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One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the last 10,000 years took place at the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea, but its dating during the late 17th or 16th century BCE remained controversial. Volcanic ash from the eruption spread over a large area in the eastern Mediterranean region. One of the lingering questions in archaeology was how this huge geological event lined up with royal Egyptian chronologies.

Now, a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and University of Groningen researchers have produced the first radiocarbon dates concerning King Ahmose, the pharaoh who reunited Upper and Lower Egypt and established the New Kingdom.

Their results show that the explosive eruption occurred prior to the New Kingdom during the Second Intermediate Period. The new radiocarbon dates significantly favor a "low" (i.e. younger) chronology for the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, which is of great importance in our understanding of Egyptian relations with neighboring civilizations in the region.

Their findings were in PLOS One last month.

Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at BGU's Sylan Adams Sde Boker Campus and Prof. Johannes van der Plicht of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands received rare permission to select samples of Egyptian artifacts at the British Museum and the Petrie Museum in London for radiocarbon dating. Supervised by museum staff, samples were taken of a mudbrick from the Ahmose Temple at Abydos (British Museum), a linen burial cloth associated with Satdjehuty (British Museum), and six wooden stick shabtis from Thebes (Petrie Museum).

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They discovered that, contrary to traditional archaeological understandings, the volcanic eruption did not occur during the Egyptian New Kingdom, but occurred earlier, during the Second Intermediate Period. Radiocarbon dates of the Santorini eruption are significantly older than the first-ever radiocarbon dates concerning Pharaoh Ahmose and the other artifacts investigated of the 17th to early 18th Dynasty.

"Our findings indicate that the Second Intermediate Period lasted considerably longer than traditional assessments, and the New Kingdom started later," says Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins.