The House of David
by
Damien F. Mackey
Perhaps even more remarkable still was that Israel's religion was overflowing into Egypt. That Hatshepsut was re-inventing Karnak as Egypt's Jerusalem is evidenced by the unmistakably Davidic psalmery that she had written on the base of one of her obelisks.
Introduction
In a series of Compass shown on ABC TV (Australia) in January of 2003, British journalist and former Beirut hostage, John McGrath, who had developed a great interest in the Holy Land, set out to find if the best known Old Testament stories had any basis in archaeological fact. Perhaps the title of the TV documentary, “It Ain’t Necessarily So”, already gave the viewer a preview, a foreboding, that this man's search was not going to prove terribly successful. Actually it turned out to be quite a disaster.
The experienced archaeologists upon whose information this presenter had to depend completely, men like William Dever and Israel Finkelstein, unable to find any evidence for an Egyptianised Israel of the Exodus, or for the Joshuan conquest of Canaan, or for the Solomonic era, led him to the conclusion that these biblical events had no basis in reality. It was tragic - and frustrating in the extreme - to watch these archaeologists in action.
These, every time, guided by their faulty Sothic dating system (on this, see my:
The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited
pointed to an ‘empty’ site or thin air as to where they thought Joshua, or David, or Solomon, ought to be, whilst at that same moment standing upon the very archaeological layers where the evidences for these civilizations are actually to be found.
Talk about the blind leading the blind!
Some of the archaeologists interviewed did occasionally come to light with data that they thought belonged to a given biblical era or nation, such as the Philistines. A few, even though they had found nothing, argued the ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence’ line. In this regard one cited the case of the Byzantine era, considered to have had a huge influence upon Jerusalem, of which he had nevertheless found “not a single sherd”. But by far the majority of archaeologists interviewed were entirely of the minimalist Dever-Finkelstein view.
There were a couple of moments of light. As when the founder of the famous Tell Dan inscription referring to the “House of David” showed that actual inscription to the cameras and laughed at the early attempts by archaeologists to explain it away. And the program's presenter himself came to be convinced that a massive altar on Mount Ebal in Samaria was the one that Joshua had built there (Joshua 8:30). Indeed it was made of “unhewn stones” (v. 31), and the archaeological data discovered around this altar seemed to fit very well that this was indeed an ancient Israelite site of sacrifice.
David himself was grudgingly accorded a real existence, based largely on the Tell Dan evidence, but now as only some very petty king over a tiny portion of Israel. Solomon, however, was virtually denied any real existence at all.
The irony is that, as with David, so with Solomon, there is an ancient, non-biblical reference to his “House”"; but, because it was found in Egypt (El-Amarna) - whose history has not been properly synchronized with Israel’s - it cannot be identified, as can David's, for what it really is. I refer to the Bit Šulmãni references in the El Amarna archive (letters 74 and 290), which phrase translates as “House of Šulmãn”. See my article:
House of Solomon
Tell El-Amarna [EA]
The relevant EA letters were actually written by the king of Jerusalem (“Urusalim”), but not unequivocally to a pharaoh. For, as I noted in my article:
King Abdi-Hiba of Jerusalem Locked in as a ‘Pillar’ of Revised History. Part Two: With whom was Abdi-hiba corresponding?
“One is surprised to find upon perusing these letters of Abdi-hiba, that - despite Rollston’s presumption that Abdi-hiba’s “the king, my lord” was an “Egyptian monarch” - no Egyptian ruler appears to be specifically named in this set of letters”.
The royal correspondent has been most convincingly identified by revisionists as JEHORAM of Judah of the mid C9th BC (conventional dating) - who wrote (letter 290): “…the capital of the country of Jerusalem - its name is Bit Šulmãni - the king's city, has broken away”.
However, with the approximately contemporaneous pharaoh Akhnaton conventionally dated almost half a millennium before King Solomon, there could be no thought that these two letters could really contain reference to that great king of Jerusalem.
One of the archaeologists interviewed in the TV program under discussion, comparing the biblical description of David’s vast kingdom with what he believed to be the almost total dearth of historico-archaeological evidence for the king, exclaimed that if David were as great as the Bible describes him as being then we should expect some reference to him in historical documents outside of Israel, for instance “by the Egyptians and the Assyrians”.
That is a fair enough remark. And my response to it is that there is such evidence for David in abundance, if only one knows where to look for it.
The glorious and golden era of kings David and Solomon will never be found where Finkelstein keeps looking for them, in the most impoverished Iron Age strata, but rather in the Late Bronze Age. Already in my revision I have shown that the Late Bronze Israelite civilization of king Solomon overflowed like a flood into Egypt and Ethiopia. See for e.g. on this my article:
Solomon and Sheba
Just as of old, when the ancient river of Eden (site of Jerusalem; cf. Ezekiel 28:12-17) "flow[ed] out" and gushed into Egypt and into and around Cush (Ethiopia), and watered the east as the Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 2:10-14), so too did the Israel of David’s and Solomon’s time overflow to become the civilizing source of wisdom for the entire ancient world.
“Thus King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom. The whole earth sought the presence of Solomon to hear his wisdom, which God had put into his mind” (1 Kings 10:23-24).
And who were these contemporary wisdom-seeking "kings"?
They were great ones indeed. I am talking historically here.
The revision that I follow has set King Solomon at the time of such celebrated monarchs as:
HAMMURABI of Babylon;
IARIM-LIM (i.e., Hiram), Said to be a son of Abibaal (ca. 1000 BC),
of Syro-Phoenicia;
HATSHEPSUT (biblical Queen of Sheba, and later) of Egypt/Ethiopia.
Solomon himself was (according to my “Solomon and Sheba”) the great SOLON of Greek folklore (appropriated by the Greeks from the Jews; Solon's laws being found to be largely Jewish however).
The glorious reign of Hammurabi, a veritable watershed in Mesopotamian history, reflects Davidic and Solomonic influence in its every facet (socio-economic, law, religion, architecture). See e.g. my multi-part series:
Davidic Influence on King Hammurabi
commencing with:
So, too, does Hatshepsut’s reign over Egypt/Ethiopia reflect Davidic and Solomonic influence.
Solomon is said to have had certain enemies, apart from Jeroboam, rise up in the latter, decadent part of his reign: namely, HADAD the Edomite and REZIN, a Syrian (1.Kings 11:14, 23). Rezin I have previously identified with Zimri-Lim of Mari. Now a possible candidate for Hadad is Ishkhi-Adad of Qatna, ally of David's arch-rival, Shamsi-Adad I (biblical Hadadezer, as identified by Dean Hickman), and who continued on as a force for some time after the latter's death.
The two states of Aleppo and Qatna appear to have developed almost simultaneously. We are better informed about the history of the second during the reign of Shamsi-Adad I because he was the ally of Ishkhi-Adad, who occupied the throne of Qatna at that time. The arrangement between the two monarchs had been sealed by a marriage, Iasmakh-Adad, the viceroy of Mari, having married Ishkhi-Adad's daughter. Co-operation was political and military as well as economic. There were frequent movements of troops between Mari and Qatna, and it seems likely that a detachment from Mari was stationed in the Syrian town. The presence of these foreign soldiers at Qatna does not seem to indicate a relation of dependence, for Ishkhi-Adad himself insisted on their being sent, and invites his son-in-law to take part in an expedition which seems likely to yield some spoils. It was Shamsi-Adad who had taken the first steps towards the marriage, stressing to his son that the house of Qatna had a ‘name’. He also dealt on level terms with Ishkhi-Adad, whom he called his brother.
That Hadad would indeed have had a ‘name’, or would come to have had a ‘name’, is apparent from what we know of his drama-packed early life. Hadad was "of the royal house of Edom"; a country from which he had had to flee as "a young boy", with his retainers, when David's General Joab systematically, over a six month period, slew every male in Edom (1.Kings 11:14-16). The prince managed to flee to Egypt, to Pharaoh (vv. 18-20), who:
…gave him a house, assigned him an allowance of food, and gave him land. Hadad found great favour in the sight of Pharaoh, so that he gave him his sister-in-law for a wife, the sister of Queen Tahpenes. The sister of Tahpenes gave birth by him to his son Genubath, whom Tahpenes weaned in Pharaoh's house; Genubath was in Pharaoh's house among the children of Pharaoh.
Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky may very well have found, as he claimed to have (Ages in Chaos I), references to both Queen Tahpenes and Genubath in the Egyptian records, appropriately spaced according to his chronological revision. Thus Velikovsky wrote (pp. 80, 157-158):
The pharaoh [who received young Hadad] must have been Ahmose. Among his queens must have been one by the name of Tahpenes. We open the register of the Egyptian queens to see whether pharaoh Ahmose had a queen by this name. Her name is actually preserved and read Tanethap, Tenthape, or, possibly, Tahpenes.
… Hadad had returned to Edom [sic] in the days of Solomon, after the death of Joab. Since then about forty years had elapsed. Genubath, his son, was now the vassal king of Edom; he dwelt either in Edom or in Egypt.
Tribute from this land, too, must have been sent to the Egyptian crown; there was no need to send an expedition to subdue Edom. When Thutmose III returned from one of his inspection visits to Palestine he found in Egypt tribute brought by couriers from the land "Genubatye", which did not have to be conquered by an expeditionary force.
"When his majesty arrived in Egypt the messengers of the Genubatye came bearing their tribute."
It consisted of myrrh, "negroes for attendants", bulls, calves, besides vessels laden with ivory, ebony and skins of panther.
Who were these people of Genubatye? Hardly a guess has been made with regard to this peculiar name. The people of Genubatye were the people of Genubath, their king, contemporary of Rehoboam.
And thanks to Velikovsky's 18th Egyptian dynasty reconstruction, we can know too that Saul of Israel was contemporaneous with pharaoh Ahmose, and that Israel was in fact allied with the Egyptians; an alliance forged in their common struggle against the hated Amu /Amalekites.
With this in mind, I had previously suggested that David's resounding defeat of Hadadezer's Syrian coalition (e.g. 2.Samuel 8:3-6) would have been achieved with Egyptian military support; this last being a factor that would become common practice (at least in theory) during a later phase of the 18th dynasty (el-Amarna).
But it had seemed that there was far more than just a military union between Israel and Palestine. Egypt was in fact beginning to be flooded by Israel’s new, vibrant civilization.
But how could this be happening to a nation known to be extremely conservative, insular and closed to change?
While the beginnings of the 18th Dynasty of Egypt and the United Monarchy of Israel were closely concurrent (as per Dr. Velikovsky), I had erred in the past by trying to identify the Kings of Israel also as 18th dynasty Pharaohs. This is a notion of Dr. Ewald Metzler, with which I had previously become quite enamoured, having written as follows:
The Encouraging Signs that King Saul of Israel was Pharaoh Amenhotep I.
There were, I found, some initial encouraging signs for Amenhotep I's being king Saul. For instance:
1. Amenhotep I was not related to Ahmose, but married his daughter, Ah-hotep. Now, amazingly, Saul had a father-in-law called Ahimaaz, which seems to be an exact Hebrew equivalent of the Egyptian name, Ahmose; Saul having married Ahimaaz's daughter, Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50).
2. Secondly, DNA testing has shown that Amenhotep I was not related to Thutmose I; just as David was unrelated to Saul.
3. Thirdly, Amenhotep I and Thutmose I may have shared a co-regency; just as Saul and David were yoked together (though usually in uncomfortable harness, as enemies) in a co-regency.
Despite these encouraging early signs, I considered my Amenhotep I = Saul equation to be extremely tentative when I wrote my article on the new 18th dynasty scenario, entitled "The House of David", in which I proposed that the Thutmoside 18th dynasty of Egypt was actually, in its origins, a Davidic Israelite dynasty.
Whether the biblical “Ahimaaz” may yet be identifiable with pharaoh Ahmose may perhaps be a matter for further consideration.
I would no longer attempt to identify King Saul with pharaoh Amenhotep I, nor King David with pharaoh Thutmose I. However, I still think that the latter pharaoh may be biblical identifiable, as King Tolmai of Geshur. See e.g. my article:
The vicissitudinous life of Solomon's pulchritudinous wife
The Coronation Ceremonies
On the potentially Davidic influence upon pharaoh Thutmose I, see my article:
Thutmose I Crowns Hatshepsut
As I have written previously:
“Moreover, the overflow from Israel went to the very heart of the matter: to the coronation ceremony. The very ceremonial procedure, in its three phases, that David had used for the coronation of his chosen son, Solomon, was the procedure used by Thutmose I (Amenhotep I’s successor) in the coronation of the former’s daughter, Hatshepsut”.
Might not one have imagined that Egypt, so steeped in ceremony and cultic procedure over so many dynasties and centuries would by now have had its own inviolable court system?
How great therefore must have been the Israel of David’s time that even its ceremonial procedures had flowed into Egypt?
Religious Parallels
Perhaps even more remarkable still was that Israel’s religion was overflowing into Egypt. That Hatshepsut was re-inventing Karnak as Egypt’s Jerusalem is evidenced by the unmistakably Davidic psalmery that she had written on the base of one of her obelisks. Conventional scholar, J. Baikie, both notes it and chronologically misinterprets it (A History of Egypt, 1929, p. 63):
“And then, in language which might have come straight out of the Book of Psalms, though it belongs to an age centuries before [sic] the first of the Psalms was written, she continues:
I did it under [God's] command; it was he who led me.
"Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime ... Teach me thy way, oh Lord, and lead me in a plain path ... he leadeth me ..." Ps. 42:8; 27:11; 23:2.
I conceived no works without his doing; it was he who gave me directions. "... when the king sat in his house, and the Lord gave him rest round about him from all his enemies ... thou shalt build me an house ..." 2.Sam. 7:1,5.
"He (David's son) shall build an house for my name ..." 2.Sam. 7:13
I slept not because of his temple; I erred not from that which he commanded.
"The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy precepts." Psalm 119:110.
My heart was wise before my father; I entered into the affairs of his heart.
"Thou hast proved my heart; thou hast visited me in the night ... Who so is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving kindness of the Lord." Ps. 17:3; 107:43.
"For he shall not much remember the days of his life; because God answereth him in the joy of his heart." Eccl. 5:20.
I turned not my back on the City of the All-Lord; but turned to it the face.
"Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps declined from thy ways ... Thy face, O Lord, will I seek." Ps. 44:18; 27:8.
I know that Karnak is God's dwelling upon earth ….
James Breasted, Records of Egypt, Vol. II, Sec. 316; p. 131. "I have surely built thee an house to dwell in, a settled place for thee to abide in forever. ... The Lord God ... may dwell in Jerusalem forever." 1.Kings 8:13; 1.Chronicles 23:25.
Baikie continues (loc. cit.):
The sleepless eagerness of the queen for the glory of the temple of her god, and her assurance of the unspeakable sanctity of Karnak as the divine dwelling-place, find expression almost in the very words which the Psalmist used to express his sense of duty towards the habitation of the God of Israel, and his certainty of Zion's sanctity as the abiding-place of Jehovah: "Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids. Until I find out a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob - For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever; here will I dwell; for I have desired it" Psalms 132:3-4, 13-14; 2.Samuel 7:5-6
As I have noted in previous articles, not only David's own writings, but even images from the pre-Davidic Torah (e.g. Genesis) - and from Solomon's wisdom writings and his love poem, Song of Songs - were used by Hatshepsut in her inscriptions.
Construction Parallels
Hatshepsut had even had built her magnificent temple at Deir el-Bahari along Solomonic lines - not surprisingly since Solomon himself, as Senenmut - was her chief architect. The Phoenician influence this beautiful temple displays (cf. Mariette) would undoubtedly be the work of Hiram's Phoenicians, allies of Solomon, who were amongst the master craftsmen for the building of the Temple in Jerusalem (1.Kings 5:7-18).
Covenant, Ark of the
Hatshepsut would even employ a high-priest in her religious infrastructure.
Now of the high offices of priest, secretary and recorder (herald) established by David in Israel (2.Samuel 8:16-17. Cf. 1.Kings 4:2-3), the latter two are actually considered by some (wrongly, I think) to have been borrowed from Egypt. More likely now the correct order of influence is that these became established Egyptian offices only after having firstly been borrowed from Davidic Israel.
Furthermore, do we not find at the time of Hatshepsut greater attention being given to the greatest of all the gods, Amun, and to his barque (ark)-like vessel which was carried around by priests bearing poles on their shoulders? Thus Joyce Tyldesley (Hatchepsut the Female Pharaoh, 1998, pp. 106-107):
The Red Chapel, now known more commonly by its French name of Chapelle Rouge, was a large sanctuary of red quartzite endowed by Hatshepsut to house the all-important barque of Amen. Amen's barque, or barge, known as Userhat-Amen (Mighty of Prow is Amen), was a small-scale gilded wooden boat bearing the enclosed shrine which was used to protect the statue of the god from public gaze. .... When Amen, on the holy days which were also public holidays, left the privacy of his sanctuary to process through the streets of Thebes, he sailed in style concealed within the cabin of his boat-shrine which was carried, supported by wooden poles, on the shoulders of his priests. When Amen was not traveling the barque rested in its own sanctuary or shrine.
The sacred barque had always played a minor role in Egyptian religious ritual, but during the early New Kingdom it had become an increasingly important part of theology, and most temples now gave great prominence to the barque sanctuary.
That strongly reminds one of the Ark of the Covenant, of great age, before which David danced (2.Samuel 6:14). David had re-emphasized the order that the awe-inspiring Ark was to be carried by “no one but the Levites” (1 Chronicles 15:2). The 'boat' aspect may even hark back to the time when baby Moses (little Horus in the Egyptian version) was enclosed by his mother in an ark (teba) and floated on the river (Exodus 2:3).
Both the Israelite and Egyptian versions of the ark were oracular. Both ideally went forth before their armies into battle (1 Samuel 14:18). Thutmose III (the biblical "Shishak king of Egypt") will, after Hatshepsut's death, have that ark of Amun proceed before his own mighty army.
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