Secret_History

Chapter 10: Who Wrote the Bible and Why? 427
It is understood that Manetho only included 30 dynasties, the 31st being added
later for the sake of completeness. However, the fact is, there are no original
copies of The Egyptian History by Manetho. All we have of his work are excerpts
cited by Josephus, the Jewish historian of the first century AD, and by two
important Christian chronographers, Sextus Julius Africanus (3rd century AD),
and Eusebius (4th century AD). George the Monk, Syncellus, used both Africanus
and Eusebius extensively as his sources in his history of the world written in 800
AD. It is fairly easy to realize that all three of these men had agendas. We also
note, once again, the period of time in which they were writing, and the fruits of
their efforts in terms of the imposition of Christianity based on the platform of
Judaism, the ultimate arbiter of the “you are doomed” linear view of Time.
It is regularly claimed that Egyptian chronology is based on “astronomical
dating”. What does this mean? It actually means that Egyptian dating is based on a
theory that the Egyptians used astronomical dating. But many people do not
realize this and believe that Egyptian chronology is actually based on astronomy.
The fact is there are astronomically fixed Near Eastern dates, but they are not
Egyptian dates. Two Babylonian cuneiform tablets have been found, each one
filled with an entire year of data on the sun, planets, and eclipses. These dates fix
two years: part of 568 / 567 B.C. and part of 523 / 522 B.C. Those are our oldest
astronomically fixed dates. There is one other older Near Eastern eclipse, noted by
the Assyrians, which has enough partial data to fix it at one of two years: it applies
either to 763 BC or 791 BC. But experts do not agree on which date this eclipse
occurred.
When we dig even deeper into these dating assumptions, we find that the main
peg upon which the assumptions are hung is called the “Sothic cycle”.
What is the Sothic cycle?
The experts tell us that the Egyptian civil year had 365 days - 3 seasons, (Akhet,
Peret, Shemu), 4 months each with 30 days per month. To this, they added 5
additional epagomenal days. Since the actual orbit of the earth around the sun
takes 365 and about a quarter days, this calendar falls behind by one day every
four years. Nowadays, we correct this by adding an extra day every four years in a
“leap year”. However, if no calendar corrections are made, such a year would soon
create significant problems (the experts say). How the Egyptians dealt with this
was a matter of some conjecture, and it was finally decided that they corrected
their calendar every 1460 years at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius.
Where did this idea come from?
Our information on the alleged Sothic cycle depends largely on the late classical
writers Censorinus (ca. 238 AD) and Theon (379-395 AD). Sir William Flinders
Petrie writes, referring to a table of purported observations of Sirius:
Now in going backward the first great datum that we meet is that on the back of the
medical Ebers papyrus, where it is stated that Sirius rose on the 9th of Epiphi in the
9th year of Amenhotep I. As the 9th of Epiphi is 56 days before the 1st of Thoth,
Sirius rose on that day at 4 X 56 years (224) before the dates at the head of the first
column. As only 1322 B.C. can be the epoch here, so 1322 + 224 = 1546 B.C. for
the 9th year of Amenhotep I, or 1554 B.C. for his accession. And as Aahmes I
reigned 25 years, we reach 1579 B.C. for the accession of Aahmes and the
beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty. This is not defined within a few years owing to
four years being the equivalent of only one day’s shift; owing to the rising being