Chronological Problems

We are comparatively well informed concerning the second part of the First Intermediate Period—the phase of competition between Herakleopolitans and Thebans, which lasted for some 90 to no years. However, the earlier part of the period—the phase of Herakleopolitan rule before the advent of the nth Dynasty—is rather less clear. There is a dearth of information of immediate chronological value because of the loss of most of the names of the Herakleopolitans and of all information concerning the lengths of their reigns in the Turin Canon, and because of the unsatisfactory state of archaeological research in northern Middle Egypt and the Delta, the heartlands of the Herakleopolitan kingdom. Because of the scarcity of data directly relating to the Herakleopolitans, it was even at one stage proposed that there must have been no period during which Herakleopolitans were (at least nominally) the sole rulers, and that they must have been entirely coeval with the nth Dynasty. This is impossible, however, since we know of prominent individuals and important political events that can be placed only in the period between the 8th and nth Dynasties.

Detailed studies of the succession of holders of important administrative and priestly posts in several towns of Upper Egypt, as well as studies of developments in the archaeological material, strongly suggest that this interval between the 8th and nth Dynasties occupied a fairly long span of time, probably amounting to some three or four generations. In addition, the figure that Manetho reports as the length of his loth Dynasty can be interpreted to support an estimate of nearly two centuries for the whole of the First Intermediate Period, an assessment that would also be in perfect agreement with the prosopo-graphical and archaeological evidence.