Scarabs, Chronology, and Interconnections

Daphna Ben-Tor uses fossils from the pill-shifter (scarab) to investigate the relationship between Egypt and the Levant during the period of the 12th and 13th dynasties. The importance of scarab fossils for the historical reconstruction of the relationship between Egypt and the Levant was discovered a long time ago. However, the controversy about the typology of scarabs excluded it as a reliable historical source. This study suggests a new typology of pill-movers for the first half of the second millennium BC based on the knowledge of Egyptian and Levantine ceramic collections. Based on this research, the age of the earth's layer can be determined, in which the scarabs and footprints were found in both regions and the connection between the second middle period in Egypt and the middle Bronze Age IIB in the Levant is proven. The principal methodological difference between current and previous research lies in the understanding of the Egyptian and Palestinian scarabs as two (instead of one) groups. The new perspective allows a systematic distinction between Egyptian and Canaanite scarabs of the time and leads to a separate stylistic and chronological typology for each group. The conclusions presented in this study show the significance of the scarabs as the main source of information for the reconstruction of the history of the 12th and 13th dynasties.