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Egyptian

The majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many details of the chronology of . This scholarly consensus is the so-called Conventional , which places the beginning of the 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 Astronomical ceiling from the variant diverging by about 300 yearstomb of showing stars and for the Early Dynastic Period, up to 30 in theconstellations used in calculations 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 "" 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

Scholarly consensus on the general outline of the conventional chronology current in 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 in 2000 (all dates in the table are BC).[2]

Breasted Shaw Dynasty (1906) (2000)

Early Dynastic Period of First c. 3000– 3400–2980 Egypt Second 2686 Third 2980–2900 2686–2613 Fourth 2900–2750 2613–2494 Old Kingdom Fifth 2750–2625 2494–2345 Sixth 2623–2475 2345–2181 Seventh 2475–2445 2181–2160 Eighth First Intermediate Period Ninth 2445–2160 2160–2025 Tenth Eleventh 2160–2000 2125–1985 Twelfth 2000–1788 1985–1773 Thirteenth? Fourteenth? Second Intermediate Period Fifteenth 1780–1580 1773–1550 Sixteenth Seventeenth Eighteenth 1580–1350 1550–1295 Nineteenth 1350–1205 1295–1186 Twentieth 1200–1090 1186–1069 Twenty-first 1090–945 1069–945 Twenty- 945–745 945–715 second Third Intermediate Period Twenty-third 745–718 818–715 Twenty-fourth 718–712 727–715 Twenty-fifth 712–663 747–656 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 , Breasted also believed all the dynasties were sequential, whereas it is now known that several existed at the same . These revisions have resulted in a lowering of the conventional chronology by up to 400 years at the beginning of Dynasty I.

Regnal years

Forming the backbone of Egyptian chronology are the regnal years as recorded in Ancient Egyptian king lists. Surviving king lists are either comprehensive but have significant gaps in their text (for example, the ), or are textually complete but fail to provide a complete list of rulers (for example, the ), even for a short period of Egyptian . The situation is further complicated by occasional conflicting information on the same regnal period from different versions of the same text; thus, the Egyptian historian Manetho's history of Egypt is only known by extensive references to it made by 'Diagonal star table' from the subsequent writers, such as Eusebius and Sextus Eleventh Dynasty coffin lid; found at , Egypt. Roemer- und Julius Africanus, and the dates for the same Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim 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 of the ruling pharaoh. Yet this only provides a minimum length of that reign and may or may not include any 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 . 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 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.[3] 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. [4]

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 decades, a number of these have been found, although they are of varying degrees of usefulness and reliability.

Seriation, i.e. archeological sequences. This does not fix a person or to a specific year, but establishing a sequence of events can provide indirect evidence to provide or support a precise date. For example, some inscribed stone vessels of the rulers of the first two dynasties were collected and deposited in storage galleries beneath and sealed off when the Step Pyramid of , a Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, was built. Another example are blocks from the Old Kingdom bearing the names of several kings, which were reused in the construction of Middle Kingdom pyramid-temples at in the structures of . Likewise, the third pylon at , built by Amenhotep III contained as "fill" material from the kiosk of Sesostris I, along with various stelae of the Second Intermediate Period and the Eighteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom.[5] Synchronisms with other chronologies, the most important of these being with the Assyrian and Babylonian chronologies, but synchronisms with the , ancient Palestine, and in the final period with , are also used. The earliest such synchronism is in the 18th century BC where a stela of the Governor of Byblos Yantinu indicates that pharaoh was contemporary with kings Zimri-Lim of Mari and of .[6] Other early synchronisms date to the 15th century BC, during the Period, when we have a considerable quantity of diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian Kings Amenhotep III and , and various Near Eastern monarchs. (See Chronology of the Ancient Near East.) For the Third Intermediate Period, has been ascribed a date relative to and the Eponym dating system by , based on biblical passages about 's campaign. Shoshenq I's absolute date was calculated based on Edwin R. Thiele's theory.[7] Synchronisms with memorials of bull internments. These begin as early as the reign of Amenhotep III and continue into Ptolemaic , but there is a significant gap in the record between Ramesses XI and the 23rd year of Osorkon II. The poor documentation of these finds in the Serapeum also compounds the difficulties in using these records. Astronomical synchronisms. The best known of these is the , and careful study of this led Richard A. Parker to argue that the dates of the Twelfth dynasty could be fixed with absolute precision.[8] More recent research has eroded this confidence, questioning many of the assumptions used with the Sothic Cycle, and as a result experts have moved away from relying on this Cycle.[9] For example, Donald B. Redford, in attempting to fix the date of the end of the Eighteenth dynasty, almost completely ignores the Sothic evidence, relying on synchronicities between Egypt and (by way of the Hittites), and help from astronomical observations.[10][11] . This is useful especially for the Early Dynastic period, where Egyptological consensus has only been possible within a range of about three or four centuries. A 2013 study found a First Dynasty start in the 32nd or 31st century, compatible with scholarly opinions placing it in between the 34th and 30th centuries.[12] The Thera eruption. This is a famous conundrum not just in Egyptian but also in Aegean (Minoan) chronology, as the radiocarbon date for the eruption, between 1627 and 1600 BC (p=5%),[13] is off by a full century compared to the date traditionally accepted in of c. 1500 BC.[14][15][16] Since 2012, there have been suggestions that the solution lies in adjusting both dates towards a "compromise" date in the mid 16th century BC,[17] but as of 2014 the problem has not been satisfactorily resolved. . There have been occasional opportunities to use dendrochronology to support Egyptian chronology, mostly for the New Kingdom period, e.g. the Uluburun shipwreck.[18] Combined use of dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating allowed identification of tree rings even back to the Middle Kingdom period, as in the coffin of Ipi- ha-ishutef (dated 2073±9 BC) or the funerary boat of Senusret III (dated 1887±11 BC; conventional reign date 1878 BC–1839 BC).[19]

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 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 Peter James et al. "would move the end of the Egyptian New Kingdom from 1070 BC to around 825 BC",[20] and lower all earlier dates with it, due to miscalculations of the 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

o. K. A. Kitchen, "The Chronology of Ancient Egypt", World Archaeology: Chronologies, 23, (1991), p. 202 p. Breasted's dates are taken from his Ancient Records (first published in 1906), volume 1, sections 58–75; Shaw's are from his Oxford (published in 2000), pp. 479–483. q. 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 r. Erik Hornung, "Introduction", Ancient Egyptian Chronology Hornung, et al., pp. 10f s. Kitchen, "Chronology", p. 203 t. 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 u. 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. v. forth in "Excursus C: The Twelfth dynasty" in his The of ancient Egypt (Chicago: University Press, 1950). w. 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. ox. 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. oo. 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 with circumpolar stars, for a date of that structure precise within 5 years. op. Michael Dee; David Wengrow; Andrew Shortland; Alice Stevenson; Fiona Brock; Linus Girdland Flink; Christopher Bronk Ramsey (2013). "An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling". Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 469 (2159): 20130395. Bibcode:2013RSPSA.46930395D. doi:10.1098/rspa.2013.0395. PMC 3780825. PMID 24204188. oq. Friedrich, Walter L; Kromer, B, Friedrich, M, Heinemeier, J, Pfeiffer, T, and Talamo, S (2006). "Santorini Eruption Radiocarbon Dated to 1627– 1600 B.C". . American Association for the Advancement of Science. 312 (5773): 548. doi:10.1126/science.1125087. PMID 16645088. Retrieved 10 March 2007. or. Warren P.M. (2006). Czerny E, Hein I, Hunger H, Melman D, Schwab A (eds.). : Studies in Honour of Manfred Bietak (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 149). Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium: Peeters. pp. 2: 305–321. ISBN 978-90-429-1730-9. os. Balter, M (2006). "New Carbon Dates Support Revised History of Ancient Mediterranean". Science. 312 (5773): 508–509. doi:10.1126/science.312.5773.508. PMID 16645054. ot. "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 ou. In 2012 one of the proponents of an archaeological date, Felix Höflmayer, argued that archaeological evidence could be consistent with a date as early as 1570 BCE, reducing the discrepancy to around fifty years. Höflmayer, Felix (2012). "The Date of the Minoan Santorini Eruption: Quantifying the "Offset"". Radiocarbon. 54 (3–4): 444. Retrieved 3 November 2013. 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 ov. Kuniholm et al. Nature 1996, 782 ow. 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] px. James, Peter; et al. (1) (1991). "Centuries of Darkness: Context, Methodology and Implications [Review Feature]" (PDF). Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 1 (2): 227. doi:10.1017/S0959774300000378. ISSN 1474-0540.

External links

Scientific tool for converting calendar dates mentioned in Greek and Papyri from Egypt into Julian dates M. Christine Tetley (2014). "Chapter 1. Introduction to Problems with the Historical Chronology of Ancient Egypt" (PDF). The Reconstructed Chronology of the Egyptian Kings.

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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