Introduction
David Rohl wishes to remove 350 years approximately from the chronology of Ancient Egypt. His reasons for this are the tomb of Osorkon II overlaps the tomb of Psusennes I in the necropolis of Tanis, the order of burials in the DB 320 cache and the absence of any Apis bulls for the 21st dynasty. However each of these reasons is better explained by an alternative reasoning. Moreover this amount of chronological compression would have to have an equal effect of the chronologies of the entire Ancient Near East. While this is possible if the country was enduring a dark age as in Greece it is impossible to wrap up the kings of Assyria and the Kassite kings of Babylon hence Rohl's entire thesis is completely disproved and incorrect. Furthermore making the Egyptian Dynasties 21 and 22 contemporary leads to the overlapping of all the major offices of the period. Where it may be possible to argue for two rival dynasties and each to have had a separate High Priest of Amun, The High Priests of Ptah are completely damming, because only two families held the post throughout the Third Intermediate Period. Also being doubled up are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th prophets of Amun and the Southern Viziers. Rohl never answers the question of why two rival kings would need two Southern Viziers as both could not control the South.
Failing to prove the overlap of the two dynasties has disastrous effects on Rohl's New Chronology. Firstly he looses the argument over the order of burials in both the Necropolis of Tanis and in the cache of DB 320 and all his arguments based around the absence of the Apis bulls of the 21st dynasty. This in turn destroys his synchronism that Ramesses II = Shishak. As a consequence of this he misses his chosen date for an eclipse at Ugarit, which can no longer be because Ugarit was destroyed by the Sea Peoples in Year 8 of Ramesses III. In turn one by one all Rohl's arguments turn out to be worthless.
He misleads the readers of his book by arguing that ancient Egypt is dated through this period by Sothic dating whereas it is in reality dated by reference to the Assyrian Kinglist. This links the Assyrian king Ashur Uballit I and Burnburiash II of Babylon as correspondents of Akenaten at Armana in the Armana letters.
The number of reasons Rohl can be shown to be wrong is huge and my website probably will never be able to cope with them all. Important reasons include the Temple of Tanis which shows that Siamun came after Psusennes I and before Osorkon II. There is also a complete absence of any way of dealing with the Philistines in the New Chronology.
Rohl's efforts have been ignored by all scholars throughout the archaeological world. Rohl has tried to argue that it is because they are wedded to their beliefs and unable to countenance any change to their long cherished positions. But on the contrary they have slated him describing him as anything from a charlatan to a "son of Velikovsky" a reference to the first chronological revisionist now widely discredited by everyone even by the "New Chronologists". These scholars include the leading experts in the field such as Kenneth Kitchen who said Rohl was 98% rubbish, Franc Yurco who described Rohl as a charlatan. A special mention should go to Chris Bennet who produced two of the most detailed rebuttals of Rohl's chronology in the journal JAMS entitled Temporal Fugues and Postscript to Temporal Fugues in which he concluded Rohl was not just wrong but magnificently wrong.
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