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Rating: 
Summary: An incredible find!
Review: Another marvelous and engaging work of fiction from psuedo-archaeologist David Rohl. The book is a visual feast and exciting to read but pretty pictures are no replacement for careful philology. It is a great exercise in fitting data to the theory. If only careful scholarship were this exiting to read.
Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Revision of Ancient History
Review: David Rohl's "Pharaohs and Kings" (released in some countries it would seem as "A Test of Time") has to be one of the most interesting and readable archaeology/history books around.
Stunningly illustrated with excellent diagrams, colour photographs and maps, this book catalogues the chronological problems Egyptgologists have created by sticking to three somewhat tenuous biblical synchronisms made with Egypt during the last century. Rohl disects the currently accepted chronology, demonstrates its flaws and then reconstructs an alternative using only the physical archaeological record. The results are startling. Far from breaking the synchronisms between the Bible and Ancient Egypt, Rohl finishes up confirming that many of the Biblcial stories are based on real events. These are backed up with physical objects excavated from sites such as Tell el-Amarna and Tanis. Rohl's own position, an essentially atheistic one, makes his discoveries all the more exicting as there is no religious angle to his work - just clear conclusions drawn from well presented evidence. Seemingly, he has received widespread support from the younger members of the accademic community for his work while the 'old brigade', who have been teaching the flawed conventional chronology for years, can't bring themselves to re-examine the facts. Rohl's style is unusual for a serious accademic - the book is written with humour and humanity, and easily readable. The whole layout, text, notations and illustrations make this a very attractive book. By the end of the book, you are amazed at how much you have understood and how obvious the conclusions are. A five star read - NOT TO BE MISSED - and a fabulous Christmas present.
Rating:
Summary: THE challenge
Review: Dr. David Rohl is shaking up the world of archeology. This books connects ancient Egyptian chronology and Iraeli chronology. I don't think it is perfect, but it is perhaps the
most accurate book of its type (ever written).
I believe Dr. Rohl reports an erroneous Ugarit solar eclipse, which he took from Mitchell. I believe the correct solar eclipse is in 1078 B.C. (rather than 1012 B.C.). I was in personal communication with Mr. Mitchell via e-mail, and he was very helpful.
In summary, if you want a book to enlighten you about Egytian history (with reference to Pharoah Akenaten and Tutankamen), this controversial book will HELP.
Rating:
Summary: THE challenge
Review: For the advanced scholar, especially if you want to draw parallels between ancient Egypt and Christinity...........unfortunately Rohls findings have mostly been refuted in the past five years........nothing like it though to challenge the historic belief of timelines in the middle and new kingdom.....
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting notions, but largely wishful thinking
Review: I found this book to be quite interesting, but unfortunately the arguments that Rohl uses are largely based on indirect evidence and filled with fallacies. Rohl makes a number of obvious errors in logic that when truly thought about make his scenarios unlikely. I would have to agree with Professor Kitchen in that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Mr. Rohl's argument about the missing sacred bulls is basically an inductive argument assuming that since about 5 bulls have not been found representing the 22nd dynasty, that they do not exist. He presumes that the 21st and 22nd dynasty co-existed simultaneously from two different capitals. This is a nice theory, but there is not a shred of direct evidence. I would think that if there were different pharoahs operating from two different capitals in Egypt at the same time that there should be voluminous recordings about the two competing leaders, but unfortunately there are no records of this type, severely calling his theory into question. Until he finds evidence of this type, his theory will remain exactly that--a novel theory. Also, even if the bulls were truly missing and the two dynasties did in fact co-exist in time, it only alters the timeline by about 140 years. Many of his other theories regarding the changing timeline require an alteration of over 350 years--how do the extra 200 years disappear? The argument about the royal architect's genealogy found at the rock quarry in eastern Egypt is another fallacious argument. He starts at the fixed date of 496 BC, during the Persian occupation of Egypt under Darius I, and then counts back 14 generations to arrive at a date of 776 BC by presuming 20 years per generation to establish a date for Shoshenk I. The problem with this logic is that anyone who has ever undertaken genealogy realizes that not ALL children to any given parent are born when that parent is 20 years old. In fact, the age of 20 is typically a starting date for when most parents started having children in antiquity (although it could have been as early as 14 or as late as 70+ years of age for a father). It is very easy to re-establish dates based on the genealogy that would place Shoshenk I back at his original 925 BC date, the year that he would have presumably plundered the city of Jerusalem. Trying to use a genealogy without any associated ages of the parents at the time the gave birth to their respective offspring to establish dates over such a long time frame is shear fantasy. There are many other examples of faulty logic and wishful thinking throughout the book. Unfortunately, although Rohl raises some interesting possibilities, he clearly has no direct evidence of any of his theories. It would be nice to be able to place King Solomon in the late bronze age and to redate King Saul to suddenly appear 300 years further into the past to fit a letter written by a Canaanite King to Pharoah Akanaton. But the way that Rohl tries to reach these goals simply does not make sense based on the evidence. It seems much more likely that the Biblical stories are regurgitated legends that may possibly have some link to individuals who actually existed, but do not provide any real accurate record of the series of events. As far as trying to make a faceless statue from the Nile Delta suddenly become Joseph, son of Jacob, without any written record regarding the sojurn of Asiatics in Goshon OTHER than the Biblical record is another example of shear fantasy. I wish that I could be more positive in assessing this book, but Mr. Rohl's theories are truly based on what he wants to believe rather than what the evidence presents.
Rating:
Summary: Completely changes Egyptology
Review: It seems our chronologies for the late Bronze, early Iron Age need an overhaul; 270 years need to be taken out. Mr. RohlÕs deductions have earned him the unfailing hostility of the curators for Egyptology at the British Museum. Just think of it: the number of exhibits go in the ten thousands. If Rohl is right, 80% of the material needs to be relabeled. Every textbook would have to be rewritten; current term papers be reevaluated - it would be chaos. It is good to recall these purely practical aspects before jumping to conclusions of an academic conspiracy against new findings. Overturning an established consensus can be good science, but should be done with prudence. For instance Big Bang may very well be on the wrong side of new astronomical discoveries, but before we really abandon the idea, we better make darn sure that what is going to take its place, will account for all the facts and reasons that made us developing the older theory in the first place. Rohl has all the academic credentials and he knows what he is up against, so he makes every effort to produce a solid case, and as far as I am concerned, he has succeeded. However Ð the farther back we go, the murkier his conjectures. ÒJosephÕsÓ statue on the cover is a brazen speculation on the books marketability. Although Rohl himself prefaces part 4 of the book as Òa change of evidenceÓ - meaning scarce on evidence but ample on speculation - an illustration depicting ÒJosephÕs palaceÓ and conjectures on ÒPrince MosesÓ campaigning the Ethiopians, give the wrong impression and really have no place in a paper of otherwise immaculate science. Somewhere down the line one has to strike a balance. There are biblical texts that allow for chronological deductions, even require it, because they are meant to be history in the first place. And there are other texts that are not, because they were initially concocted to explain the etiology of things, like most of Genesis or the JosephÕs novel, (which in the Babylonian exile must have been an especially uplifting read.) People ask why is the man lord over woman? Why is agriculture so hard? Why do people speak in so many different tongues? Why did Jews live in Egypt? ÒBecauseÓ God made Eve from AdamÕs rib, ÒbecauseÓ Cain rose against his brother, ÒbecauseÓ Yahweh destroyed the tower of Babel, and ÒbecauseÓ Joseph became PharaohÕs prime minister and invited his brothers to stay with him. (ÒOh tell us more about Joseph!Ó - ÒWell thatÕs a juicy tale: Joseph was pursued by PotipharÕs wife but rose from slavery to power.Ó) Our oldest literary sources in the entire bible, Amos (in 2:10; 3:1; 9:7) and Hosea (in 11:1; 13:4), testify to a common awareness of Moses and the deliverance from Egyptian bondage. We have reached the murky area where etiology gradually shifts to legends. For all we know, the original stories about the sly fox Moses, who not only had defied the PharaohÕs might, but even outwitted God himself when he came to claim MosesÕ firstborn (Ex. 4:24ff), may never have been put in writing. It is a common motif in oral folklore all over the world. We will never know for sure, but it probably formed a cycle of formulaic litanies ending in pithy sayings, like ZipporahÕs ÒSurely a bloody husband art thou to me,Ó or the Ten Commandments. Inevitably, after only a few generations, the material must have yielded to the dynamics of oral transmission and the formulas and litanies took on a life of their own. So nobody can expect any degree of historical accuracy. Likewise abductions by pirates and raids against townships in Anatolia were known occurrences, but every single detail in the Iliad has turned to formula and fiction. VirgilÕs Aeneas may never have had existed, but the fact remains that Etruscan immigrants had brought early statehood to Italy. Moses the fox may indeed have defied Egyptian authority in a protracted campaign, even struck a deal with JetrohÕs Ôspiritus familiarisÕ - Yahweh - but the author of Exodus completely transformed MosesÕ character from a sly guerilla leader to a slow witted prophet, inflated the narrative with inserted laws of a different period, and added those extravagant census figures, which however might reflect a real census of all the Jews in exile from the time of CyrusÕ edict. RohlÕs revised chronology goes a long way. It places Judges in the neighborhood of HomerÕs Iliad (which according to Thucydides calculations for HomerÕs lifetime had been composed about 800 to 750 BC. (but recollects legends from about 1048 BC.) It puts the post-exile account of JoshuaÕs campaign in the right place at the right time in the middle Bronze Age; even if the biblical historian refers to the campaignÕs geography in terms current to his own period. (If I told you that after 876 the Vikings had built a stronghold at Eburacum, the expression on your face will probably turn politely bland. If I tell you that the Vikings had fortified York in the North of England, everything becomes clear for the modern reader, despite the fact that neither England as a state nor ÒYorkÓ as the name of that settlement had existed at the time. Anachronisms can be deliberate and informative rather than misleading.) In the end, here as elsewhere, everything comes down to text analysis. What was the authorÕs objective, who did he address, are genre and form comparable to known traditions, does language and the use of anachronisms provide clues for the time of authorship? A story can be true despite the lack of supporting evidence. It also can be a piece of fiction despite all the archaeological evidence going for it. Having said all this, strictly as an Egyptologist, Mr. Rohl has an excellent argument.
Rating:
Summary: The Ancient Dreamcoat
Review: This is 425 pages packed with information, illustrations, charts, B & W photos, and color plates. The layout and typesetting is outstanding, something akin to a layered website. In this book British Egyptologist David Rohl produces convincing evidence that the accepted conventional ancient Egyptian chronology (especially the Third Intermediate Period) is out of sync with Egyptological and Archaeological evidence. The implications of this are immense, as ancient Egyptian chronology is the foundation for dating contemporary Asiatic and Levantine civilizations in a relative sense. Mr. Rohl demonstrates repeatedly that in this revised "New Chronology", Egyptian history and biblical narrative do indeed have common bonds, from the entrance of Jacob into Egypt to the Exodus of the Apiru (Hebrew) people under Moses. This is a fascinating read, but I caution that it gets a bit scholarly and complex at times. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the veracity of the Old Testament narratives vis-a-vis documented ancient Egyptian historicity.
Rating:
Summary: Required Reading for Egyptologists
Review: To say the very least, this book is an enlightening read. The author attempts to design a new chronology of Egypt based on a number of archaeological observations he made which pointed to certain anomolies in the standard chronology of the Third Intermediate Period of Egyptian history. The TIP is one of those points in history where information is scanty and there is much room for error in interpreting existing archaeological evidence. Rohl posits that the 21st and 22nd pharaonic dynasties were at least partly contemprary in a period of balkanization of Egypt, contrary to the conventional chronology's view that they were successive. He therefore shifts the entire preceding dynastic histories downward from 200 to 300 years. That is, what we previously though to occur at 1250 BC actually happened at 1000 BC according to Rohl. In so doing Rohl has done much to synchronize Egyptian chronology with the chronology of the bible. Rohl claims that the Amarna letters were not to be compared to Joshua's conquest of Canaan, a period where they clearly do not fit, but rather tell the tale of Saul's and David's claiming of Israel from Phillistine Egyptian vassals. He synchonizes Ramesses II's conquests of Asia Minor with the biblical invasion of Shishak. Also, he identifies the Egyptian 'Hyksos' with the Amalekites of the book of Exodus. There are many other enlightening points of connection with the bible that Rohl makes, but my point here is not to explain them all. The true value of this book for any egyptologist, student of biblical history, or any student of the ancient world at all, is this book's popular presentation of the field of archaeology and ancient history. So rare are books that actually connect a lay reader with the methodologies and evidence upon which researchers base their works. In order to show a need for a revision of Egyptian chronology, Rohl shows how the entirety of Egyptian chronology depends on all but of a handful of archaeological finds, many of them of dubious reliability. Even if Rohl's opponents find more pieces of evidence supporting the standard chronology, the number will still be very small and they will quite likely be as subject to interpretation, as are the ones that Rohl has pointed out. Rohl goes to great lengths to show the history of the observations that scholarship has made, thereby showing us where they may have gone wrong. (As a popular book, I must confess that parts of Rohl's historical narratives depict events in which one expects to find Indiana Jones) Next, when building his own chronology, Rohl puts us close to the texts and archaeological evidence upon which he bases his theories. Rohl's conclusions are in many cases impressive, but in some cases I had to shake my head and come to the conclusion that he was grasping at straws. For instance, I believe that his work in astronomical retrocalulations to find the dates of eclipses recorded in ancient texts is pretty shaky. I even doubt that the text that he is talking about is even mentioning an eclipse. This information has proved to be incredibly valuable to me, however, as I now know that astronomy based chronology, something I though would give absolute and undisputable dates, is as foggy an area of research as any. I do not know if I will eventually embrace Rohl's ideas or not, or if partially. I do know that reading this book has shown me the types of reasoning and observations that old world historians make, and can now make an informed decision about how firm our grip on dating events of the past is. My conclusion: if somebody tells you some biblical event did not happen because the dates don't line up with scientific knowledge, don't be disheartened. We have a LONG way to go before we can truly be confident about such statements, if indeed we will ever arrive at that sort of knowledge. This uncertainty that I have gained from Rohl's book is corroberated by the "Oxford History of Ancient Egypt" which provides wonderful information on Egyptian chronology. Everyone who wants to study ancient history, whether it be Egyptian, biblical, Middle Eastern, or even Chinese for that matter, should read this book, so the next time they read somewhere that 'such and such happened at 3200 BC', they will know to take that statement with a grain of salt. Whether Rohl is right or not, I am forever indebted to him for showing me how chronologists operate. Lastly, I would like to say, after all this talk about archaeology and methodology of Egyptologists, that this book is very readable and comprehensible to the lay reader. Though a smattering of knowledge of biblical and/or Egyptian history will make the book more interesting to the reader, no such knowledge is required in order to understand the book or find value in it. It is truly a popular book intended for the average interested person. I recommend it to all.
Rating: 
Summary: History is a many coloured coat
Review: __________________ Rohl comes from the Glasgow Chronology, an alternative to Velikovsky's Ages in Chaos timeline, as does Peter James and his coauthors. As Martin Sieff has pointed out, the Velikovsky model is the only one that works. All of these scholars recognize that the conventional pseudochronology is untenable. James hasn't any use for Rohl's timeline or for Kenneth Kitchens; Rohl has none for Kitchens; neither James nor Rohl seem to mention each other by name very often in public forums. Rohl has had more success in his publishing endeavors, possibly because of his exploration of Biblical characters. Velikovsky's reconstruction remains the most viable despite the posthumous badmouthing that scholar has had to endure. James has claimed that V didn't understand archaeology or stratigraphy, a claim that is pretentious rubbish. Rohl and James et al accept most of the conventional New Kingdom pseudochronology, apparently willing to ignore the written record and the archaeological findings of the past century and more. Rohl attempts to rework Velikovsky's analysis of the el-Amarna letters, but does so in order to prop up his own warmed-over version of the conventional. Rohl even resorts to so-called archaeoastronomy. Since the destruction of the palace of Ugarit occurred at some indeterminable time after the tablet he cites was recorded, and for other reasons, the eclipse data is irrelevant to the dating of the fire. The only thing that will settle the question (and for that matter, resolve chronology questions) is scientific dating, among other things of fired ceramics, such as the eclipse tablet mentioned above. When the thermoluminescence date shows a much more recent origin, all thermoluminescence dating will be called into question. Should be fun. As Velikovsky pointed out over twenty years ago, the conventional date for Hammurabi was reduced by nearly six centuries -- quite an error considering how reliable the conventional chronology is supposed to be. Where Rohl agrees with Velikovsky (check the index for at least two instances in which V is mentioned by name) he is on solid ground -- as in his identification of the era of Joseph. The book is weakened by his devotion to the garbled chronology of the New Kingdom of Egypt. Still recommended for those who enjoy ancient history, particularly for those considering works by Bauval or Hancock. Also of interest: -:- Ages In Chaos by Immanuel Velikovsky (0848814975) -:- The Secret of Crete by Hans Wunderlich (0026316005, 0285621645, out of print) -:- Centuries of Darkness by Peter James (0813519500, 0813519519, 022402647X) -:- Murder of Tutankhamen by Bob Brier (0425166899) -:- Giving Goliath His Due by Neal Bierling (0801010187; out of print; available online; suffers from the author's reliance on the conventional pseudochronology) -:- Voices of the Rocks by Robert Schoch et al (0609603698) -:- Serpent in the Sky by John Anthony West (0835606910, 0517566354, 0060145811) -:- The Mysteries of the Sphinx (VHS, available online only) -:- Plato Prehistorian by Mary Settegast (0940262347, 0961733314)
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