Introduction

The period covered by this chapter is often called the ‘‘Third Intermediate Period,’’ a label which only came into use in the 1960s (Morkot 2005: 76). Chronologically it is defined by the supposed peaks of Egyptian civilization which preceded and followed it: the New Kingdom and Twenty-sixth Dynasty (or ‘‘Saite period’’) respectively. However, the term ‘‘Intermediate’’ is unfairly negative and fails either to describe the characteristics of the times or to explain them. The features of the period should not be understood in terms of decline but of political and cultural changes which can be attributed to the influence of non-Egyptians, specifically various groups of settlers from the west of Egypt, in modern Libya, and invaders from Nubia to the south.

The period corresponds to the Twenty-first to Twenty-fifth Dynasties and ends with the establishment of the kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty as rulers of Egypt. The basic framework by which we understand Egyptian history was inherited from Manetho, an Egyptian priest and scholar of the third century bc, who used the system of dynasties as the basis for his history of Egypt (Waddell 1940: vii). The system implies that the country was ruled by a single Pharaoh at all times throughout its history, and that each was succeeded by the next at his death. It does not allow for the co-regencies which existed from time to time and assumes that the kings and dynasties were contiguous, each being succeeded directly by the next with no gaps or overlap. For much of Egyptian history this structure is appropriate, but for the era under study here Manetho’s system is unsuitable and potentially misleading. While it is possible to date inscriptions, objects, and events to the reigns of specific kings, it is not possible with any certainty to assign to a particular dynasty all the kings of this period whose existence is attested by the monumental inscriptional evidence, and indeed some of the kings involved seem not to have been known to Manetho at all. The situation is complicated by the frequent repetition of certain royal names, particularly the (Libyan) birth names Shoshenq, Osorkon, and Takelot, a practice which has caused much confusion as scholars have attempted to distinguish one Pharaoh from another and to relate them to the individuals in Manetho’s lists.