Sementawy Horemheb wrote:

"What is your opinion on the number of attempts to rewrite the conventional chronology of Egyptian history, and notably to the striking parallels between Akhenaton's Great Hymn to Aton (Gardiner, p.225f) and Psalm 104 (the Bible - various authors), in which scholars suspect the authors of these texts to be identical.

Secondly, I would just love to know the exact location of "the hill of grit-stone" - a title of the 'general' Horemheb's, under Tutankhamun."

That said, most Egyptologists, while acknowledging a discrepancy (such as von Beckerath 1997), do not hold with Rohl's dating the alternate chronology, particularly in the methods by which he formed his theory. Most feel that Rohl has either ignored or misinterpreted both archaeological and textual evidence to make it 'fit' his theory.

When Rohl's Test of Time came out in 1996, it garnered a great deal of interest in popular reviews, but insofar as professional Egyptology went, it was soundly rebutted in Kenneth Kitchen's revised publication The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 1100-650 B.C.. (Be sure that you are looking for the Second Edition but with a new supplement to get the right publication; it is stated at Amazon that a new edition may be out in 2008.)

However, there are other issues which concern me with this statement: "...the striking parallels between Akhenaton's Great Hymn to Aton (Gardiner, p.225f) and Psalm 104 (the Bible - various authors), in which scholars suspect the authors of these texts to be identical."

What you have with the similarities between the Great Hymn to the Aten and Psalm 104 is the phenonmenon known as Ancient Near Eastern [ANE] literary motif parallelism.

First noted by Gerhard von Rad (1972), over 30 years ago, ANE literary parallelism is the phenomenon where the literary texts or motifs of one culture's stories/myths/religious texts, etc. reappear in another culture's texts, but subtly altered in such a way to reflect the adopting culture's worldview. Most scholars are aware of the phenomenon, particularly in respect to Biblical texts. Let me give some examples:

The best known example of ANE literary parallelism in the Bible is the story of Noah and the Ark, which has an almost 1:1 detail parallel of the much earlier flood stories of the Chaldean Flood Tablets,dated to 2000 BCE, which later evolved into the Babylonian myth of the Story of Gilgamesh, dated to about the 7th century BCE. Similarly, the Story of Job has its parallels in a Sumerian poetic essay about suffering, dated to the beginning of the Third Millennium BCE, thus preceding the Biblical Job story by about 2000 years.

Genesis 2: 5-6 is yet another example, where an ancient Egyptian religious text, probably from either the Middle Kingdom or New Kingdom, evokes the literary motifs of Creation from the Primordial Mound, but appears in this much later 10th century BCE biblical composition.

Thus, we see the same situation with the transfer of the literary motifs from the Great Hymn to the Aten into Psalm 104. For while there are many points in common between the two texts, the purpose and emphasis of Psalms 104 version differs with that of the Great Hymn.

This, in fact, is the telling effect of ANE literary parallelism: the adopting culture which assumes the previous culture's story/myth/text always subtly changes the emphasis of that text to meet the adopting culture's worldview (apud Redford 1986; see also Niditch 1997, and Nakhai 2001, on the worldview of Israelite culture during the 10th through 6th centuries BCE).

Meanwhile, most biblical scholars agree that the majority of the Pentateuch and other biblical texts, such as Psalms and the prophetic literature, were not composed until the periods between 950 to 540 BCE. As all of the above non-Israelite precedent texts can be dated to much earlier periods, you are seeing neither examples of contemporaneous texts, nor a common author.

Dating of Psalms can be particularly tricky, for example: Some are the Psalms are of pre-exilic composition (before 587 BCE ), while others are post-exilic works (after 539 BCE), but none are as late as the Maccabean period (ca. 165 BCE).

As such, the logic of Rohl's argument in this regards is faulty, in my opinion, in stating this make the two texts reliable sources for dating a chronology.

While those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible will not believe in the concept of ANE literary motif parallelism, from a strictly Biblical form criticism point of view, one cannot deny the clear evidence of literary borrowing of certain biblical texts from other cultures (Tucker 1971). So, to most Old Testament scholars, it comes as no surprise that elements of the Great Hymn to the Aten could linger for over 500 years in the collective culture memory of the ancient Near East, and then reappear, in a revised format, in Psalm 104, but reflecting a strictly Israelite worldview.

For this reason, as well as the archaeological/textual rebuttal covered by Kitchen, I don't think Rohl's contention that the similarity of the two texts reflect either common or contemporaneous origins, nor are they sufficient to warrant a revision of the entire Egyptian chronological dating system.

Finally, as to your query about the epithet attached to Horemheb: as much as I have looked through texts related to this king, I am unable to locate the reference to "the hill of grit-stone."

Perhaps you could cite for me the text where you found this epithet? Further, since translators also have varying ways of rendering certain phrases, could you tell me not only in which text it appears, but also who did the translation, it could help me to find the epithet reference in context. Then perhaps I can give you a better and more full answer.

Reference:

Kitchen, K. A. 1986. The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt, 1100-650 B.C. Second Edition, with Supplement. Warminster: Aris and Philips.

Nakhai, B. A. 2001. Archaeology and the Religions of Canaan and Israel. ASOR Books 7. V. Matthews. Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research.

Niditch, S. 1997. Ancient Israelite Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Redford, D. B. 1986. Pharaonic King-lists, Annals and Day-books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History. SSEA Publication IV. L. M. James. Mississauga: Benben Publications.

Rohl, D. M. 1992. Some Chronological Conundrums of the 21st Dynasty. Ägypten und Levante. Zeitschrift für ägyptische Archäologie undderen Nachbargebiete 3: 133-141.

Tucker, G. 1971. Form Criticism of the Old Testament. Old Testament Series. Philadelphia: Fortress Publishers.

von Beckerath, J. 1997. Chronologie des Pharonischen Ägypten. Die Zeitbestimmung von der Vorzeit bis 332 v. Chr. Münchner Ägyptologische Studien 46. G. Burkard and D. Kessler. Mainz: von Zabern.

von Rad, G. 1972. Genesis: A Commentary. The Old Testament Library. J. H. Marks. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

I hope this assisted.

Katherine Griffis-Greenberg