New Chronology (Rohl)

New Chronology (Rohl)

New Chronology is an alternative Chronology of the ancient Near East developed by English Egyptologist David Rohl and other researchers beginning with A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History in 1995. It contradicts mainstream Egyptology by proposing a major revision of the conventional chronology of ancient Egypt, in particular by redating Egyptian kings of the 19th through 25th Dynasties, lowering conventional dates up to 350 years. Rohl asserts that the New Chronology allows him to identify some of the characters in the Old Testament with people whose names appear in archaeological finds.

The New Chronology, one of several proposed radical revisions of the conventional chronology, has not been accepted in academic Egyptology, where the conventional chronology or small variations of it remain standard. Professor Amélie Kuhrt, head of Ancient Near Eastern History at University College, London, in one of the standard reference works of the discipline, notes that "Many scholars feel sympathetic to the critique of weaknesses in the existing chronological framework, but most archaeologists and ancient historians are not at present convinced that the radical redatings proposed stand up to close examination." Rohl's most vocal critic has been Professor Kenneth Kitchen, one of the leading experts on biblical history and the author of the standard work on the conventional chronology of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period, the period most directly affected by the New Chronology's redating of the 19th to 25th dynasties.