Originally Posted by Lucretius

From what little research I have been able to do online the identification of this statue (on Christian literalist sites alone as far as I can see ) is IF it is a statue and the palace of Imonhotep (which is far from certain) IF Joseph was a real person and not a mythical character and IF Joseph actually was Imonhotep (which is far from certain) then it MAY be a statue of Joseph (or it MAY NOT) .
So thats quite a few assumptions to start off with,not to mention how does this fit in with the accepted chronology or even Biblical chronology.
Some Christian sites appear to identify Joseph with Khufu (Cheops) a different person entirely to Imonhotep so as far as I can see they just want Joseph to be "someone else" to fit him into their revised timeline,(in fact anyone but Joseph ) .

Originally Posted by jules?

What do people think? a thread, moderated by a preciding mod who can act as a judge and compel witnesses to 'answer the question'. A free choice thing of course but one where entering requires certain rules to be followed.

Originally Posted by VoxRat

Just out of curiosity, do they give any evidence for this "Imonhotep = Joseph" hypothesis?

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

I'm a bit late for the party here.

Has anyone yet pointed out that if Rohl's theories are indeed correct, then:

1) There was no global Flood - the story is about a local flood in mesopotamia.

2) There was no Tower of Babel - the story is a mangled account of the Temple of Inanna at Uruk.

3) There was no Garden of Eden - the stories of Eden and of Cain/Abel is a mangled account of the movement of tribes around Lake Urmia in Turkey.

4) There were no Antediluvian Patriarchs - the story of them is a mangled version of the Sumerian King Lists.

5) Rohl's Egyptian timeline contradicts Dave's own timeline, particularly in terms of the founding of Egypt, and still has the Egyptians thriving through the date in which Dave puts his flood without noticing it.

Basically - the last thing Dave wants is for Rohl to be proven right. That would be just as devastating to his own beliefs as if the mainstream view is right.

It would be unfair of me to accuse him of actually doing this - but it would certainly appear that all Dave wants is do is use Rohl as a wedge to cast doubt on the mainstream view - cherry-picking from Rohl's theories only those small parts that he can use to support his own views and ignoring all the rest - not to actually have Rohl's view replace the mainstream.

Originally Posted by afdave

....I'm curious, Dean, do you agree that Champollion made a mistake? Do you agree that this mistake throws off conventional Egyptian chronology by several hundred years?

There is also no philological alternative to the equation Shoshenq = Shishak, varying only by the amissable nasal n. Rohl's attempted equation with Sessi (short name for Ramesses II and rarely III) is totally false, and ignores what is known of the linguistic facts. These are that as between Egyptian and biblical Hebrew, s is always reproduced as s, never as sh - and sh as sh never as s. Thus Hebrew Pi-Beseth is from Egyptian Pi(r)-Baste, Hebrew Phineas derives from Egyptian Panhesi, and Hebrew Shoshana(t) from Egyptian Sh-sh-n(t) and so on. So Sessi does not give Shish(aq), nor can the q be arbitrarily added or subtracted at a whim. The ommision of Jerusalem from Shoshenq's great list at Karnak means nothing - the city was not stormed or captured; and other Judean controlled places do appear in it. There is no factual basis for denying that Shoshenq I is the Biblical Shishak. Contrariwise the apparent Shalim in Ramesses II name-list at the Ramesseum in his year 8 may have nothing to do with Jerusalem - its context in the list is too far north.