Peter James

home · independent scholar

The well-known classical myth of Phaethon must be the earliest recorded cautionary tale about teenage driving: taking control of the chariot of his father, the Sun-god, Phaethon set the world ablaze and endangered the cosmic order, until he was felled by Zeus' thunderbolt and hurled to the earth. It has long been recognised that the tale must refle...

There has never been any consensus on the nature, composition and chronology of the “21st Dynasty”. Recent research has produced an ever-increasing multiplicity of rival models, most still relying on the information given in the surviving epitomes of the Hellenistic scholar Manetho. The claim that the regnal years given by “Manetho” for the 21st Dy...

[This article tackles two issues in the "proto-astronomical" conception of the planet Saturn, first attested in Mesopotamia and followed by the Greeks and Hindus: the long-standing problem of Saturn's baffling association with the Sun; and why Saturn was deemed to be "black". After an extensive consideration of explanations offered from the 5th cen...

It is proposed that the story of the Hurrian deity ‘Silver’, as portrayed in the Late Bronze Age Song of Silver, is a plausible precursor to the classical myth of Phaethon. Shared motifs include the teasing of the young hero, the revelation by his mother of his father’s divine identity, a temporary assumption of power in heaven, a clash with the go...

The theory of Jansen-Winkeln, which argues for a reversal of the traditional order of the late 20th Dynasty High Priests of Amun Herihor and Piankh, has provoked considerable controversy. The key to a resolution seems to lie in recognising that Herihor, on his elevation to kingship, was able (like later monarchs of the TIP) to co-opt a colleague/re...

A fresh approach is offered to the tangled arguments that surround the dating of late Iron Age Ekron (Tel Miqne). The only firm historical peg for dating the late Iron strata is provided by the temple inscription of Ikausu, an Ekronite ruler mentioned in Assyrian records in the second quarter of the seventh century BCE. From this evidence, somewhat...

The presently accepted ceramic chronology places the earliest episodes of Greek colonisation in Libya some three to four decades earlier than the traditional historical dates. A similar offset between the archaeological and historical chronologies can be seen at Naukratis and other Archaic Greek sites. A review of 'fixed points' for Archaic dating...

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