Age structure in Egypt 2009-2019 Published by H. Plecher, Oct 13, 2020 This statistic shows the age structure in Egypt from 2009 to 2019. In 2019, about 33.83 percent of Egypt's total population. Lake of Egypt is a privately owned reservoir located six miles south of Marion, Illinois and covers 2,300 acres with 90 miles of shoreline. The lake is owned by the SIPC, to supply cooling water for a coal-burning electric power plant. For almost 30 centuries—from its unification around 3100 B.C. To its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.—ancient Egypt was the preeminent civilization in the Mediterranean world.
Question: 'How old was Moses when he died? How long did Moses live?'Answer: According to Deuteronomy 34:7, “Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet his eyes were not weak nor his strength gone.” How was Moses able to live to 120? And how was Moses able to live to 120 yet still have his strength and vitality?
The life of Moses can be divided into three periods of forty years. According to Acts 7:23, for the first forty years of his life, Moses was essentially a member of the Egyptian royal family. Once Moses determined to side with the people of Israel instead of the Egyptians, he was forced to live in exile for the next forty years of his life (Acts 7:30). After returning to Egypt to free the nation of Israel from slavery, Moses lived another forty years (Acts 7:36). So, Moses was a prince for forty years, an exiled shepherd for forty years, and then the leader of a nation of freed slaves for forty years.
One would think that what Moses learned as a prince of Egypt for forty years was what prepared him to be Israel’s leader during the forty years of wilderness wanderings. But the Lord also wanted Moses to learn humility. Moses’ forty years as a shepherd taught him to be humble and to rely on the Lord. Numbers 12:3 declares, “Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth.” Moses’ experience and training during the first eighty years of his life prepared him to be Israel’s leader. But it was his face-to-face relationship with God that truly made Moses a powerful and godly leader (Exodus 33:11).
It is interesting to note that, when Moses died at the age of 120, he did not die of old age. This is despite the fact that, by Moses’ day, the typical lifespan was much shorter than 120. Moses had been supernaturally strengthened and protected from the effects of aging; he died because God had completed what He had planned for Moses. God had used Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, record God’s Law, and deliver the Israelites to the borders of the Promised Land. Because of Moses’ failure to obey the Lord in Numbers 20:1–12, God did not allow Moses to enter the Promised Land with the Israelites. So, when the Israelites were ready to enter and take possession of the land, Moses went up Mount Nebo and saw the land from an overlook, and then the Lord took him home (Deuteronomy 34:1–7). The 120 years of Moses’ life are a perfect example of a follower of God being “indestructible” until God’s plan for him or her is completed.
Introduction
Archaeologists believe Egypt’s large pyramids are the work of the Old Kingdom society that rose to prominence in the Nile Valley after 3000 B.C. Historical analysis tells us that the Egyptians built the Giza Pyramids in a span of 85 years between 2589 and 2504 BC.
Interest in Egyptian chronology is widespread in both popular and scholarly circles. We wanted to use science to test the accepted historical dates of several Old Kingdom monuments.
Previous estimates
One radioactive, or unstable, carbon isotope is C14, which decays over time and therefore provides scientists with a kind of clock for measuring the age of organic material.
The earliest experiments in radiocarbon dating were done on ancient material from Egypt. Willard F. Libby’s team obtained acacia wood from the 3rd Dynasty Step Pyramid of Djoser to test a hypothesis they had developed.
Libby reasoned that since the half-life of C14 was 5568 years, the Djoser sample’s C14 concentration should be about 50% of the concentration found in living wood (for further details, see Arnold and Libby, 1949). The results proved their hypothesis correct.
Subsequent work with radiocarbon testing raised questions about the fluctuation of atmospheric C14 over time. Scientists have developed calibration techniques to adjust for these fluctuations.
All living things are built of carbon atoms. There are various isotopes, or species, of carbon atoms with the same atomic number but different mass.
One radioactive, or unstable, carbon isotope is C14, which decays over time and therefore provides scientists with a kind of clock for measuring the age of organic material.
While alive, all plants and animals take C14 into their bodies. The numbers of C14 atoms and non-radioactive carbon atoms remain approximately the same over time during the organism’s life. As soon as a plant or animal dies, the carbon uptake stops. The radioactive carbon isotope is no longer replenished; it only decays.
Scientists have calculated the rate at which C14 decays. By measuring how much C14 remains in a sample of organic material, we can estimate its age within a range of dates.
Samples older than 50,000 to 60,000 years are not useful for radiocarbon testing because by then, the amount of C14 remaining is too small to be dated. But material from the time of the pyramids lends itself well to radiocarbon dating because they fall into the 2575-1640 date range.
Radiocarbon technicians prefer to test wood and wood charcoal because their high molecular weight mitigates material loss during the rigorous pretreatments required for radiocarbon testing. We focused our collection efforts on tiny pieces of these materials, along with reed and straw left by the ancient builders.
1984
Project members collect samples
In 1984 we conducted radiocarbon dating on material from Egyptian Old Kingdom monuments (financed by friends and supporters of the Edgar Cayce Foundation). We then compared our results with the mid-point dates of the kings to whom the monuments belonged (Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd ed.).
The average radiocarbon dates were 374 years earlier than expected.
In spite of this discrepancy, the radiocarbon dates confirmed that the Great Pyramid belonged to the historical era studied by Egyptologists.
1994-1995
In 1994-1995 the David H. Koch Foundation supported us for another round of radiocarbon dating.
We broadened our sampling to include material from:
- The 1st Dynasty tombs at Saqqara (2920-2770 BC).
- The Djoser pyramid (2630-2611 BC).
- The Giza Pyramids (2551-2472BC).
- A selection of 5th Dynasty pyramids (2465-2323 BC).
- A selection of 6th Dynasty pyramids (2323-2150 BC).
- A selection of Middle Kingdom pyramids (2040-1640 BC).
We also took samples from our Giza Plateau Mapping Project Lost City excavations (4th Dynasty), where we discovered two largely intact bakeries in 1991. Boku mobile bingo sites. Ancient baking left deposits of ash and charcoal, which are very useful for dating.
The 1995 set of radiocarbon dates tended to be 100 to 200 years older than the Cambridge Ancient History dates, which was about 200 years younger than our 1984 dates.
Comparison 1984/1995
The number of dates from the two projects was only large enough to allow for statistical comparisons for the pyramids of Djoser, Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.
There are two striking results.
First, there are significant discrepancies between the 1984 and 1995 dates for Khufu and Khafre, but not for Djoser and Menkaure.
Second, the 1995 dates vary widely even for a single monument. For Khufu’s Great Pyramid, they scatter over a range of about 400 years.
Date agreements
We have fair agreement for the 1st Dynasty tombs at North Saqqara between our historical dates, previous radiocarbon dates, and our radiocarbon dates on reed material.
We also have fair agreement between our radiocarbon dates and historical dates for the Middle Kingdom. Eight calibrated dates on straw from the pyramid of Senwosret II (1897-1878 BC) ranged from 103 years older to 78 years younger than the historical dates for his reign.
Four of the Senwosret II dates were only off by 30, 24, 14, and three years. Significantly, the older date was on charcoal (see “old-wood problem” below).
Test results from Middle Kingdom pyramid (Senwosret II).
The old-wood problem
Ancient Egypt’s population was restricted to the narrow confines of the Nile Valley with, we assume, a sparse cover of trees. It is likely that, by the pyramid age, the Egyptians had been intensively exploiting wood for fuel for a long time.
Because of the scarcity and expense of wood, the Egyptians would reuse pieces of wood as much as possible. Some of this recycled wood was burned, for example, in mortar preparation. If a piece of wood was already centuries old when it was burned, radiocarbon dates of the resulting charcoal would be centuries older than the mortar for which it was burned.
We thought that it was unlikely that the pyramid builders consistently used centuries-old wood as fuel in preparing mortar. The 1984 results left us with too little data to conclude that the historical chronology of the Old Kingdom was wrong by nearly 400 years, but we considered this at least a possibility.
Alternatively, if our radiocarbon estimations were in error for some reason, we had to assume that many other dates obtained from Egyptian materials were also suspect. This prompted the second, larger, 1995 study.
Old Kingdom problem
If the Middle Kingdom radiocarbon dates are good, why are the Old Kingdom radiocarbon dates from pyramids so problematic?
The pyramid builders often reused old cultural material, possibly out of expedience or to make a conscious connection between their pharaoh and his predecessors.
Beneath the 3rd Dynasty pyramid of pharaoh Djoser, early explorers found more than 40,000 stone vessels. These vessels included inscriptions of most of the kings of the 1st and 2nd Dynasties, but Djoser’s name occurred only once. Did Djoser gather and reuse vases that were already 200 years old from tombs at North Saqqara?
In the 12th Dynasty, Amenemhet I (1991-1962 BC) left clear evidence of this kind of recycling. He took pieces of Old Kingdom tomb chapels and pyramid temples (including those of the Giza Pyramids) and dumped them into the core of his pyramid at Lisht.
Test results from 5th Dynasty pyramid (Sahure).
Three of the eight radiocarbon dates from samples taken at our excavation at the Lost City are almost direct hits on Menkaure’s historical dates: 2532- 2504 BC. The other five range from 350 to 100 years older.
Our radiocarbon results from the Lost City site suggest that the dates on charcoal scatter widely, like those from the pyramids, with many dates older than the historical estimate. The inhabitants were very likely recycling their own settlement debris during the 85 or so years that they were building pyramids.
Conclusions
It may have been premature to dismiss the old wood problem in our 1984 study. Radiocarbon dating can only tell us when a tree died, not when it was last used. Wood may lay around for centuries before being burned, especially in a dry climate like Egypt.
Also, any living forest or stand of trees will have old trees and very young shoots. Any individual tree will have old parts (the inner rings) and very young parts (the outer rings and small branches).
Do our radiocarbon dates reflect the Old Kingdom deforestation of Egypt?
Did the pyramid builders exploit whatever wood they could harvest?
Or did they have to scavenge for wood to burn tons of gypsum for mortar, to forge copper chisels, and to bake bread for thousands of assembled laborers?
The giant stone pyramids in the early Old Kingdom may mark a major depletion of Egypt’s exploitable wood. This may be the reason for the wide scatter and history-unfriendly radiocarbon dating results from the Old Kingdom.
While the multiple old-wood effects make it difficult to obtain pinpoint age estimates of pyramids, the David H. Koch Pyramids Radiocarbon Project now has us thinking about forest ecologies, site formation processes, and ancient industry and its environmental impact—in sum, the society and economy that left the Egyptian pyramids as hallmarks for all later humanity.
Pari match com. The David H. Koch Pyramids Radiocarbon Project was a collaborative effort of Shawki Nakhla and Zahi Hawass, The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities; Georges Bonani and Willy Wölfli, Institüt für Mittelenergiephysik, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule; Herbert Haas, Desert Research Institute; Mark Lehner, The Oriental Institute and the Harvard Semitic Museum; Robert Wenke, University of Washington; John Nolan, University of Chicago; and Wilma Wetterstrom, Harvard Botanical Museum. The project was administered by Ancient Egypt Research Associates, Inc.
Age Of Egyptian Pyramids
See also: Bonani G, Haas H, Hawass Z, Lehner M, Nakhla S, Nolan J, Wenke R, Wölfli W. “Radiocarbon Dates of Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments in Egypt,” Radiocarbon 43, No. 3 (2001), 1297-1320(24).