A Synchronized Early Middle Bronze Age Chronology for Egypt, the Levant, and Mesopotamia

Abstract

Recent years have seen considerable progress in Middle Bronze Age chronological research throughout the eastern Mediterranean and ancient Near East. New radiocarbon dating initiatives have cast doubts on some long-held synchronisms and especially on the dating of the key-site of Tell el-Dabʿa (ancient Avaris) in the eastern Nile Delta. The excavator’s dating of this site was used to argue for the New (ultra-low) or Mebert Chronology of Mesopotamia, but recent radiocarbon data from Tell el-Dabʿa, the southern Levant, and Anatolia challenge the low Middle Bronze Age chronology for the Levant and endorse the Middle Chronology for Mesopotamia, as we demonstrate in what follows. Chronology can be regarded as one of the most essential but also contested fields of research within ancient Near Eastern studies. Every historical or archaeological argument stands or falls with the (relative or absolute) chronology applied, as “the question when is a prerequi-