What's Wrong With Egyptian Chronology?

What's Wrong With Egyptian Chronology?

Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI

Biblical Authority Ministries, June 24, 2025 (Donate)

Conventional or traditional (e.g., secular interpretation of) Egyptian chronology has major problems. As a result, they add in an extra few thousand years.[1] Nevertheless, the researchers arguing for the secular view of history magnify it and rarely question it when it comes to aligning archaeological and past events in the Middle East.

Egyptian chronology methods have been shown to be errant repeatedly.[2] Egyptologists groan at the inflated dates. And yet, here it is in textbooks and technical articles as though it were the “gospel truth”.

Several years ago, some researchers got fed up with it and decided to meticulously point out the problems with it. English Egyptologist David Rohl, for example, was one of those researchers.[3]

Then Australian Egyptologist David Down (editor for Archaeological Diggings) did further revisions and began decades of research that set him on a journey trying to look at Egyptian events and dating to salvage it. Since then, other have contributed work on this as well—John Ashton, Elizabeth Mitchell, and so on.

Egyptian Artifacts housed in the British Museum; Photos by Bodie Hodge

Big Picture

Let me explain the problem from a big picture before we hone in on some of the details. The Egyptian chronology comes from lists of kings/pharaohs and how long they reigned.

Much of the information about these kings come from Manetho who lists them. Manetho was an Egyptian priest living about 250 BC. He wrote a book called Aegyptiaca in Greek which means History of Egypt. The first thing you need to realize is that Manetho's lists are flawed.

(1)   He wrote about Pharaohs who preceded him by over a millennium through secondary sources and are subjected to duplication, legends, and political biases.[4] Nevertheless, these are not as much of a major concern.

(2)   Egyptian chronology uses radiocarbon dating, astronomical cycles (e.g., Sothic calendar), and pottery styles, but these are prone to assumptions and calibration errors. But even these are not a fatal concern.

(3)   But the major flaw comes as a result of how these kings lists and their ages are treated. Modern secular chronologists stack kingly dynasties one on top of another, assuming Egypt was merely one nation that has one successive king/Pharoah after another.

To anyone who knows basic information about Egypt, this is approach is laughable! Egypt was known to have 3 kingdoms for much of its duration! The kingdoms were:

1.     Lower Kingdom

2.     Middle Kingdom

3.     Upper Kingdom

So, with a little basic research, one should easily realize that these kings lists and dynasties of Egypt are not simply one on top of each other. Instead, there was usually 3 kingdoms reigning at the same time each with their own Pharoah. The key is researching who was co-reigning where and when.

Thus, many dynasties ruled concurrently (e.g., Upper vs. Middle vs. Lower Egypt). Recognizing parallel reigns drastically shortens the timeline. So, there is a false assumption of linear successions.

In our modern understanding—imagine if someone took all the different governors of all 50 States of the USA and listed how long they reigned. What would happen if someone just stacked all their respective reigns, one on top of each other and then proclaimed the USA was thousands of years old! That would be incredibly flawed—inflating the age of the USA by thousands of years. But that is essentially what happened with Egyptian dating!

Revised Egyptian Dating Is Useful

Naturally, the revised chronology of Egypt matches rather well with a biblical timeline. It’s not an exact match and this is why biblical chronology (e.g., Ussher[5], Jones[6], Hodge[7], etc.) is obviously to be favored over Egyptian revised dating. God never errs.

Nevertheless, the revised Egyptian chronology is a good confirmation of what we expect to find after diligent researchers corrected the Egyptian chronology. John Ashton and David Down’s book Unwrapping the Pharoah’s is an excellent assessment of the revisions.

Because of the errors in traditional Egyptian chronology, events like the Exodus are often placed in the wrong time. Scholars usually associate it with Ramses II (13^th century BC), yet revisions have it earlier—around 1450 BC, during the end of the 13^th Dynasty.

Archaeological layers at Jericho, Hazor, and Ai show destruction consistent with the biblical conquest—but only if one accepts the revised date for the Exodus (~1450 BC). The current secularized Egyptian timeline misses these connections because of its inaccuracies.[8]

On the flip side, secular historians reject the biblical timeline because they argue that it doesn’t match conventional Egyptian chronology—and then reject the Bible's historical accounts (e.g., the Exodus and Jericho) because they can't find them in the misaligned Egyptian record. By the way, this is a vicious circular argument—thus, fallacious.  

Yet these events are fairly close to where they should be when using the revised chronologies. See the Revised Dates in the Table for some major events.

Timeline Comparison: Conventional vs. Revised

Event	Secular Date	Revised Date	Notes
Early Dynastic Period	3100 BC	~2200 BC	Correcting Overlap
Old Kingdom (Pyramids)	2686–2181 BC	~2100–1900 BC	Correcting overlaps
Middle Kingdom	2055–1650 BC	~1900–1700 BC	The time of Joseph
Hyksos Rule (15th Dynasty)	1650–1550 BC	~1700–1450 BC	Likely overlapped with late 13th Dynasty
Exodus	c. 1270 BC (Ramses II)	~1450 BC	Matches 1 Kings 6:1 and Judges timeline
Conquest of Canaan	~1200 BC	~1410–1400 BC	Matches with destruction layers (Jericho)
United Kingdom (Saul-David)	1050–930 BC	Same	Alignment begins here

Conclusion

The traditional secular/conventional Egyptian chronology is based on (1) inflated king lists, (2) incorrect assumptions by stacking one king on top of another even though there were multiple kingdoms co-existing at the same time, and (3) unreliable dating methods. When adjusted to reflect biblical chronology, the archaeological record better confirms the historicity of the Exodus, patriarchs, and conquest, and is more aligned with the authority of God’s Word.

Even with much better revised dates, it is always advisable to use Biblical chronological dates which are closer to absolute—though biblical chronologists can err as well, but the source document (i.e., the Bible) is superior regardless.

 

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[1] Which defies the true age of the earth.

[2] For instance, see: Donovan Courville’s The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications.

[3] For instance, see David Rohl’s Test of Time (AKA Pharaohs and Kings).

[4] D. Down and J. Ashton, Unwrapping the Pharaohs. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2006.

[5] Ussher’s The Annals of the World.

[6] Jones’ Chronology of the Old Testament.

[7] Hodge’s Age of the Earth as Tallied from Creation to the Captivity using Biblical References.

[8] Wood, B. (2008). "The Discovery of Joshua’s Ai.; Is There Evidence that the Israelites Conquered Jericho?