Last Christmas holidays I spent some time reading “The Red Sea Scrolls” by Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner (ref.1). The readable book – with a wealth of instructive illustrations - is about a recently excavated papyrus archive from Wadi el-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbour on the Red Sea. Both the harbour and the papyri are probably the oldest known of their kind, stemming from the beginning of the 4^th dynasty around 2600 BC. The harbour was intermittently in operation during the reigns of kings Sneferu and Khufu for, among other things, copper and turquoise mining expeditions to the Sinai across the sea. The papyri however are from the very last year of Khufu’s reign, not long before the harbour was decommissioned and the expeditions started from Ayn Sukhna instead under Khufu’s son Khafre. Furthermore the papyri do not mention the Sinai-expeditions at all, but give instead detailed accounts about the workforce putting the finishing touches to Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza.

The papyri are partly accounts documents listing the supply of foodstuff and tools to the pyramid builders, and partly logbooks about day-to-day activities of different work-teams. Most striking is the display of natural and consequent use of administrative tools. Every move and every gadget was recorded on papyrus spreadsheets, with input on the time axis from the newly launched Egyptian civil calendar. That means that virtually everyone was aware of the actual civil date and that at least the boss of a work-team of some 40 men was able to read/write and had book-keeping skills.

The logbook of an Inspector Merer and a bread accounts document are the least fragmentary parts of the Wadi el-Jarf papyri. The entries are dated around the Egyptian New Year and continue almost uninterrupted for several ten days periods (decans, “Egyptian weeks”) and months. For some reason Tallet and Lehner assume that Merer’s logbook, explicitly dated to the first day of the inundation season, commenced in July but this is probably a mix-up of facts about the civil calendar and nearly two months off the real time of the (solar) year when things happened. This makes that the authors also miss the first Sothic date for the Old Kingdom which seems to be included in the papyrus archive from Wadi el-Jarf. Read more here.

Ref.1: Tallet, P. & Lehner, M. (2021). The Red Sea Scrolls. How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of thePyramids. Thames & Hudson, London. ISBN 978-0-500-05211-2

Having postulated and demonstrated that the Egyptian civil calendar was used strictly schematically as a timekeeping instrument, we investigate in a new article when and how the civil calendar was converted into the Alexandrian calendar. The surprising evidence shows that this happened in -37 CE and that a parallel calendar with the same start year and year length - known as the Spanish Era - was in operation until the 15th century.

In this brand-new article - the fourth in our Egyptian suite - we explore the papyrus archive from El Lahun using a strictly schematic Egyptian civil calendar and a modern astronomical date for the start of the calendar. This leads to the absolute accession years for three pharaohs of the Egyptian 12^th dynasty. The accession years are compatible with recent radiocarbon dates for dynastic Egypt and are confirmed by all twenty-six moon dates with explicit regnal years, as well as by the Sothic date and an additional incomplete moon date included in the archive. Our investigation also sheds light on periods of co-regency, Egyptian practices of Sirius and moon observations, and the reliability of the Turin king list.

We have published an extensive update to our old article with almost the same name, read here.

We postulate that - due to a dendrochronological error of 218 years - an extreme narrow ring event in Scandinavian pine tree-ring chronologies at -329 CE is contemporary with the “Hallstatt gap” in central European oak tree-ring chronologies. See also the termination of the work at the old Hallstatt salt mine which is dated on dendrochronological grounds around -570. Based on archaeological/radiocarbon evidence however, the Hallstatt settlement (its cemetery) was abandoned first around -350. This means that there are 220 years difference between the end dates at Hallstatt assessed with different dating methods, a stunning agreement with our postulated 218 years error.

We further postulate a large cosmic catastrophe with impacts distributed over north-western Europe as the cause for the -329 extreme narrow ring event which led to large scale deforestation and migration among the surviving people, the Celtic expansion.

Radiocarbon dating of St James and St Philip relics

Reading the newspaper this morning, an article with the title: Worshipped dead in Rome were not apostles, caught my interest.

The story was about the scientific examination of the relics of two of Jesus’ disciples worshipped for fifteen hundred years in the Basilica dei Santi XII Apostoli in Rome, St Philip and St James, the brother of the Lord. Both are said to have died in the second half of the first century AD.

However, the author stated with enthusiasm that the relics very clearly were not from the apostles but from other persons living a long time later, because in a recent study a radiocarbon date between 214 and 340 AD (2σ confidence) was obtained from one of the bones kept in the reliquary.

Now, on the contrary, this radiocarbon date is very good news for us and for all who were convinced that these relics really are from the two apostles. This is because Jesus and his disciples are historically dated in Western Roman Empire contexts as living around the time of Emperor Augustus and his immediate successors. Having postulated that Western Roman history is conventionally dated too old by 232 years, we generally would expect organic samples like bone collagen from that time to produce calibrated radiocarbon dates more than two hundred years younger than conventional dates. And in this case, with a secure provenience of the sample material, we find just that. In other words, if the persons died around year 70 in Western Roman context, we would expect a radiocarbon date centered around 300 AD which actually is what we find. Otherwise our hypothesis would be in trouble.

Another of our studies involved dendrochronologically-dated Western Roman timber which produced radiocarbon dates more than 150 years younger than conventional dates.

Our new Egyptian suite of articles has been continued with part 2 and 3.

Using modern astronomical parameters and based on handed-down dates for "days of the Feast of the New Moon", we propose the exact accession years for two Egyptian New Kingdom pharaohs: -1497 for Thutmose III, and -1297 for Rameses II. These accession dates comply well with recent radiocarbon dates.

We also include some remarks about the eight years adjustment of the radiocarbon calibration curve (Intcal) which we have applied in our Egyptological studies. As it appears just now, this eventuality seems to be at least detected - but not yet acknowledged - in recent academic research.

Read part 2 here.

The rock-cut Great Temple at Abu Simbel in Nubia built by Rameses II has been associated with the royal jubilee of the pharaoh. Based on our proposed accession year -1297, we can demonstrate that the first few jubilees of the king would have been celebrated when the traditional civil date for the festival (V Tybi 1) coincided with the climax of the autumnal lightshow at Abu Simbel. We regard this coincidence as a proof that we indeed have identified the absolute (astronomical) year for Rameses II's accession.

Read part 3 here.

Now we start a new suite of articles under the heading "Towards an absolute scientific date for the Egyptian New Kingdom". Part 1 takes a closer look at the Egyptian civil calendar and its primary sources to see if this provides useful understanding for the Egyptian chronology. Scientific dates for e.g. the Egyptian New Kingdom do still not comply fully with the historical consensus chronology in force. This might be due to the lingering use of outdated scientific parameters, perhaps because of historical bias at Egypt's transition from sovereign kingdom to Roman province.

Read the article here.

Our new article is about the historical consequences of our scientifically reinforced hypothesis that the West-Roman empire is conventionally dated some 232 years too old. We offer an alternative interpretation of some Roman heirlooms retrieved from the grave of the Frankish king Childeric, and from a Japanese grave dated to the late 5th century.

Read all about it here.

Our new article is about a rarity: radiocarbon dates of timbers archaeologically anchored in West-Roman time which are also dated by dendrochronology. The surprising but apparent trend is that the radiocarbon dates are a large number of years younger than the dendro dates. This strongly supports our hypothesis that West-Roman history and archaeology are conventionally dated too old by more than two hundred years, and that European dendrochronology was adapted to this error already in its early period.

Read our new article here.

In a new article in Dendrochronologia, Andreas Rzepecki with co-authors lift the lid on Ernst Hollstein's weak bridge over the Roman gap in the Central European oak chronology. This issue has been taboo since the bridge was accepted by academia. However, the authors do not deliver any scientific proof for their assertion that the bridge is still valid.

Our analysis shows that the generally used confidence levels for dendrochronological matches are still far too low to point out an unambiguous synchronous position. And in cases when a strong confidence level can not be reached with dendrochronology, the use of less resolved methods like radiocarbon, or even worse historical considerations, is still regarded an adequate procedure.

Read our new article Response to Rzepecki et al., "Missing link in Late Antiquity? A critical examination of Hollstein’s Central European Oak Chronology".