What year did Thutmose the third die?

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2026-05-17 10:46

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Currently there are two basic models in Egyptology, called the High and Low chronologies. These both work by tracking the heliacal rising of the Sothis star which aligns with their civil year once every 1461 years. It just so happens that a Pharaoh reigning just after Thutmoses the Third records on his tomb walls the Sothis alignment at a given point in his reign. The timing then can be dated to the very day, as can the precise reign of Thutmoses the Third--53 years, 10 months and 26 days.

The problem is that there were two places from which the Sothis star could have been sighted from--the old capital at Memphis or the new capital at Thebes which was the case with the 18th dynasty Thutmoses was a part of. Depending on which location the star was calculated from, this will throw off the death by about 18-30 years of a given pharaoh.

The document--we have only one--that mentions the rising of Sothis does NOT specify which capital it was sighted from. The paper and ink are from Thebes, but that proves nothing because they still could have sighted it at Memphis and wrote it down later at Thebes. It may simply be the archive in Memphis did not survive and this is the only copy that was copied in Thebes.

If the rising of Sothis was from Memphis, Thutmoses III dies in March of 1450 BCE, but if from Thebes it is March of 1426. (A few say 1432.)

My personal opinion is that the Memphis dating is more accurate. We have a first century CE text that mentions sightings went straight from Memphis to Alexandria in the last years of the Pharaohs with no mention of Thebes. The Bible in 1 Kings 6:1, tells us the Exodus happened in 1447 bce, 480 years before Solomon's 4th year in 967 BCE (See Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, p, 78) and Solomon's time is widely agreed upon. Since I further believe the Pharaoh of the Exodus died in the Sea of Reeds, this puts Thutmoses the Third's death around March 25th, 1447 BCE, about 2 days after the historical Exodus.

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