Reinterpreting the Tempest Stela
3,500-year-old Egyptian inscription could alter Middle Bronze Age chronology
AHMOSE I. A new translation of the Tempest Stela from the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose I could revise the dates of major events in the Middle Bronze Age. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A newly translated inscription on a stone block from Egypt could revise the chronology of major events in the Middle Bronze Age.
A study recently published by Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies offers a new translation of the 40-line inscription on the Tempest Stela, a six-foot-tall stone block dated to the reign of Pharaoh Ahmose I. The inscription describes a series of severe weather events, including the “sky being in storm” with “a tempest of rain” for a number of days. The text also eerily speaks of bodies floating down the Nile River like “skiffs of papyrus.”
The Oriental Institute researchers believe the Tempest Stela describes the catastrophic weather phenomena that resulted in the aftermath of the mid-second millennium B.C.E. volcanic eruption on the Minoan island of Thera.
If the researchers are correct, then the reign of Ahmose I—the first pharaoh of the 18th dynasty—would be dated closer to the Thera eruption than previously thought.
What can archaeology tell us about the historicity of the Biblical account of the Exodus? The free eBook Ancient Israel in Egypt and the Exodus considers textual and archaeological evidence from the second millennium B.C.E. that describe the Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus.
“This is important to scholars of the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean, generally because the chronology that archaeologists use is based on the lists of Egyptian pharaohs, and this new information could adjust those dates,” said Moeller in a University of Chicago press release.
“Tightening and correcting the dates of the reign of Ahmose would allow us to readjust our understanding of events and their inter-linkage throughout the region across the late second millennium B.C.E.,” explained Leslie Anne Warden, Egyptologist at Roanoke College, in an email to Bible History Daily.
According to Oriental Institute scholar David Schloen, the re-dating of Ahmose’s reign may help clarify how Ahmose was able to overthrow the Hyksos—the Canaanite rulers of Egypt—and lay the foundations for the New Kingdom of Egypt. The tsunami from the eruption at Thera would have dismantled the Hyksos’s ports, disrupting trade and weakening their sea power.
Read more about the new interpretation of the Tempest Stela.
More on the Mediterranean Bronze Age in Bible History Daily
The Thera Theories: Science and the Modern Reception History of the Exodus
King Senebkay of ‘Lost’ Abydos Dynasty Died in Battle
Bronze Age Collapse: Pollen Study Highlights Late Bronze Age Drought
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The exodus says that the Hebrew people did not suffer those plagues living nearby, as they explain that a natural disaster only affected the Egyptian people ?? I think you are wrong assimilating what was found in the Ahmose Stela with that part of the exodus. And the Pharaoh name in the time on Exodus is no the same.
Hello “n.” Something tells me you have an axe to grind here. I’m guessing it has something to do with Archaeology as a discipline – or maybe it’s the “biblical” part? What makes you think BAR didn’t access the actual source that is repeatedly linked? You have zero proof that the BAR “plagiarized” the story.
http://www.sci-news.com/othersciences/linguistics/science-tempest-stela-ahmose-worlds-oldest-weather-report-01826.html
original story.
Fantastic plagiarism by this site.
Thera eruption dating – http://www.academia.edu/303305/The_Minoan_Santorini_eruption_and_tsunami_deposits_in_Crete_Palaikastro_Geological_archaeological_14C_dating_and_Egyptian_chronology
Senuseret II, Senuseret III – great agricultural projects… 300 years later Hyksos, the shepherd kings are hated and there comes Ahmose I, the new king, the new dynasty… Hatshepsut, favourable to people like Senmut, hated by Thutmose III for an unknown reason… Thutmose III, the long living king… Amenhotep II, the strongest and most powerful of all pharaohs, the heroic king (Egypt at its best)… Thutmose IV, the king who was not the firstborn, begs foreign kings for a wife to secure peace… Amenhotep III, his scarab was the last one to be found at Jericho’s cemetery… Amenhotep IV, Canaanite kings beg him for military support against Habiru, who are strong and skillful enough to conquer a number of cities, but the king instead of sending soldiers breaks with the religion of his fathers and begins to worship just one god manifesting himself as light and calls him Aton… more than 400 years later Sheshonq invades Judea…
It’s also an interesting link that E. provided with comparisons of the storm of Ahmose’s time with the ten plagues of Moses. Wouldn’t it be interesting if the Exodus account of the defeat of Egyptian forces in the Sea of Reeds was based on the description of a flood inundation of Egypt during the time of Ahmose I during the rise of the eighteenth dynasty? When Abraham was told his descendants would be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years (Gensis 15:13), it’s hard not to see the similarity with the inscription on a stela in Tanis in honor of the Pharaoh Seti I. The 400 Year Stela celebrates a 400 year era beginning with a Hyksos ruler, Opehtiset-Nubti. The Pharaohs of the nineteenth dynasty had apparently established a chronology of 400 years of rule from Tanis, the biblical Zoan, known as Avaris in the time of the Hyksos. You would suppose from a Hebrew point of view, Seti I and Ramsese II were the same as the Hyksos kings who ruled from Avaris, whose chief god was Set, the biblical Satan. The stela mentions Seti I’s father on the throne, Peramses, and his mother Teya; “born of the lady,, the musician of Re, Teya, triumphant.” Compare with Miriam the prophetess and her dance with a tambourine (Exodus 15:20).
Thank you E. and it’s reassuring that someone out there has sources not found in Wikipedia. As for my obvious mix-up with the end of Minoan civilization occuring in the 16th century B.C.E., I got blurred vision because Queen Hatepshut’s inscriptions give an account of what appears to be the expulsion of the Hyksos or it could have been an event such as the Biblical Exodus or something similar. I remember one version in which the Tsunami happened on her watch. I also can’t help but see the character of Moses as being based on part, on Ahmose I, thanks to this deeper revelation of a cataclismic event that would have caused horse and rider to be hurled into the sea (Exodus 15:21).
Well, they’re wrong as the eruption took place nearly a century earlier. Also, Paul, the Minoan civilization didn’t collapse until the late 15th century BC, nearly two centuries after the eruption. Also, Gerar was a prominent Middle Bronze city-Finkelstein &Silberman point this out in an appendix.
http://drchris.me/higgaion/?page_id=151