"Pharoahs and Kings"

Presented by David Rohl on The Learning Channel

David Rohl thinks we've got the chronology of Ancient Egypt all bollixed up. He thinks that the accepted correlation of Biblical events with events in the history of Egypt is wrong by as much as 200-300 years. In his three-part television series, presented on The Learning Channel and available on videotape, he makes his case for the existence of this discrepancy and explains how he thinks Egyptian chronology really unfolded.

Rohl ascribes the problem to the tendency of past Egyptologists to date events in Egyptian history by linking them with events in the chronology of the Bible. For example, the Bible says that during the time of Moses, Hebrew slaves in Egypt built a city called "Rameses". Therefore, erstwhile Egyptologists have argued, the Pharoah at the time of Moses must have been Rameses the Great. As another example, a carved relief at Karnak, the great war relief of Pharoah Shoshank I, shows that pharoah smiting defeated captives from Judah. Thus, Champollion, he of Rosetta Stone fame, linked this depiction with the biblical description of the defeat of Judah by Shishak, and identified the biblical "Shishak" with "Shoshank". However, Rohr argues that these identifications are based solely on these interpretations of biblical passages and not on self-supporting Egyptian evidence.

Rohl bases his chronology on evidence from Egyptian artifacts alone. The interesting thing is, when the Biblical timetable is lined up against this new Egyptian chronology, it puts Biblical events in a whole new light. Rohl's conclusion is that archaeologists looking for, say, evidence of Solomon's reign, have been looking in the right places, but at the wrong times--that is, in the wrong stratum of their excavations.

Although this may sound complicated and confusing, one of the beauties of this series is that it is extremely well produced; Rohl makes his case by taking us to relevant locations in Egypt and Israel, climbing up on monuments to decipher inscriptions for us--we even visit the Internet Cafe in London where he receives e-mail from a colleague whose astronomical calculations appear to support Rohl's theory. The three hours zip by as Rohl (and others) engagingly discuss his theories. The skeptical comments of some other Egyptologists add spice to the presentation, and Rohl's enthusiasm for his subject comes through in every scene. Whether he is right or not, I don't know. But I do know that this series will make you think about Biblical history and show you some fascinating sights from the Ancient Near East.