The Influence of Egyptian Chronology in the Archaeology of the Iron Age Negev: A Reassessment

JUAN MANUEL TEBES

Göttinger Miszellen

Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie

Lugar: Göttingen, Alemania; Año: 2004 vol. 198 p. 91 - 104

0344-385X

Though the Negev desert is the nearest eastern land area to Egypt, this proximity very often has not benefited the understanding of the chronology of the region. The main problem for the study of  the Negev in the Iron Age is that local written sources are almost non-existent for this period. In addition, the recurrent political and economic contraction experienced by Assyria and Babylonia after the 12th century BC crisis implies that Mesopotamian sources concerning the Early Iron Southern Levant are extremely scarce. For the period since the end of the Egyptian 20th Dynasty until the first archaeological synchronisms with the Assyrian Empire (late-8th century BC), archaeologists working in the Negev have relied mainly on relative chronologies, based especially on sequences of strata, objects and ceramic types. In this paper we will deal only with the Egyptian evidence of the 12th-10th centuries BC, inasmuch as Assyrian synchronisms can be used since the middle of the 9th century BC and Assyrian or Assyrian-like archaeological artifacts since the late 8th century BC.