In order for the revised account of history to be credible we must be able to account for all dynasties and events supportable from historical sources. In this paper we want to examine the chronology of the 22nd Dynasty for it occupies an important segment of time in ancient history. Various writers have stated the precarious arrangement of the kings of this dynasty which usually means that there are few or no certainties about most or any of their kings. With those precautions in mind we also realize that in recent times some additional facts became known which, to our knowledge, were not yet available to Alan Gardiner, for instance.

The key to understanding the placement of this dynasty is like all other dynasties, we need to find out as much as possible about its connection to the dynasty before and after it, as well as its internal succession. Perhaps we should mention once again that these kings represent foreign, albeit neighboring, Libyan rulers. But that has detractors, some thought it had Assyrian connections.

The Conventional Chronological Confusion at the Transition from the 21st to 22nd Dynasty

As the story goes when Alexander the Great lay on his death bed he was asked where he would like to be buried. Alexanders' choice was the Siwa Oasis where 8 years before the oracle had declared him to be the son of god. His body was brought to Egypt but Ptolemy I. was against giving the body to the priests of the oasis and selected for him a tomb in Alexandria which to date has not been discovered.

Menkheperre, son of Peinuzem, who had received Alexander in the oasis upon his arrival was followed in the office of high priest by a son of his also called Peinuzem (II) after his grandfather. From this Peinuzem II remain several inscriptions, one of them rather extensive, carved on a wall of the temple of Amun at Karnak. Peinuzem II figures as a high priest or prophet but not as a king. He also did not refer to his deceased father Menkheperre as a king or late king. Peinuzem II dated his inscriptions to the years 2, 3, 5 and 6 of some king who is not named. "It is desirable to know the identity of the unnamed king", wrote E. Naville. [E. Naville, `Inscription historique de Pinodjem III', Paris, 1883. In more recent publications this same Peinuzem III is referred to as Peinuzem II.] As a son and successor of Menkheperre, Peinuzem II must have lived and held office in the days of Ptolemy I. The years 2, 3, 5 and 6 would, then, apply to the royal years of Ptolemy I, though they may refer to the time when Ptolemy, after Alexander's death, virtually in supreme authority over Egypt, had not yet proclaimed himself king. [H. Gauthier, `Le Livre des rois d'Egypte', Vol. V (1917), p. 213: "La chronologie de Ptolémée I-er nous offre, du reste, une curieuse particularité, en ce qu'elle fait usage d'un double mode de datation."; See also R.Lepsius, `Die XXII. Ägyptische Königsdynastie', Berlin, 1856. We assume that Peinuzem II exercised the office of the Prophet of Amun in the last two decades before the year 300 BC.

In the large Karnak inscription Peinuzem functions before "the great god", which, as Naville observed, stands for "the king". Just like in the `Stela of the Banished', the "great god" appoints scribes, inspectors, and overseers. Some of them committed fraudulent acts; Peinuzem inquires of the oracle of Amun whether a certain Thutmose, a son of Soua-Amun and a temple attendant, is guilty of appropriating to himself some of the temple property. The oracle answers with violent movements of his brow, as in the `Stela of the Banished'. The long text amounts to a rehabilition of the suspect. How true the verdict of the oracle was we don't know but this wall inscription dealing with such a trifling issue at such great lengths is a sign of decadence and indicates late period time.

Modern historians then assumed that Peinuzem II had a son named Psusennes (II). This Psusennes II is now counted as the last "king" of the 21st Dynasty and so defended by Kenneth Kitchens and others. There exists no inscription which with certainty could be assigned to him or about him. In addition historians assume that this Psusennes had a daughter named Makare. Why are these assumptions made? We think in order to create a link between the 21st dynasty of priest-kings and the Lybian Dynasty.

In this connection a `statue of the Nile god' keeps being mentioned which is nothing else but a dedicatory or votive dedication by a pilgrim of unknown time period. At first archaeologists paid little attention to this votive statue but today that cautionary approach seems largely to have vanished. But one such statue, when its inscription was read, was found to have been dedicated by High Priest Meriamun-Sosenk, who describes himself as a son of King Osorken and of his wife Makare, daughter of King Pesibkenno (now read as Psusennes). As a result of this the assumption was made that a link had been found between these two dynasties, one expiring, the other taking over.

The Statue of the Nile God Inscription

"Made it the High Priest of Amon-Re, king of gods, Meriamon-Sheshonk, for his lord, Amon-Re, lord of Thebes, presider over Karnak, in order to crave life, prosperity, health, long life, an advanced and happy old age, might and victory over every land and every country, ... ... ..., all valiant might, to take captive his land; lord of South and North, the leader, Meriamon-Sheshonk, who is great leader of the army of all Egypt, king's-son of the Lord of the Two Lands, Lord of Offering, Meriamon-Osorken (I); his mother being Makere, king's-daughter of the Lord of the Two Lands, Meriamon-Horus-Pesibkhenno (II), given life, stability, satisfaction, like Re, forever." [Breasted, `Records', Vol. IV, Sec. 740; See also Pisebkhanu.]

It was also assumed that the high priest Sosenk later mounted the throne as King Sosenk, although the monumental inscriptions have this Sosenk preceding, not following, Osorken.

Nobody knows with any degree of certainty that Peinuzem II had a son Psusennes II, nor is there any evidence that, if there was such a scion in the priestly succession, he had a daughter Makare. But a surmise that a Psusennes II followed Peinuzem II, further, that he had a daughter Makare, and finally that she married Osorken I and bore a son Sosenk, led to a confusion in which descendants changed roles and times with their ancestors. It is for this reason that the order of dynasties is thought to be `established beyond question'. Whenever we read such statements we ought to be double careful it seems more correct to say that nothing in the history of ancient Egypt is beyond question. Since Peinuzem II officiated in his priesthood under Ptolemy I, a son of his could not be the father-in-law of a king who reigned more than 600 years earlier.

The El Amarna Age - The Years Before the 22nd Dynasty

The 18th Dynasty period saw a marked growth in the population density and city building in both Upper and Lower Egypt, toward the cataracts and the Nile Delta. A succession of strong kings ended with Akhnaton and after him only weaker kings remained. During the 18th Dynasty the distribution of wealth was elitist and kings made a show of rewarding loyal officials at home and abroad as the El Amarna letters clearly show. There was a permanent military administration but this was never or infrequently employed as a coercive arm of the government. Egypt itself had few garrisons and their role was to train and register those of age for military service. In Israel Jehu was king and Hazael began a long period of oppression in the region. It was the time of the prophet Elisha and the Egyptian plenipotentiary Naaman, successor of Aman-appa (Amon), in Damascus; the time of Shalmaneser III and Shamshi-Adad in Assyria.

The el Amarna Age had just come to its end during which Shalmaneser III had received large quantities of ivory carvings as we can read in his annals. Shalmaneser III has been dated to 858-824 BC. Four years into his reign, during the reign of Amenhotep III in Egypt, he came up against Ugarit/Ras Shamra and forced their King Nikmed and the people to flee the city after which half of it was destroyed, EA#151. The exchanges of ivory and other gifts are described in Assyrian records and from evidence found in his own capital Calakh [Nimrud] on the Tigris River. Here he had a military headquarters which served him from the 9th to the end of the 8th century BC and which was excavated by W.E.L.Mallowan in 1959 and continued by David Oates. The New York Times carried an article on November 26, 1961 entitled "Ancient Swindle is Dug Up in Iraq". "When archaeologists dug into the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq earlier this year, they were surprised to find not Assyrian but `Egyptian' carvings... The explanation given... by David Oates, director of the British School of Archaeology's Nimrud Expedition, is that the archaeologist's spade dug into an ancient Assyrian antique shop. The `Egyptian' carvings had been cut by local craftsmen... to satisfy their `rich' clients' demand for foreign `antiquities'. Although the cut-away skirts worn by the bearers are typically Assyrian, the carvings are of a style that antedates by hundreds of years the period in which they were made. If found elsewhere, they would have been identified as Egyptian... they are considered to be `manufactured antiquities', designed to satisfy a rich man's taste for antiques."

There could be no question that this was Shalmaneser's loot or collection, for in one of the storage rooms, 90 feet in length, was found his statue and an inscription attests to the king's approval of the portrait as "a very good likeness of himself".
The quantity of ivory found was so great that, in three seasons, the excavating team could not empty the first of the three storage rooms. The excavators strained their wits to understand why so much ivory work reflecting Egyptian styles of over five hundred years earlier should fill, of all places, the military headquarters of Shalmaneser III. Mallowan and his representative archaeologist on the site, David Oates, could not come up with anything better than the theory that, in the military headquarters of Shalmaneser, a factory for manufacturing fake antiques had been established. No better explanation was in sight, neither did Agathe Christie (she was the wife of Mallowan), who took an interest in the archaeological work of her husband, know of a better solution to unravel the mystery! - In revised view this makes sense because now we work with the understanding that Shalmaeser III lived right in the El Amarna Period, the age to which these ivories belong on stylistic grounds. Could it be that he was a correspondent we could find among the el Amarna cuneiform clay tablets? He was identified with Burraburiash of the letters (EA 6-11,13) and as a contemporary of Akhnaton. Burraburiash, writing from Babylon, asked for objects of ivory:

"Let trees be made of ivory and colored! Let field plants be made of ivory and colored...and let them be brought!" EA 11.
"And, thirdly, let experts, who are with thee, make animals, either of the land, or of the river, as if they were alive; the skin, may it be made as if it were alive..." EA 10.

From this same palace also came a massive throne base found in 1962, one of the panels showing a ceremonial meeting of Shalmaneser III with a king of Babylon, conventionally thought to have been Marduk-zakir-shumi, whom he had reinstated on the throne of Babylon. It appears that both of the potentates were about of the same age, at least that there was no such difference as one being a youth or very old king. In this representation the kings appear as equals helping us understand that Shalmaneser probably desired his relationship to the Egyptian suzerain to be on similar terms.

What was the reply of Akhnaton? In a lengthy letter, containing the shipping list of Akhnaton, we read about many items made of gold and silver, studded with precious stones, golden items of just about any utility, bronze items, clothing, lapis-lazuli and ivory: "...of ebony inlaid with ivory, six beast paws, nine plants of ivory, ten ..., which are (studded), of ivory... 29 gherkin- vessels of ivory, ... 44 oil-vessels, studded with figs, dates [and] kurumanu, of ivory... 375 oil vessels of ivory, 19 gasu of ivory, 19 breast ornaments, of ivory... 13 umninu, of ivory...ubda. 3 for the head, of ivory...3 bowls, of ivory....3 oil-containing oxen, of ivory... 4 oil-containing dusahu, of ivory... 1 smelling bottle of ivory, and ... in its inner part and one ox upon it." EA 14.

Had this EA letter of Akhnaton anything to do with the stash of Egyptian type ivories in Calakh? We don't know if this particular letter did, all it tells us is that such deals were made in those days and therefore authenticates the account of the sources cited.

In summary we might say that there is good agreement between actual archaeological evidence from Assyria and written sources from Egypt that Shalmaneser III was a contemporary of Pharaoh Amenophis IV/Akhnaton.

Eyes on Libya - The Rise of the 22nd Dynasty

In about 825 BC Carthage was founded from the exiles of Ugarit/Ras Shamra. In Judah seven year old Joash began his rule under the tutelage of the priest Jehoiada who destroyed the supporters of the worship of Baal, 2. Chronicles 23. The power of the Philistines had largely been broken and a period of restraint Assyrian rule settled in making the oppression, spreading over Israel by the rulers of Damascus, possible. A painting on a chest in the tomb of Tuthankhamen shows him battling what looks like Libyan and Nubian intruders. His short reign and that of his successor Aye ends the 18th Dynasty under largely undocumented circumstances indicating foreign intervention. No native rulers were in sight to continue the affairs of Egypt.

Even though nearly everyone refers to the 22nd Dynasty as of Libyan origin; that in itself is not a sure assessment. One could make a case for an Assyrian origin of the rulers living in those years. Were the names Sheshonk, Osorken and Takelot Assyrian or were they Libyan names? Can we be sure? None other than Sir Flinders Petrie had found reason to believe in the Assyrian connection of the 22nd Dynasty. Was he wrong? Later scholars rejected his conclusions in favour of a Libyan origin and we concur with that conclusion because Assyrian interactions with that dynasty show no signs of connections to its own people on the throne of Egypt at that time.

During this same time things were underfoot along the north African coast. In 856 BC Ras Shamra/Ugarit were destroyed by Shalmaneser and in 825 BC Carthage was founded by the Phoenician survivors. Young King Joash ruled Judah and Hazael oppressed Israel. The African coast had become a `safe haven' for exiles from Asia and later Greece. Carthage was about 900 miles west of Cyrenaica, and Cyrenaica about 650 miles west of Alexandria. With such distances they were as far removed from Egypt as Niniveh and Babylon were. The eastern most border of Libya today is right at the Siwa oasis. The fact that the Libyan pharaohs did not look any different than Egyptian pharaohs had looked all along, meaning they were not blacks from Africa, points to an origin from the Libyan coast, probably of immigrant parents. But there is no history associated with such a scenario from the African coast itself to our knowledge. Therefore, the true origin of the 22nd Dynasty and with it the end of the 18th Dynasty still remains an unsolved mystery. We must remember that the 22nd Dynasty period pre-dates the arrival of the Greeks at Cyrenaica. Therefore, the information that Seti the Great and Ramses II conducted campaigns against the `Tehenu' in the eastern delta is an indication that their years of reign have been misdated on the BC time scale.

Geographical considerations cannot help us to solve their origin. Does their religion help? A famous find connected to the 22nd Dynasty was the a) Serapeum and the b) Horpasen Geneological Inscription.

a) About the Serapeum A. Gardiner commented, "Strangely enough not a single inscription of Dynasty 21 was found in the Serapeum., but the material bearing upon the Dynasty 22 and others later is all the richer." [A. G. `Egypt of the Pharaohs', p. 326] In revised view we do not find that strange at all because the so-called 21st Dynasty came much later.
b) The Horpasen Inscription is dated to the 25th year of a king by the name of Sheshonk who is assumed to be Sheshonk IV. Among the names was one `Tahenbuyuana' which is taken to have to do with the word `Tehenu' for Libya. This name similarity would point to a Libyan connection and the Greeks who had settled at Cyrenaica.

Since we lean toward a Libyan origin for the 22nd Dynasty we shall tell the story with that in mind. It appears Libya experienced at this time of Egyptian decline a succession of adventurous rulers leading to their taking over the reigns of the country in the middle of the second half of the 9th century BC. But these neighborly invaders adapted themselves into the culture of Egypt so closely that one can hardly realize that they represented foreign invaders. The Sea Peoples (we think mainly of Greeks) influence, the Hittite/ Chaldean empire and the height of mercenary wars were still future while the Mycenaean, Geometric Age produced its wares simultaneously for just a little longer. The destruction of Troy was still ahead, the first Olympic games some 50 years away. Egypt was free from foreign assaults out of the east for the time being and its Egyptian artists continued making beautiful artwork in the basic 18th Dynasty style under Libyan rulers.

Examples of such art are eloquent in their own right and left experts to marvel on how close 22nd Dynasty work resembled that of 18th Dynasty manufacture, so much so, that museums paid out large sums of money for artifacts like the Carnavon statue of Amon thinking it was from the 18th Dynasty only later to be identified as of 22nd Dynasty manufacture, a considerable difference in price at the time.

Presumably in the same way we find 18th Dynasty amphorae throughout various locations of the Mediterranean realm but not 22nd Dynasty and few 19th Dynasty examples. This is probably due to the situation that the artists of 22nd Dynasty times continued making 18th Dynasty style pottery products as already mentioned above.

Pharaoh Sheshonk I

During his rule we have records of one campaign into Palestine in his 20th year by an Egyptian army inscribed on the south wall of the temple of Amun at Karnak which he began to built but never completed. The famous city list of Pharaoh Sheshonk I (about 823-798 BC) located on the south facade of the Bubastide Portal at Karnak is the account of his activites related to us in 2.Kings 13:1-7 from about 811 BC. This city list is an imitation in design based on that of Pharaoh Thutmose III. It is an imitation also because in its execution it lacks the clarity and workmenship of Thutmose's carvings.
The City List of Thutmose III..................................The City List of Sheshonk


The first city named in the list of Thutmose III is `q-d-s' kadesh, the holy city, Jerusalem. Next comes `mkt' Megiddo, there is `dbh' Tibhath, `tmsq' Damascus, `itmm' Etam ..."

Without placing Sheshonk yet on the BC time scale, his city list starts with the first 9 names, which are the `Nine Bows'. Number 10 is the introduction saying simply "List of the towns". They are: 11=Gaza, 12=Makkedah, 13=Rubuti, 14=Aijalon, 15=Kiriathaim?, 16=Bethhoron, 17=Gibeon, 18=Mahanaim, 19=Shaud[y], 20=?, 21=Adoraim, 22=Hapharaim, 23=Rehob, 24=Betshan, 25= Shunem, 26=Taanach, 27=Megiddo, 28=Adar, 29=Yadhamelek, 30=[Heb]el?, 31=Honim?, 32=Aruna, 33=Borim, 34=Gathpadalla, 35=Yahma, 36=Betharuma, 37=Kekry, 38=Socoh, 39=Bethappuah...

According to Breasted certain peculiarities in the language of this inscription of Sheshonk showed Aramaic influence but this observation was largely dismissed because conventionalists could not imagine for Aramaic to have become a leading language that early in Syrian history. In conventional thinking Sheshonk reigned from 945-924 BC.

Between #17 & 18 should be Jerusalem by sequence if that is where he went according to conventional history. Instead we realize that Shoshenk's campaign was not in its BC timing and purpose directed against Jerusalem but rather he intended to help Jehoahaz against Hazael, king of Damascus, the Aramean [Aram] kingdom in about 816 BC, 2.Kings 13:1-7.

"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he delivered them into the hand of Hazael king of Syria, and into the hand of Ben-ha-dad the son of Hazael, all their days. And the Lord gave Israel a saviour, so that they went out from under the hand of the Syrians: and the children of Israel dwellt in their tents, as beforetime."

This concept of an unnamed `saviour' we find again in Josephus.

Subsequent to the death of Alexander the Great we have this account: "Now when Alexander, king of Macedon, had put an end to the dominion of the Persians, and had settled the affairs of Judea after the forementioned manner, he ended his life; and as his government fell among many, Antigonus obtained Asia; Seleucus, Babylon; and of the other nations which were there, Lysimachus governed the Hellespont, and Cassander possessed Macedonia; as did Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, who seized Egypt: and while these princes ambitiously strove one against another, every one for his own principality, and it came to pass that there were continual wars, and those lasting wars too; and the cities were sufferers, and lost a great many of their inhabitants in these times of distress, insomuch that all Syria, by the means of Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, underwent the reverse of that denomination of Saviour, which he then had." [Josephus, AJ, Book XII, Chapter I, Sec. 1]

This attribute of `saviour' is reminiscent of 2.Kings 13:1-7 where Pharaoh Sheshonk [though not named], upon the request of Jehoahaz, became the `saviour' of Israel by freeing his cities from the armed raids of the troops of Hazael of Aram, Damascus in about 816 BC. From Josephus it becomes quite clear that a reigning monarch is meant by that description of a `saviour' who somehow becomes involved in the affairs of Judah. Sheshonk's deed was beneficial, that of Ptolemy the reverse - it was a disaster as far as the Jews were concerned. The concept of a `saviour' then in Jewish thinking was one well understood by them. Not until the days of Jesus Christ would the word `saviour' be filled with new meaning.

None of the other kings of the 22nd Dynasty pharaohs left a record indicating they led some kind of a campaign into Palestine even though king Hoshea of Israel asked Pharaoh So [Siu in the Hebrew] to send help just before Samaria was destroyed by the Assyrians in 722 BC and the Ten tribes led into exile. [2.Kings 17:4]

Did Sheshonk I "squeeze in" the Bubastite Portal between the second Pylon and a small temple of Ramses III at Karnak? In the revised scenario Ramses III was still in the future, so how are we to understand this statement by Alan Gardiner? [A. Gardiner, `Egypt of the Pharaohs', p. 328] As Alan Montgomery has pointed out, `Rohl has demonstrated convincingly from the architecture of the buildings that the Bubastite Portal was constructed after the Pylon of Ramses II as the cartouche of Ramses II is hidden by the Portal. Again there would be no need for the structure unless the temple of Ramses III already existed.' He then asks the question: `With what material would a rather impoverished Dynasty XXX build a Portal between the Pylon of Ramses II and the Temple of Ramses III? The real explanation of this conundrum is that Ramses III built it himself with material from the Libyans used in their buildings - particularly of the reigns of Sheshonq I and Osorkon I as their monuments are almost non-existent.'