orthodox chronology. Based on this genealogical record, the early-Nineteenth Dynasty would have to be related to the late-Tenth Century B. C. (! ), rather than to the first quarter of the Thirteenth, as is conventional. Dismissing that this Royal Architects genealogy might reflect a possible haplography (accidental omission) of up to ten generations between Rameses II and Shoshenq I, and another eight generations between the latter king and Darius I (if so, two other corresponding independent genealogies discussed in Time s Appendix A make the same omissions), Rohl proposes that the dramatically shortened time between Rameses II and Darius I be explained by the fact that the Third Intermediate Period s Twenty-first and Twenty-second dynasties, at least, were concurrent.

At this point in his presentation, the author refers those of his readers who are still thirsty for more sips from the poisoned chalice which is the the TIP [Third Intermediate Period] to turn to his treatment of same in Time s appendices. He explains that he is restrained from being more detailed in the main text of his book by the university regulations regarding [his] PhD thesis presenting this same material, which is due for examination one year following the writing of A Test of Time. Starting with Time s Part Three (Legendary Kings and Chronicles: Egypt and the United Monarchy Period in Israel), Rohl advances into territory that requires his readers to have more than just Sunday-school familiarity with Old Testament events and personalities. But first he tackles the sticky wicket of The Historical Shishak (Chapter Seven), whom Rohl identifies with none other than Rameses II rather than the Shoshenq I of conventional wisdom. Having made the third ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty contemporary with the 925 B. C.

biblical date of the despoiling of the Temple of Solomon by an Egyptian king Shishak, the author equates the latter event with Rameses II s plundering of a town named Shalem in his Year 8, as specifically recorded on the pylon gate of the Ramesseum and by inference elsewhere (Abu Simbel). For Rohl Shalem is easily enough Jerusalem. And Rameses is Shishak, if one is to believe the author s argument that See (SS, SSw, See or Show) a supposed nickname or hypocoristic on for that Egyptian king, as preserved for Rameses III in a cartouche at Medline Have is equivalent to the Hebrew Shisha[k]. Additionally, Rohl uses several of Rameses II s war reliefs (such as the Ashkelon Wall at Karnak) as support to his case that the Nineteenth Dynasty ruler engaged in battle with a fully established Israelite nation (possessing war chariots), which would have been impossible had Rameses II been the Pharaoh of the Oppression (or the Exodus, for that matter). Next, in Chapter Eight, The Age of Solomon, Rohl posits that the culturally rich time of King Solomon is not likely to have occurred during the universally impoverished first years of the Iron Age (its traditional dating), but rather should be contemporary with the Late Bronze Age IIA-B, or the end years of the Eighteenth Dynasty; and he goes so far as to identify the Pharaoh s daughter who married Solomon as the (otherwise unattested) offspring of Horemheb. Rohl even identifies the site near Jerusalem (grounds of the cole Biblique) once occupied by the palace which Solomon built for his transplanted Egyptian bride (II Chronicles 8: 11) this based on a few Egyptian minor artifacts and a papyrus capital excavated there in the 1880 s.

Rohl s chapters Nine, The Lion Man, and Ten, The Beloved, although biblically dense, hold special interest for Amarnophiles, inasmuch as he argues therein that he is able to identify legendary kings Saul and David as historical personalities playing roles in the events recorded in the famous cuniform correspondence known as the A...


Free research essays on topics related to: twenty second, ancient egypt, intermediate period, test of time, b c

Research essay sample on Test Of Time Ancient Egypt

Writing service prices per page

  • $18.85 - in 14 days
  • $19.95 - in 3 days
  • $23.95 - within 48 hours
  • $26.95 - within 24 hours
  • $29.95 - within 12 hours
  • $34.95 - within 6 hours
  • $39.95 - within 3 hours
  • Calculate total price

Our guarantee

  • 100% money back guarantee
  • plagiarism-free authentic works
  • completely confidential service
  • timely revisions until completely satisfied
  • 24/7 customer support
  • payments protected by PayPal

Secure payment

With EssayChief you get

  • Strict plagiarism detection regulations
  • 300+ words per page
  • Times New Roman font 12 pts, double-spaced
  • FREE abstract, outline, bibliography
  • Money back guarantee for missed deadline
  • Round-the-clock customer support
  • Complete anonymity of all our clients
  • Custom essays
  • Writing service

EssayChief can handle your

  • essays, term papers
  • book and movie reports
  • Power Point presentations
  • annotated bibliographies
  • theses, dissertations
  • exam preparations
  • editing and proofreading of your texts
  • academic ghostwriting of any kind

Free essay samples

Browse essays by topic:

Stay with EssayChief! We offer 10% discount to all our return customers. Once you place your order you will receive an email with the password. You can use this password for unlimited period and you can share it with your friends!

Academic ghostwriting

About us

© 2002-2024 EssayChief.com