11/3/2023 0 Comments Ipuwer papyrus excavatorThe secular timeline gives 840 years to this period (see Shaw 2003, 481–483). Porter (2022) then goes back through the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods (Dynasties I–VI), allowing 540 years through unproven assumptions, such as an average of 15 years per reign. He admits (I give him credit for this) that he hasn’t been able to shorten this interval enough, as his date for the Exodus works out to 1560 BC, taking roughly 600 years out of the Egyptian timeline instead of 700. He shortens this period with assumptions about the lengths of the pharaohs’ reigns, a methodology that I find unconvincing. He then discusses in some considerable detail the period from the end of the Old Kingdom to 609 BC this latter date is when Pharaoh Necho kills Josiah (2 Kings 23:29), approximately the date when the two timelines merge. He also appeals to stratigraphical (layer) sequences by archaeologists but gives no reasons why this should prove anything about the lengths of pharaohs’ reigns. Porter (2022) waves aside the Egyptian king-lists as “unreliable” (no proof of this is offered), and instead prefers to use information from “inscriptions, papyri and tomb paintings, etc.” These sources could be less solid than they appear, however, because of the well-known propensity of the Egyptian pharaohs to glorify themselves. ![]() But how they deal with this divergence of the two timelines is quite different. ![]() The Differing Methodsīoth Porter and Osgood date the Exodus at about 2150 BC on the Egyptian timeline, 700 years earlier than the widely accepted biblical date of 1450 BC. ![]() Their placement of the Exodus at the end of the Old Kingdom, approximately at the end of Dynasty VI, is a stance with which I concur. It is with interest that I see Porter (2022) and Osgood (2022) address the very important topic of where to position the Exodus in the secular Egyptian history. Keywords: Biblical chronology, Early Dynastic, Egyptian chronology, Egyptian history, Exodus, Exodus pharaoh, Ipuwer Papyrus, Old Kingdom, overlapping dynasties, timeline synchronization Introduction
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