Egyptian chronology

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(Redirected from
Conventional Egyptian chronology
)

Astronomical ceiling from the tomb of Seti I showing stars and constellations used in calendar calculations
Egyptian chronology to approximate scale, including medieval and modern Egypt.

The majority of

Old Kingdom in the 27th century BC, the beginning of the Middle Kingdom in the 21st century BC and the beginning of the New Kingdom
in the mid-16th century BC.

Despite this consensus, disagreements remain within the scholarly community, resulting in variant chronologies diverging by about 300 years for the

Early Dynastic Period, up to 30 years in the New Kingdom, and a few years in the Late Period.[1]

In addition, there are a number of "alternative chronologies" outside scholarly consensus, such as the "New Chronology" proposed in the 1990s, which lowers New Kingdom dates by as much as 350 years, or the "Glasgow Chronology" (proposed 1978–1982), which lowers New Kingdom dates by as much as 500 years.

Overview

Further information: List of pharaohs

Scholarly consensus on the general outline of the conventional chronology current in Egyptology has not fluctuated much over the last 100 years. For the Old Kingdom, consensus fluctuates by as much as a few centuries, but for the Middle and New Kingdoms, it has been stable to within a few decades. This is illustrated by comparing the chronology as given by two Egyptologists, the first writing in 1906, the second in 2000 (all dates in the table are BC).[2]

Periods
Dynasty
 Breasted (1906) Shaw (2000)
Early Dynastic Period of Egypt
 First 3400–2980 c. 3000–2686
Second
Old Kingdom
 Third 2980–2900 2686–2613
Fourth 2900–2750 2613–2494
Fifth 2750–2625 2494–2345
Sixth 2623–2475 2345–2181
First Intermediate Period
 Seventh 2475–2445 2181–2160
Eighth
Ninth 2445–2160 2160–2125
Tenth
Middle Kingdom of Egypt Eleventh 2160–2000 2125–1985
Twelfth 2000–1788 1985–1773
Second Intermediate Period
 Thirteenth? 1780–1580 1773–1550
Fourteenth?
Fifteenth
Sixteenth
Seventeenth
New Kingdom of Egypt Eighteenth 1580–1350 1550–1295
Nineteenth 1350–1205 1295–1186
Twentieth 1200–1090 1186–1069
Third Intermediate Period
 Twenty-first 1090–945 1069–945
Twenty-second 945–745 945–818
Twenty-third 745–718 818–727
Twenty-fourth 718–712 727–715
Twenty-fifth 712–663 715–664
Late Period of ancient Egypt Twenty-sixth 663–525 664–525

The disparities between the two sets of dates result from additional discoveries and refined understanding of the still very incomplete source evidence. For example, Breasted adds a ruler in the Twentieth dynasty that further research showed did not exist. Following Manetho, Breasted also believed all the dynasties were sequential, whereas it is now known that several existed at the same time. These revisions have resulted in a lowering of the conventional chronology by up to 400 years at the beginning of Dynasty I.

Regnal years

Eleventh Dynasty coffin lid; found at Asyut, Egypt. Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim

Forming the backbone of Egyptian chronology are the

Eusebius and Sextus Julius Africanus
, and the dates for the same pharaoh often vary substantially depending on the intermediate source.

Regnal periods have to be pieced together from inscriptions, which will often give a date in the form of the regnal year of the ruling pharaoh. Yet this only provides a minimum length of that reign and may or may not include any coregencies with a predecessor or successor. In addition, some Egyptian dynasties probably overlapped, with different pharaohs ruling in different regions at the same time, rather than serially. Not knowing whether monarchies were simultaneous or sequential results in widely differing chronological interpretations.

Where the total number of regnal years for a given ruler is not known, Egyptologists have identified two indicators to deduce that total number: for the

Old Kingdom, the number of cattle censuses; and for later periods, the celebration of a Sed festival. A number of Old Kingdom inscriptions allude to a periodic census of cattle, which experts at first believed took place every second year; thus records of as many as 24 cattle censuses indicate Sneferu had reigned 48 years. However, further research has shown that these censuses were sometimes taken in consecutive years, or after two or more years had passed.[4] The Sed festival was usually celebrated on the thirtieth anniversary of a pharaoh's ascension, and thus rulers who recorded celebrating one could be assumed to have ruled at least 30 years. However, once again, this may not have been standard practice in all cases.[5]

In the early days of Egyptology, the compilation of regnal periods was also hampered by a profound biblical bias on the part of Egyptologists. This was most pervasive before the mid 19th century, when Manetho's figures were recognized as conflicting with

biblical chronology, based on Old Testament references to Egypt (see Pharaohs in the Bible
). In the 20th century, such biblical bias has mostly been confined to alternative chronologies outside the scholarly mainstream.

Synchronisms

A useful way to work around these gaps in knowledge is to find chronological synchronisms, which can lead to a precise date. Over the past decades, a number of these have been found, although they are of varying degrees of usefulness and reliability.

Alternative chronologies

A number of suggestions for alternatives to the consensus on the conventional chronology have been presented during the 20th century:

  • The Revised Chronology of Immanuel Velikovsky as postulated in his Ages in Chaos series.
  • The chronology of Donovan Courville as described in The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications.
  • The Glasgow Chronology formulated by members of Velikovsky's Society for Interdisciplinary Studies in 1978.
  • The Centuries of Darkness (1991) model by
    Third Intermediate Period
    .
  • The New Chronology of David Rohl, as described in his Test of Time series.

See also

  • History of ancient Egypt
  • List of Pharaohs
  • Chronology of the Ancient Near East
  • Biblical chronology
  • Dating methodologies in archaeology

Notes and references

  1. ^ K. A. Kitchen, "The Chronology of Ancient Egypt", World Archaeology: Chronologies, 23, (1991), p. 202
  2. ^ Breasted's dates are taken from his Ancient Records (first published in 1906), volume 1, sections 58–75; Shaw's are from his Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (published in 2000), pp. 479–483.
  3. ^ Hsu, Shih-Wei. "The Palermo Stone: the Earliest Royal Inscription from Ancient Egypt" Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 37, no. 1, 2010, pp. 68-89
  4. ^ Miroslav Verner, "Contemporaneous Evidence for the relative chronology of DYNS. 4 and 5", Ancient Egyptian Chronology Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, and David A. Warburton (editors), (Leiden: Brill, 2006) pp. 124–8
  5. ^ Erik Hornung, "Introduction", Ancient Egyptian Chronology Hornung, et al., pp. 10f
  6. ^ Kitchen, "Chronology", p. 203
  7. ^ William Stevenson Smith: Interconnections in the Ancient Near East: A Study of the Relationships Between the Arts of Egypt, the Aegean, and Western Asia, Yale University Press, 1965
  8. ^ Kitchen's quotes on M. Christine Tetley (2014). "Chapter 1. Introduction to Problems with the Historical Chronology of Ancient Egypt" (PDF). The Reconstructed Chronology of the Egyptian Kings. pp. 7–9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2018. Retrieved 18 February 2018.
  9. ^ Set forth in "Excursus C: The Twelfth dynasty" in his The Calendars of ancient Egypt (Chicago: University Press, 1950).
  10. ^ One example is Patrick O'Mara, "Censorinus, the Sothic Cycle, and calendar year one in ancient Egypt: the Epistological problem", Journal of Near Eastern studies, 62 (2003), pp. 17–26.
  11. ^ Redford, "The Dates of the End of the 18th Dynasty", History and Chronology of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt: Seven studies (Toronto: University Press, 1967), pp. 183–215.
  12. ^ Kate Spence, "Ancient Egyptian chronology and the astronomical orientation of pyramids", Nature, 408 (2000), pp. 320–324. She offers, based on orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza with circumpolar stars, for a date of that structure precise within 5 years.
  13. S2CID 206526496
    . Retrieved 8 October 2021.
  14. PMID 24204188
    .
  15. S2CID 35908442. Retrieved 10 March 2007.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
    )
  16. ISBN 978-90-429-1730-9
    .
  17. S2CID 26804444
    .
  18. ^ "The date of this [volcanic] event is of critical importance to the synchronisations of the civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean. The solution of this matter is the key to most of our synchronisation problems". Bibliotheca Orientalis 61, #1–2 January – April 2004: Book review of W. Manning's "A Test of Time", 1999, Oxbow Books
  19. doi:10.1017/S0033822200047196. Conversely, the radiocarbon dates have been argued to be inaccurate by Malcolm Wiener, Radiocarbon dating of the Theran eruption
    ", Open Journal of Archaeometry, 2 (2014). DOI 10.4081/arc.2014.5265
  20. ^ Kuniholm et al. Nature 1996, 782
  21. ^ S. Manning et al., "High-precision dendro-14C dating of two cedar wood sequences from First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom Egypt and a small regional climate-related 14C divergence", Journal of Archaeological Science 46 (2014), 401–416.[1] [2]
  22. S2CID 246638930
    .

External links

Further reading

  • Erik Hornung, Rolf Krauss, and David A. Warburton (editors), Ancient Egyptian Chronology. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
    ISBN 978-90-04-11385-5 Scribd copy
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