are to be sought in the world of Israel’s environment. The problems besetting the establishing of an ‘absolute’ chronology for the biblical data (i.e., one which dates the inner-biblical ‘relative’ chronology by means of cross-reference to datable external events or named persons) are, however, notorious even for periods which stand more fully in the broad daylight of history than does the exodus. For example, a fixed point for settling the chronology of later Assyrian history is provided by the