The relative chronology of ancient Egypt is centered on a structure of dynasties, or royal houses, akin to the European Windsors, Hohenzollerns, Bourbons, or Habsburgs. These dynasties are taken from a history of Egypt, the Aegyptiaka, written in Greek by the Egyptian priest, Manetho, for the Macedonian king of Egypt, Ptolemy III, around 300bce. This work is now lost, but excerpts survive in the works of later antique authors. Manetho divided the royal succession into thirty dynasties, and although there are numerous problems with his system, it is retained by Egyptologists to this day as the most straightforward way of delineating the progress of ancient Egyptian civilization.
These dynasties are usually grouped into periods and kingdoms corresponding to distinct phases in the country’s political or cultural evolution. Thus, the Old Kingdom embraces the third through sixth dynasties, the time occupied by the great pyramid builders, while the Middle Kingdom, comprising the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties, represents a reunification of
Egypt.
The country, consolidation and cultural development, and its decline. The New Kingdom (the eighteenth through the twentieth dynasties) is the era of Egypt’s imperial power in Asia, seeing the construction of an empire that extended from the Sudan to the Euphrates. The three Intermediate Periods, following each of the Kingdoms’ periods, highlight centuries during which central authority was eroded, accompanied in some cases by foreign rule of parts of the country.
In addition to the Manethonic framework, we have a number of earlier, and thus far more reliable, king lists that help to confirm the ordering of rulers. These lists all date to the New Kingdom and comprise an administrative listing, giving full reign lengths as well as royal names (the badly damaged papyrus known as the Turin Canon), and four monumental offering lists, three of which place their contents in historical order. Of the latter, by far the best is that from the temple of Sethy I at Abydos; all of them, however, are incomplete and omit rulers for political and other reasons. Nevertheless, the lists combine with contemporary monuments and documents to permit the construction of our modern framework of Egyptian history.
The Egyptians did not employ an era-dating system such as BCE/CE (BC/AD), or AH, instead determining time by reference to the regnal years, months, and days of the reigning king. Thus, to ascertain the time between two events, the exact length of the reigns of all kings ruling between the events must be known. This information is only rarely available in a consistent manner, but in general a roughly reliable relative chronology can be formulated for most periods.
Putting absolute dates BCE to the dynasties thus reconstructed is often difficult and the subject of intense scholarly debate. Some astronomical events, recorded in monumental inscriptions and papyri, can be of some help, but all dates prior to 664bce must be regarded as approximations only. The key is to identify events that can be dated with reference to an astronomical phenomenon, or by reference to another culture with an absolute and secure chronology. Unfortunately, both kinds of link are frequently more or less equivocal and dangerously subject to circular reasoning: there are examples where a Mesopotamian “fixed” date is actually based on an Egyptian “fixed” date, which is based on the original Mesopotamian “fixed” date, in turn based on an Egyptian “fixed” date.
Two main astronomical phenomena have been used to identify absolute dates; one is the new moon, the other the rising of Sirius, or Sothis. The former is used for refining dates where the basic time period has been pinpointed by other means, since it places an event within a cycle that repeats approximately every dozen years. Sothic dating is based on the fact that the Egyptian civil year had 365 days, and thus the “natural” year lost a quarter day each year, only coming back into synchronization every 1,460 years. Sothis was supposed to rise on New Year’s Day, but gradually drifted away, and so any record of the rising of Sothis dated to a specific day, month, and year can be placed accurately within a 1,460-year cycle. Unfortunately, the result varies depending on where the rising was observed within Egypt, the accuracy of the observation; it also depends on the assumption that the calendar was never reformed to bring the Sothic and civil year into synchronism artificially. There is, however, no evidence for such a reform.
The main pegs used to establish an absolute chronology for ancient Egypt begin at 664BCE, when the beginning of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty can be fixed with reference to unimpeachable Assyrian data and is, in fact, the earliest absolutely fixed date in Egyptian history. All earlier dates are more or less problematic.
These begin with the biblical record (1 Kings 14: 26-35; 2 Chronicles 12: 3-4) of the plundering of Jerusalem by Shishak, dated to around 925bce via Assyrian connections. Although objections have been raised (e. g., James 1991, pp.229-231), Shishak is almost certainly to be identified with Shoshenq I, founder of the Twenty-second Dynasty; depending on where the campaign is to be placed in his reign, the beginning of this dynasty can be fixed within the range 948/929bce. On this basis, a lunar date under Rameses II can be used to place the latter’s accession in the range 1304/1254bce, with probability favoring 1279/1254bce. Moving earlier, a dendrochronological date from the Uluburun shipwreck, containing an
One of the sources for the Egyptian chronology are lists of kings to whom offerings are being made. Here, in Sethy I’s temple at Abydos, Prince Ramses (later King Ramses II) reads a prayer, some of whose beneficiaries’ names are seen in front of him. These are arranged in chronological order and begin with Menes, unifier of Egypt, in the top line. The list runs all the way down to the time of Rameses’ father, Sethy I, but omits the whole Second Intermediate Period and certain “undesirable” kings such as Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. Photo © Aidan Dodson.
Object of the wife of Akhenaten places the end of his reign before 1300bce; a Sothic date for Amenhotpe I has many problems, and may (or may not) place his accession at 1553/1526BCE. Before this we have but one dating peg, a Sothic date under Senwosret III, that places his accession around 1880bce. All other absolute Egyptian dates are derived from these pegs, and are thus wholly dependent on dead reckoning.
Radiocarbon dating has thus far played little role in historic Egyptian dating, since its error range generally exceeds that of other techniques. However, determinations from the beginning of the First Dynasty place its foundation in the range 3350/3000BCE, comparing with the around 3150/3050bce arrived at by means of deadreckoning back from the accession of Senwosret III.
The chronology of ancient Egypt is broadly well-founded, but it must be emphasized that there remain considerable difficulties, and for the New Kingdom at least, dates may have to be lowered by up to half a century compared with the current consensus figures given in this encyclopedia.
Aidan Dodson
Further Reading
Balmuth, M. S., and R. H. Tykot, eds. Sardinian and Aegean Chronology: Towards the Resolution of Relative and Absolute Dating in the Mediterranean. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1998.
Beckerath, Jurgen von. Chronologie des Pharaonischen Agypten [Chronology of Pharaonic Egypt]. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1997.
Dodson, A. “Towards a Minimum Chronology of the New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period.” Bulletin of the Egyptian Seminar 14 (2000): 7-18.
James, P., in collaboration with I. J. Thorpe, Nikos Kokkinos, Robert Morkot and John Frankish. Centuries of Darkness: A Challenge to the Conventional Chronology of Old World Chronology. London: Jonathan Cape, 1991.
Ward, W. A. “Dating, Pharaonic.” In Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, edited by K. A. Bard. London: Routledge, 1999.
World History
