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Ancient Egyptian Chronology - Long or Short?

Modern writers generally depended upon an arrangement of the dynasties for the duration of ancient Egyptian history. Some held those dynasties to have ruled consecutively; but others maintained that many of them were contemporaneous. Hence arose two chronological systems. Those who held the dynasties to have been all consecutive, assigned to the Egyptian monarchy a duration of upwards of 5000 years. It was, however, generally admitted by the mid-19th Century, that this was an extravagant period, and that both the writings of ancient historians, and the evidence of the monuments, led to the conclusion that many of the earlier dynasties were contemporary. But here again there is a wide difference of opinion.

Dynasty I-II 5510-4945 BCOR3400-2980 BC
Dynasty III 4945-4731 BCOR2980-2900 BC
Dynasty IV 4731-4454 BCOR2900-2750 BC
Dynasty V 4454-4206 BCOR2750-2625 BC
Dynasty VI 4206-4003 BCOR2625-2475 BC
Dynasty VII-VIII 4003-3787 BCOR2475-2445 BC
Dynasty IX-X 3787-3502 BCOR2445-2160 BC
Dynasty XI 3502-3459 BCOR2160-2000 BC
Dynasty XII 3459-3246 BCOR2000-1788 BC
Dynasty XIII-XVII 3246-1580 BCOR1788-1580 BC
Dynasty XVIII 1580-1322 BC
Dynasty XIX 1322-1202 BC
Dynasty XX 1202-1102 BC
Dynasty XXI 1102-952 BC
Dynasty XXII 952-755 BC
Dynasty XXIII 755-721 BC
Dynasty XXIV 721-715 BC
Dynasty XXV 715-664 BC
Dynasty XXVI 664-525 BC
By the early 20th Century authorities were hopelessly divided over the question of the chronology of the earlier part of the history of Egypt. After the rise of the Eighteenth Dynasty there was a very satisfactory amount of agreement, the discrepancies amounting only to a few years at most; but before that the divergence is enormous, and there was no possibility of reconciling the two systems of dating. The conflict of authority may best be exhibited by quotation.

Breasted, who advocated the shorter system, remarked as follows upon the system which he discards: "The extremely high dates for the beginning of the dynasties current in some histories are inherited from an older generation of Egyptologists. . . . Their accuracy is now maintained only by a small and constantly decreasing number of modern scholars." On the opposite side Professor Flinders Petrie is equally positive. "If anyone wishes to abandon these dates [the longer system], they must . . . treat history as a mere matter of arbitrary will, regardless of all records. As against this general position of dates there is nothing to be set in favour of any very different schemes, nothing—except the weightiest thing of all — prepossessions."

By the early years of the 20th Century it was increasily clear to many that Brugsch's chronology entirely rested on two certainly false assumptions, and it was only rendered possible by freely making any number of arbitrary omissions. In short, it was no system, and it had no reason. The assumption that a generation was 33 years was certainly wrong; in the royal families there were found throughout that the generations of 22 years for eldest surviving sons (which were shown by the Jewish kings) fit the known history. The other assumption, that a reign was equal to a generation, was also certainly wrong, as seen by looking into the family history of any dynasty. These entirely false premises were then arbitrarily doctored by omitting to count any reigns which would make the time too long, as in the XXth to XXVth dynasties, where 18 kings are omitted, and an overlap of 66 years is made where it is impossible. Nothing remained but a mass of guesswork, in which all the certain facts were ignored.

The thirty-one dynasties of the priest Manetho fill up more than 5000 years dating from Menes, supposing them, with Boeckh and Lesueur after Scaliger, to have all reigned consecutively. The terminus is here the accession of Alexander the Great in 332 BC. By adding the sums of the thirty-one dynasties together, the epoch of Menes coincides exactly with the commencement of a great Dog-star cycle of 1460 years, peculiar to the Egyptians, viz., with BC 5702.

Bunsen and Lepsius, however, thought this cannot have been the sense of Manetho, and they appealed to a statement seemingly cited from that author by Syncellus, to the effect, that the dominion of the Pharaohs lasted some 3555 years to the middle of the fourth century before Christ. Hence they argue that under the Old and Middle Empires there must have been contemporary dynasties. The list of Eratosthenes was the Procrustes' bed to which the unwieldy proportions of Manetho were remorselessly truncated. The thirty-eight Theban kings of the Alexandrian critic are none other than the entire series of Pharaohs of the Old Empire, and, further, that they furnish a chronological canon for the whole of this period, and thus constitute the clue to the mazes of Manetho, who by introducing provincial as well as imperial dynasties, and by swelling his lists with joint reigns, regencies, usurpations, and interregna, has done his best to lead astray. Even after deducting all this surplusage, the estimate of Manetho for the duration of the Old Empire was still some centuries too high in order to make the numbers square with the 1076 years of Eratosthenes. Thus by the Chevalier Bunsen's accounting in the mid-19th Century, the accession of Menes was in the year 3643 BC.

Startled by the long chronology Manetho's list necessitates, Egyptian scholars formerly imagined that several of the dynasties were contemporaneous. The researches of Mariette, however, have shown that this is not the case. Thus the theory which made the fifth dynasty reign at Elephantine, while the sixth was reigning at Memphis, has been overthrown by the discovery of monuments belonging to the two dynasties in both places; and the discovery of the colossi of the thirteenth Theban dynasty at San or Tanis, near Xois, upset the scheme according to which this dynasty was contemporaneous with the Xoites of the fourteenth. There were several periods in the history of Egypt, it is true, when more than one line of kings was ruling in the country; but it is clear that either Manetho or his epitomizers struck out all except the one line which was considered legitimate, and so drew up a catalogue of successive dynasties.

It is probable, however, that gaps occur between some of the latter. If at any period there was no dynasty which the Egyptian priests considered legitimate, it would necessarily be passed over in the annals of Manetho. Indeed, of one such period we have actual proof. No mention is made by Manetho of the so-called dodccarchy, when, for more than twenty years, Egypt was under the dominion of Assyria. The twenty-sixth dynasty is made to follow immediately upon the twenty-fifth. And there is no reason to think that this is an isolated case.

With the appearance of Eduard Meyer's invaluable "Aegyptische Chronologie" (Berlin, 1904), the long existing chaos was at length reduced to order. Eduard Meyer, the famous German historian, introduced a system of so-called "approximate dates," which were always the latest dates that can be given for an era. Thus, when he said that King Menes ruled about 3200 BC, that King Snefru ruled about 2830 BC, and Pepi I, 2530 BC, he did not by any means imply that these dates were absolutely correct; but he would merely imply that these monarchs could not have ruled after the dates given, though he could not say how long before these dates they did live.




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