history. The Fifteenth Dynasty has usually been dated ca. 1650–1550 BC, but recent
finds point to an earlier date for its commencement.
In Mesopotamia, absolute dates for the first half of the second millennium BC
depend on king-lists and on the Venus-tablet from the reign of Ammisaduqa, the
penultimate king of the First Dynasty of Babylon. The tablet records the heliacal
risings of the planet Venus over a 21-year period, allowing modern astrono -
mers to fix the reign of Ammisaduqa and all the other kings of the First
Dynasty against the planet’s 64-year cycle. Which of the possible cycles is the
correct one, however, is debated: a high, a middle and a low chronology are all
possible, one following another in 64-year intervals. The middle chronology, which
I am following, places Hammurabi’s 42-year reign in Babylon at 1792–1750 BC.
The low chronology, placing it at 1728–1686 BC, no longer has many champions
among cuneiform scholars. A dendro date for Shamshi-Adad I, who was an older
contemporary of Hammurabi, supports the middle chronology.^5
Real trouble begins when we try to date the volcanic eruption on Thera. The
pottery in use on Thera when the volcano erupted was Late Minoan IA, which
Aegean archaeologists have traditionally dated to the second half of the six -
teenth century BC, contemporary with the early kings of Egypt’s Eighteenth
Dynasty. The dreadful storms described by Ahmose in his “Tempest Stela” may
have been consequences of the Thera eruption, and if they were the eruption
occurred early in Ahmose’s reign or just before it.^6 That can be accommodated
by the traditional ceramic chronology. But the carbon dates, and especially the
carbon date for an olive tree that was evidently buried alive by the eruption,
point consistently to the late seventeenth century BC, 100 years earlier than
LM IA pottery has usually been dated.^7 Making things still more difficult,
Manfred Bietak reports that his excavations at Avaris show that Theran pumice
fell on the city afterthe city had been sacked by Ahmose and in fact after its
rebuilding had begun by one of Ahmose’s successors. Most Egyptologists will
not permit Ahmose (to say nothing of a sizeable part of the Eighteenth Dynasty)
to be retrojected to the seventeenth century BC: the Egyptologists simply do not
have enough pharaohs to bridge the gap between so early a date and the Amarna
period.
So we have a stand-off between those scholars who trust physics and those who
trust historical records and stratigraphy, although I suspect that few scholars in
either group would bet a year’s salary on their choice. The journal Antiquityrecently
presented a debate about the date of the Thera eruption.^8 The advocates of a high
date were evenly matched with advocates of a low date. Skeptical about the carbon
dates, Alexander MacGillivray decided that the best course for the Aegean
archaeologist was to ignore them:
Physicists will continue to argue the “high” date because it fits their
methodology. Archaeologists will continue to support the low date because
it fits theirs. Neither camp needs the other’s approval to carry on with their
research, which is fortunate, because agreement appears to be a long, long
way off.^9236 The chronological quandary