Improbability of a Theran Collapse During the New Kingdom, 1503 - 1447 B.C.

Inevitably this result would have destroyed communication and trade for centuries between the major cultures of the Aegean, the Near East and Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to negate any probability of such geological phenomena occurring during the co-regency of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (503 - 1447 B.C.).

The graphic presence during this period of the Aegean Keftiu in the five tombs of Peumre, Senmut, User Amon, Rekhmire and Menkheperra-senb over a 54 year period, preclude the possibility that there had been any severance of Egypto-Aegean relationships during the late 16th or early 15th centuries B.C. The finds of LH II and LM I B pottery although numerically small, archaeologically support the evidence of Aegean visitors or their products, directly or indirectly in this epoch.

Therefore Marinatos' concept that the Thera collapse occurred ca. 1500 B.C., during the reigns of the co-regency of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III (1503 - 1447 B.C.), is untenable.

At the first meeting of the Thera Congress in 1969, I raised the question: If the final collapse of Thera occurred in 1500 B.C. or shortly thereafter, (as distinguished from two earlier explosions of pumice and tephra that buried Akrotiri), where was the area wide archaeological and social-economic evidence contemporaneously, for the discontinuity of intercourse in the Eastern Mediterranean that would have been caused by the inevitable, incalculable damage resulting from the tsunamis generated by the collapsing island?

For three hundred years, down to ca. 1200 B.C., with the exception of two seismic effects during MM IIIA and LM IB, on Crete and minor damage in nearby islands, there is no observable evidence for a catastrophe that Dr. Dragoslav Ninkovich (Lamont Doherty Geological Observatory) has now assessed as 14 times that of Krakatau. Although Ninkovich in his paper, given at the University of Bristol in 1965, had first agreed that the damage in the Eastern Mediterranean calibrated against the collapse of Krakatau might be four times greater than Marinatos had suggested in 1939, he ultimately realized that the collapse of Thera Island in the cul de sac of the Eastern Mediterranean would have caused within three hours at the tsunami speed in this area, a cataclysmic disaster in the Egyptian Delta, Mainland Greece, the Syro-Palestinian coast, Cyprus, Rhodes and such other communities as might have existed on the Cyclades, the Anatolian shoreline and the lower areas of Italy.

In the nine years that have elasped since I first published (1970) my hypothesis that the collapse of Thera might have occured in 1200 B.C., I have read no professional comment that furnished incontrovertible proof, and no circumstantial evidence with even a limited degree of probability that there existed archaeological evidence or otherwise to suggest an area wide cataclysm of the magnitude generated by the collapsing island of Thera, at any time ca. 1500 to 1450 B.C.

Since 1939 when in Antiquity (1939) Prof. Marinatos first confronted the evidence problem of a lack of an area wide devastation horizon in the Mediterranean and stated: "This is not the time nor the place to examine the possibility that devastation elsewhere in the Cyclades, the other islands, in Asia Minor and even in Egypt should be attributed directly or indirectly to the great disaster of Thera" - to the year of his untimely death, such evidence continued to elude him. Nevertheless, recognizing the reality of the problem of area wide destruction, he wrote in 1970, 68, "It is impossible to imagine an explosion of the Krakatau - Thera type without tsunamis. It is impossible to ignore the catastrophic power of the tsunamis. It is impossible therefore to imagine that Crete and other places in the Eastern Aegean (my emphasis) escaped terrific damage by the tsunamis around 1500 B.C. " .

Yet in the thirty years that were to elapse before the first meeting on Thera in 1969 (Acta 1971) or subsequently, was Prof. Marinatos ever able to furnish the slightest evidence of tsunami assault on the Mediterranean littorial, in answer to the question I had raised? No proof of archaeological, geological, economic or social hiatus evidence appears in any of the Thera monographs. It is perhaps significant that faced with this frustration, he confined his speculations of area wide damage to the Eastern Aegean, a geological impossibility.

Perhaps Prof. Henri van Effenterre, although not entirely satisfied with my hypothesis, best summarized my paper in his book La Seconde Fin du Monde (1974) : "As long as the analyses of volcanic layers and sediments are not completed, and if possible, better dated, as long as the geographical extent of the consequences of the explosion are not better defined by observations in the soil on well studied archaeological sites, one will doubt whether it be necessary to lay on the "Earth Shaker" the responsibility for the downfall of the Mycenaean world around 1200 B.C. But one must not put aside Mr. Pomerance's thesis without thinking carefully. One recognizes that his theory, even if it does cause reservations among pure archaeologists, is one of the most satisfying ones possible for the mind. And the historical picture which one might thus paint with him of the Eastern Mediterranean is both coherent and suggestive."

I would now like to take an entirely new approach to the problem and attempt to prove on the grounds of historicity, that an area wide destruction of ca. 1500, or at least down to 1447 B.C., a period of approximately 54 years, coinciding with the co-regency of Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III cannot be synchronized with the collapse of Thera. The information from the tombs of officials and viziers of this period that there were intermittent visitations of the Keftiu people to Egypt during this period strongly suggests that there could not have been an area wide cataclysm that would have severed all trade and intercourse between the Aegean and Egypt. During this 54 year period the murals in the tombs of Peumre, Senmut, User Amon, Rekhmire and Mehkheperra-senb show a "business as usual" communication between the Creto-Mycenaeans and the pharaonic courts of the XVIII Dynasty.

Egyptian artists had a long tradition in recording the presence of aliens on the Nile. For the 12th Dynasty we have the Semites arriving as shown in the tombs of Beni Hassan. In the 18th Dynasty we have visitors from the land of Punt and later depictions of prisoners, Semitic, Libyan, Ethiopian, Nubian, Sea Peoples and the Hittites. Such close observation of foreign peoples was deeply ingrained in the Egyptian artistic tradition for almost 2000 years. The presence of the Keftiu, whether they were Cretans or Mycenaeans, the distinctively Aegean vessels (rhytons) and the raw materials, copper ingots and ivory tusks, could not have been the product of Egyptian artistic inventiveness. No military victories were involved and there is no evidence for subjugation or tribute bearing attributes in any of these tombs. It is implausible that the Aegean Keftiu bearing copper ingots and ivory tusks which had been secured by barter from Cypriote and Syro-Palestinian sources, were gift bearing. The likelihood is that political-commercial trade was the motivation. Historically, the Keftiu tomb drawings are unique. The decorative tradition of aliens, unknown in the Aegean, was carried down hundreds of years later to the walls of the Assyrian and Achaemenid kings, but these portrayed only peoples who had been subjugated, therefore tribute bearers to the ruler of the Near East.

So for a 54 year period that blankets and coincides with the time when Prof. Marinatos and others have hypothesized a devastating cataclysm in the eastern Mediterranean, we have the pictorial record of Aegeans quietly carrying on trade, doing business as usual, visiting Egypt and picking up copper ingots and ivory tusks in foreign commerce such as is known from the excavations at Kato Zakro (Platon 1971, 116).

If the coasts of Mainlland Greece and Crete would have been devastated as they surely would have been by the tsunamis roaring in on the coastal areas within an hour and a half after the great bulk of Thera had collapsed into the caldera, and if the low lying agricultural plains had been salinated by the sea waters, the calm procession of the Keftiu traveling to Egypt during this period would have been totally impossible. Nor would the recovery of the social fabric of the devastated communities been possible for hundreds of years later.

Allowing for some slight variations in Egyptian chronology of a decade or so between the dates of the Hatshepsut - Thutmose co-regency, we have the Cambridge Ancient History listing as 1503 - 1447, the dates of Von Beckevath 1490 - 1436 and the Hovnung dates of 1490 - 1436. The time variations of the last two datings, while not critical when compared with the long term effects of tsunami assaults, would extend the period during which the Thera collapse could not have taken place.

Although we have a successive order for the various viziers, there can be no certainty during the co-regency when the murals on the tombs were started or finished. Dividing up the 54 years of the co-regency with the lives of the four viziers would give an average administrative period of 13½  years, which, while not proving the length of their administration, suggests that some of the viziers' lives overlapped their successors and it is conceivable that some of the same artists worked on successive tombs.

The question naturally arises: How much archaeological support exists for the Aegean presence in the Nile Valley as reflected in the vizier tombs? Dr. R.S. Merrillees in his article "Aegean Bronze Age Relations with Egypt" (1976) probably offers the most informative summary of the presence of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, their pottery and contexts.

In summarizing Merrillees' evidence, based exclusively on ceramic finds, there is a possible flaw in the validity of his assumptions, which are based entirely on liquid commodities, i.e. oil, wine and possibly opiates. Such assumptions may not be correct and other commodities such as textiles (flax), pine wood, unguents, wax and resinous exudations may have been imported which have not survived.

For the tomb artists, these commodities graphically would have been less exotic and therefore not recorded. At Kato Zakro, the nearest Minoan Palace to Egypt, the find often two-man rip saws (Platon 1971, 113. 129. 158) and the suggestion that Eastern Crete possessed pine forests, might also offer the possible export of boats.

Merrillees comments : "Starting with the archaeological evidence, we are confronted with a striking paucity of Minoan ceramic imports to the Nile Valley. Of the seven Late Minoan I B vases attributed to an Egyptian provenance, only one was recovered from scientific excavations, a hole-mouthed pot from Sidmant Cemetery A Tomb 137. These vases do not make up a very impressive total of imports in either relative or absolute terms."

The earliest arrivals from Greece are a few Mycenaean II A vessels, of which only three can be adequately dated. The Mycenaean IIA jar from the tomb of Mentuherkhepeshef at Thebes can be securely assigned to the times of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, that is to Dynasty XVIII B.

Merrillees adds: "We can be reasonably certain that Mycenaean II A pottery did not enter Egypt much, if at all, before the reign of Hatshepsut. As there are no recorded contexts, disturbed or intact, in which Minoan and Mycenean pots have been found together, it would seem that vases of the Late Minoan I B period did not occur in Egypt after the end of Dynasty XVIII A, i.e. from 1570 to 1504 B.C." His conclusions are that since no Aegean pottery except  Mycenaean has been found in Egypt during Dynasty XVIII B (co-regency 1503 - 1450 B.C.), therefore Dynasty XVIII C (1450 - 1417 B.C.) represents an hiatus in the find of Greek pottery until the time of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) (1379 - 1326 B.C.). In the royal city at el-Amarna a substantial amount of Mycenaean III A fragments were found by Petrie and later by German and British excavations at the same site.

One of the interesting insights made by Merrillees is that the Cretan and Greek vases "all occur in essentially middle class contexts; the vizier tombs in which Aegean foreigners and their goods are depicted belong entirely to the upper or noble classes." The assumption therefore is that concurrently, while groups were appearing at the Pharaonic courts in some commerical official capacity, other Aegeans were appearing in Egyptian market places for strictly trade purposes.

While Merrillees argues that "the relatively small quantities of Minoan and Mycenaean pottery which entered Egypt during Dynasty XVIII A, B and C, gives no grounds for asserting that commerical relations, at least, between the Aegean and Egypt were intensive, regular or sustained, until the end of the  15th century B.C.", he readily concedes that "the very concentration of Mycenaean pottery at el-Amarna seems to be the exception that proves the general rule. "

For the purposes of my argument that a cataclysmic disaster could not have occured during the very period projected by Marinatos ca. 1500 B.C., because of Aegean-Egyptian intercourse, it is of relatively little importance whether the visitors were Minoans or Mycenaeans, whether the visits were continuous or spasmodic, the presence of Aegean pottery even in small quantities confirms these visits during a period when the collapse of Thera Island and the resulting tsunami devastation would have made impossible the graphic representations of Aegeans on the tomb walls. The same might well be said, particularly for the Rekhmire tomb in which Syro-Palestinians are bringing tribute. The Levantine coast would have been just as vulnerable as the Greek mainland and north Crete to the sea-seismic effects. That the disaster could not have occurred later in the Amarna period is attested to not only by the find of the Mycenean III A sherds in quantity, but also by the Amarna tablets, none of which from the Syro-Palestinian coastal area record any mention of natural disasters.

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