Chronology of the ancient Near East

"If the dates computed by Greek scholars for the fall of Troy (ranging from 1334 to 1127 with 1183 [BC] the most popular) were approximately correct, it was largely by luck for the genealogies, by which those scholars bridged the Dark Age were “heraldically” linked up with the names of epic heroes and the sons of Helen…Those of the kings of Sparta seem to have enough authentic generations to take us back to about the 9th century [BC] and thence…joined up to their heroic ancestor Herakles and to do it their earlier generations are given the improbably long average lengths of 39 years; Spartan reigns in historic times average about 25… Greek tradition may be perfectly right in saying that in the second generation after the siege of Troy, the heroic dynasties fell."

"In spite of all defects, this division into dynasties has taken so firm a root in the literature of Egyptology that there is little chance of its ever being abandoned. In the forms in which the book has reached us, there are inaccuracies of the most glaring kind…Africanus and Eusabius often do not agree; for example Africanus assigns nine kings to Dyn. XXII, while Eusabius only has three. Sometimes all that is vouchsafed to us is the number of kings in a dynasty and their city of origin…the lengths of reigns frequently differ in the two versions…the reconstructed Manetho remains full of imperfections…. Nonetheless, [it]still dominates our studies.... We are dealing with a civilisation thousands of years old and of which only tiny fragments have survived."

"Early Egyptologists were usually more tentative about their chronology, continually revising their opinions in the light of fresh evidence. Sadly the study of Egyptian chronology seems to have become so ossified that it cannot question its fundamental assumptions, accepted more for familiarity than for any basis in fact."

"I realise that by lengthening the chronology, the few facts that the historian possesses on the most problematic periods of southern Arabian history…will be diluted in a sea of time."

"The minutiae of chronology does not matter because at least for the New Kingdom, the relative sequence of kings is certain so the absolute dates are less important."

"The chronology is confused owing to the Sumerian king list’s practice of listing contemporaneous dynasties as successive."

"They [the authors of Centuries of Darkness] indicate that the chronology for the time period in question, the so called “Third Intermediate Period”, is altogether shaky. They show that there are problems with the historical chronology of the Near East. And the sad fact is that the historical chronology for the rest of the Mediterranean until well after 700 BC rests on these. It is already widely known that the chronology for early Italy, during the Iron Age period, down to and including the foundation of Rome, is a complete shambles.... I feel their critical analysis is right and that a chronological revolution is on the way."