Yoking biblical history to an uneven Sothic Star Egyptology

 

 

by

 Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Biblical history cannot be verified in terms of the conventional

(Sothic-Sirius) Egyptology, which is an artificial construct.

 

 

Introduction

 

When I, in 1981, with a background in ancient history (University of Tasmania), began a search for the great Hebrew patriarch, Moses, I turned for assistance to books with such seemingly relevant titles as The Bible is True (1936), by Sir Charles Marston, and The Bible as History (1964), by Dr. Werner Keller.

 

To my genuine surprise, these books were pitifully unhelpful.

There was no Moses to be found there, nor was there a decent Exodus - just, at most, a handful of families departing from Egypt.

 

Fossicking around, between Moore Theological College and the Fisher Library (University of Sydney), I eventually came across (in Fisher) Dr. Donovan Courville’s life-saving 1971 set, The Exodus Problem and its Ramifications (Vols. 1 and 2).

 

This pioneering work taught me exactly what I needed to know, namely that:

 

Biblical history cannot be verified in terms of the conventional

(Sothic-Sirius) Egyptology, which is an artificial construct.

 

This is what Sir Charles Marston and Dr. Werner Keller had quite failed to understand. They had attempted - that which is totally impossible - to yoke biblical history unevenly (cf. 2 Corinthians 6:14) to an artificially derived chronology of ancient Egypt.

 

Dr. Donovan Courville, on the other hand, a Christian believer in the truth of the Bible, had insisted that the text book ancient chronology must be revised and corrected if biblical events and people were to become identifiable.

 

Having taken to heart this most important instruction, and after much reading (including Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s Ages in Chaos series, and UK and US publications devoted to a revision of history), I would soon be embarking upon a post-graduate Masters thesis on this very subject at the University of Sydney. That thesis, The Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar, was ultimately passed on both historical and scientific (archaeo-astronomical) grounds.

One examiner commented that, since I had exposed the inadequacies of the Sothic (Sirius)-based astronomical system of Egyptian chronology, “the way now lay open for a more acceptable alternative”. Exactly what I had had in mind all along, a work of reconstruction; but the less interesting work of deconstruction had had to be done first (thanks to advice from a non-university friend).

The whole epic story can be read in my article:

 

Damien F. Mackey’s A Tale of Two Theses

 

(6) Damien F. Mackey's A Tale of Two Theses

 

Creationists and biblical history

 

As far as I am aware, Creationists, or those closely associated with them, commendably intent upon proving that the Bible is actually a true historical record, will have sensibly rejected the Sothic chronology and have gone in pursuit of a revised Egyptology and stratigraphy.

Two interesting examples of this, for me, are the quite different types, Dr. John Osgood and Ron Wyatt (RIP), who was/is very popular amongst Creationists and evangelicals.

 

Dr. John Osgood

 

An Australian Creationist, Dr. Osgood has been working on biblical stratigraphy for 40 years or more. He has been an absolute guru for me as regards biblical archaeology. I doubt if I, myself, would ever have been able to identify the era of Abram (Abraham). Dr. John Osgood, and no other - as far as I am aware - has done just that, pinpointing Abram to Late Chalcolithic En-gedi (Hazazon Tamar) and those associated archaeologies in the Syro-Canaanite region, as well as in Egypt. 

 

I refer to his article, “The Times of Abraham (EN Tech. J., vol. 2, 1986, pp. 77–87):

j02_1_77-87.pdf

And whilst others, too, have made a case for the Middle Bronze I (MBI) nomadic peoples as the Exodus Israelites, none has done this more clearly and convincingly than Dr. Osgood, who will also, in the process, explain the tricky Jericho in a full OT context - from the Conquest to Hiel of Bethel in the days of King Ahab (I Kings 16:34).

 

Thus we learn that the Jericho sequence, in outline, is to be interpreted like this:

 

Joshua’s Conquest – MBI Israelites destroy Early Bronze III Jericho;

King Eglon of Moab – Middle Bronze IIB Jericho;

David’s brief tenure – Middle Bronze IIC/Late Bronze I

Hiel of Bethel – Iron Age

 

Ron Wyatt

 

An amateur US archaeologist, and Bible believer, Ron was well read in ancient history.

 

Unfortunately he, in his determination to prove the Bible to be a real history, coupled with his popularity and wide following, with money flowing in, began to doctor sites. This has been well documented. See, for instance, my article:

 

What of Ron Wyatt’s Egyptian chariot wheels in the Red Sea?

 

(8) What of Ron Wyatt's Egyptian chariot wheels in the Red Sea?

 

God does not need this sort of shonky ‘assistance’.

 

Some Creationists might baulk at the accusations made against them by Australian earth scientist, professor Ian Plimer, even threatening him with Judgment Day.

 

But I think that he makes a valid point.

 

Though I am hesitant to say such a thing, Ron Wyatt was a charlatan, a fraudster.

 

And his ex-wife, Mary Nell, is perpetuating his legacy.

She has written a book, Battle for the Firstborn: The Exodus and the Death of Tutankhamen (2020), based on the extensive research of Ron, and ostensibly God-inspired, in which she claims to have set out definitively how Egyptian history connects with the Old Testament.

 

In my article:

 

Reflecting on the biblical Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell (Lee)

 

(3) Reflecting on the biblical Egyptology of Ron Wyatt’s wife, Mary Nell (Lee)

 

I wrote, regarding the tendency of the Wyatt pair to claim divine inspiration:

 

According to Mary Nell, Ron believed that he had been able to work out the complexities of Egyptian dynastic history in relation to the Bible only because God had enabled him to do so. Otherwise, it would have been impossible considering the intricacies of the subject.

 

This is so different from what we get from Creationist Dr. John Osgood, an honest researcher, who, no doubt seeking to do the work of God, never goes so far as to claim infallibility from divine inspiration.

 

On a more positive note, I wrote in my article above:

 

Yesterday, the eve of today’s feast-day of the Immaculate Conception (8^th December, 2025), I came across a video by Mary Nell (Lee) Wyatt on the high official, Senenmut, of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty: NEW Discovery | Ron Wyatt Found Evidence For Moses In Egypt!

Prior to this, Mary Nell Wyatt was for me just a name that I had seen associated with, as his wife, the well-known Ron Wyatt. Thus I was stunned to hear her expatiate at great length and fluency on Egyptology, from the First Dynasty all the way through to the Eighteenth, in relation to her large book: Battle for the Firstborn: The Exodus and the Death of Tutankhamen (2020).

Mary Nell’s narrative, heavily based upon the research of her deceased husband, gives as plausible account as most have been able to do of biblical history, from Abram (Abraham) to Moses, in its relation to the Egyptian dynasties. And it is highly original. ….

 

Based on what I have said about the Wyatt pair, and considering also that professionals and many of their fellow evangelicals have considered them to be “fraudulent”:

How have Ron Wyatt’s claims been evaluated by professi...

 

Professional archaeologists and multiple published critiques have overwhelmingly rejected Ron Wyatt’s high‑profile claims—labeling them unscientific, unlicensed, and in many cases fraudulent—while supporters and Wyatt’s own organization continue to promote his finds without peer‑reviewed backing …. Independent examinations and institutional statements (notably from the Israel Antiquities Authority) stress that Wyatt lacked formal archaeological credentials and did not conduct legally licensed excavations, and mainstream specialists have found no verifiable archaeological evidence to support his extraordinary assertions …. [,]

 

I would suggest that God is highly unlikely to bless their efforts with a perfect Daniel-like certainty (cf. Daniel 2:45).

 

For one, the Wyatt reconstruction completely misses out on Dr. John Osgood’s essential biblico-archaeological anchor point:

 

Joshua’s Conquest – MBI Israelites destroy Early Bronze III Jericho.

 

Many of his followers will jump to the defence of Ron Wyatt whenever he is criticised, claiming him to have been a most sincere and personable type. Like most of us, though, he had that other side to him:

Ron Wyatt's personality traits, such as being stubborn and disagreeable, have been noted by those who have worked with him. Richard Rives, who accompanied Wyatt on several expeditions, described him as a sincere man who was warm to his friends but could be stubborn and ornery to those who tried to interfere with his work.

 

The strange case of Douglas Petrovich

 

He is, like Dr. John Osgood, a Creationist.

 

Again, like Dr. Osgood, he is an extremely thorough researcher.

 

And, with Dr. Osgood and Ron Wyatt, he is a firm believer in the truth of the biblical record, and he sets out to demonstrate it, but without resorting to the subterfuges of Ron Wyatt.

 

Like Ron Wyatt, but unlike Dr. Osgood, he (an ordained pastor) appears to believe that to him (as if like a new Moses) has been given divinely inspired insights.

Thus he entitles his YouTube series “Illumining the Path”.

 

Like Ron Wyatt, but unlike the gentlemanly and reasonable Dr. Osgood, he can be a prickly customer. My first very brief encounter with Douglas Petrovich was in May 2022. When I disagreed with him, and had a crack at what I called his “sloppy” research for misquoting me in a way that made an article of mine look silly, he replied in the most unexpected fashion for a scholar-academic. We saw how Creationists have threatened professor Ian Plimer with Judgment Day – well that is how he concluded with me:

 

“Let's see at judgment day whose work the Lord calls sloppy”.

 

This was like a threat from someone who believes himself to be God’s chosen instrument.

No, ‘sorry I mis-quoted you’, as I would have expected from a reasonable academic. (After all, we can all misquote someone). Instead, I am right and you are wrong!

 

What I also find mystifying is that this man, having apparently learned nothing from decades of revisionism and scholarly assaults upon the artificial Sothic scheme of Egyptology, has tried to weld the Bible to the conventional Egyptology, just as had the likes of Sir Charles Marston, long ago, and Dr. Werner Keller.

 

The results are equally fruitless.

In fact, I recently (March 2026) told him, with reference to his “Illumining the Path” series, that it was, like Seinfeld, “a show about nothing”.

 

With that hard taskmaster, Sothic chronology, dictating his every move, Petrovich will locate Joshua in the Late Bronze Age, when there was no city of Jericho to conquer; will have Moses in the Eighteenth Dynasty, but without being able identify the great man there; and will fix Joseph and the Famine during the Twelfth Dynasty, without finding either there.

 

And all this is done in such detail (he could never be called lazy) that must have the heads of his poor audience - seeking guidance along the Path, not up the garden path - spinning.

For that is the effect that it had on me.