Tell el-Dabca and Byblos: New Chronological Evidence

Abstract

This article is one of several, which aimed to synchronise major excavation sites along the Levantine coast with the relative chronology of Tell el-Dabca. Research was done in the frame of the EU MSCA project “Egypt in the Levant”. While the main part of this studies was to synchronise newly excavated sites with Tell el-Dabca, also promising museum material from old excavations was taken into consideration. As the Byblos area was one of the most important trading partners for Tell el-Dabca, it was decided to re-investigate the Royal Tombs of the Middle Bronze Age and try to synchronise their material with the stratigraphy of Tell el-Dabca. Since their discovery in the early 1920s, there is an ongoing debate about their chronological dating, which was strongly influenced by the appearance of Egyptian prestige objects naming the kings Amenemhet III and IV inside two of these tombs (tomb I and II). With a few exceptions, most of the scholars tend to date the bulk of these burials into the MB IIA period, with the tombs I and II being contemporaneous with the reign of these late 12th Dynasty kings. The re-investigation of the Egyptian, Egyptianising and local material from the Royal Tombs I, II and III as well as their synchronisation with the Tell el-Dabca stratigraphy is presented in this study.