CHRONOLOGY AND PERIODIZATION.

The structure of Egyptian history remains, as always, its

chronology. Unlike the other cultures which surrounded the
Nile Valley and remained, for all practical purposes, in a
preliterate stage, pharaonic civilization developed writing in
Early Dynastic times and so was able to systematize its
complex society around key historical and chronological
events. During the first dynasty and the second, for example,
a rudimentary system of calendrics was developed with the
interconnected system of regnal-year dating (counting the
years of a king's reign). Although little is known from sources
of that period, the Egyptians worked with a relatively
efficient method of time demarcation that included separate
names or designations for the pharaoh's years in office;
however, it does not seem that any overt reckoning based on
dynasties or ruling houses (families) was then in operation.
Our present historical schema of dividing the history of Egypt
into periods called "Kingdoms" (Old, Middle, and New) is a
modem one; it is based on the Egyptian eras of political unity
and effective internal pacification. Developed by
Egyptologists in the nineteenth century, this division
depended on a wealth of textual and pictorial data that
emanated from economically and politically viable epochs,
not all of which fit neatly into separate dynasties. Moreover,
since the earliest dynastiesin particular the first twowere
barely known at that time, the collective unity of the "Old
Kingdom" was set from the third to the sixth dynasty.
Similarly, as the second phase of pharaonic unity occurred
within the eleventh
Dynasty (under Nebhepetre Montuhotep I), rather than at the
end of one, the term "Middle Kingdom" came to encompass a
period that did not properly coincide with a break between
ruling houses. The same may be said for the end of that era
of stability; in the eighteenth century BCE, the ruling house
of the thirteenth dynasty was pushed out of the north, where
a rival kingdom was based. In that case, the designation
"Middle Kingdom" ends at a time in which the legitimate
rulers were faced with an effective new dynasty, not with the
total demise of their own.

The Egyptians, although witnessing and understanding their

periods of social harmony and strength as well as those of
civil war, disunity, and relative weakness, nonetheless did
not arrange their own schema of history to reflect that
inherent dichotomy. In fact, the present-day detailed listing
of various dynastiesfrom the presumed foundation of the
unified state in the first dynasty (the joining of the Two
Lands) to the very endwas developed over a long time
period. It began with Manetho, an Egyptian priest from the
Nile Delta, who wrote in Greek for the Ptolemies, his foreign
overlords (c.280 BCE); his king lists formed the basis of the
Classical era's understanding of Nile Valley history and
remains the basis for ours. Although the records concerning
the various ruling houses with which Manetho worked
reflected, to no small degree, the inherent political
segmentation of ancient Egypt, it can be shown that many of
his divisions were not based on sources contemporary with
those dynasties. For Egyptologists, the major outline of Early
Dynastic history remains the fifth dynasty Palermo Stone, as
well as additional fragments that may belong to another
stela.
The Palermo Stone covers, in a very schematic fashion, the
regnal years of the pharaohs, which were set within their civil
calendar (of 365 days/annum). Although Predynastic rulers
were included, they are mere names. Only for the pharaohs
of the first two dynasties (the so-called Archaic Age or Early
Dynastic period) is there evidence that connects a king's
year with a specific event. Usually religious in import, these
early regnal years appear to be brief designations of the
most important event that occurred within the given year;
full reigns with integers from one onward were not the rule.
Later, however, there was a growing attempt to simplify
matters, and it is not surprising that the expanding
bureaucratic state of ancient Egypt began to develop a more
consistent means of counting regnal years. Certainly by the
third dynasty the state had brought into its apparatus the
concept of a census of cattle, one that took place on a
regular biennial basis. The cattle "counts" appear on the
lower portions of the entries on the Palermo Stone, and they
coincide with the establishment of the expansive economic
unity of the third dynasty and onward. Although difficult to
determine with total accuracy, this system became annual in
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the sixth dynasty, thereby forming the basis of the

regularized and simple system of official state bookkeeping
and records. Unfortunately, the Palermo Stone breaks off in
the mid-fifth dynasty, so other sources were used to
document this change.
The Palermo Stone, as well as various fragments that may
belong to it, have been augmented by the publication of a
second, rather detailed list of such "annals." Dated to the
late fifth dynasty and the sixth, this list follows the same
counting style as the earlier record. Significantly, all of these
early lists do not provide demarcations that coincide with
Manetho's account. Except for the obvious break between
the Predynastic monarchs and the dynastic, the compilers of
such lists felt their kingdom to be a unity, one which began
with the unification of Egypt and the first dynasty and then
proceeded onward; the only sharp division is that between
these rulers of the Double Crownthe pharaohs over all
Egyptand their predecessors, who may have worn either
the Red Crown of Lower Egypt or the White Crown of Upper
Egypt.
The division into dynasties with which Manetho worked holds
well if such ruling houses as the twelfth or the eighteenth
dynasties are considered. As many scholars have seen,
problems arise when there are attempts to analyze in detail
the reasons for those divisions. Manetho's dynasties reflect a
lengthy historiographic tradition, in which the geographical
location of a ruling lineage mattered, with respect to its
origins. Manetho's Dynasty 18, for example, was said to be
Theban (Diospolite), which corresponded perfectly with their
origins although the pharaohs of the age had their capital in
the North, at Memphis. His Dynasty 15 is said to be that of
the Hyksos, foreign overlords from the Levant who eventually
ruled the Nile Delta and a sizable portion of Middle Egypt.
One major problem with Manetho as a late sourceand it is
an intractable oneis that the text is mainly preserved in
excerpts drawn up by later chronographers; what is
preserved is a mere summation of a relatively detailed work
in which a few specific events associated with the pharaohs
are recorded. By and large, what matters are the dynasties,
the names of the kings, and their lengths of reign. Even with
the additional problems of textual corruption over the
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centuries, Manetho presents a very confused arrangement of

dynasties when he covers Egypt's periods of disunity.
Egyptologists call those Intermediate Periods, and they are
labeled First, Second, and Third. The First Intermediate Period
followed the Old Kingdom. It corresponds to the time when
the old Memphite line had ended but before a new lineage or
ruling house had taken over the whole Nile Valley; the exact
beginning and end of that period of social upheaval did not
coincide either with the commencement or the end of a
dynasty. The Second Intermediate Period was placed after
the Middle Kingdom but before the New Kingdom. Its precise
beginning is unclear, but modern scholars consider the
collapse of the unity under a feeble thirteenth dynasty to
provide the demarcation between the Middle Kingdom and
the ensuing era of disunity. The Third Intermediate Period
refers to the time after the New Kingdom but before the
reunification of Egypt under the Saite monarchs of the
twenty-sixth dynasty.
These convenient designations of Egypt's national success
and failure are purely modern schematic terms and must not
be considered to reflect ancient usage. To take a good
example: in the First Intermediate Period, two rival houses of
Thebes and Herakleopolis waxed and waned in their
attempts to consolidate their own power over all of the Nile
Valley. In the North, the Herakleopolitans are considered by
Manetho to have ruled in Dynasties 9 and 10, although that
tradition is now considered to be partly false; specifically,
those Northern monarchs ruled from one house rather than
two. Another case is worth stressing: the problem of the
Second Intermediate Period. Sources from that time allow us
to reconstruct a complicated series of events that are
summarized here: A growing feebleness of the national
dynasty (the thirteenth) eventually led to the establishment
of a rival power in the Delta (the fourteenth dynasty). Not
long thereafter, the North was taken over by Near
Easterners, who had settled in the eastern Delta (the Hyksos
of the fifteenth dynasty). When they eventually seized the
old capital, Memphis, it is probable that remnants of the
ruling house of the thirteenth dynasty fled to Thebes in the
South and established a rump state there (the end of the
thirteenth dynasty). The sixteenth dynasty included various
local potentates, probably of a military nature, who were
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ruled by the various Hyksos pharaohs of the fifteenth

dynasty, while at the same time a new Theban dynasty
emerged (the seventeenth), one that eventually began a
successful counterattack upon the North. This brief account
of Second Intermediate Period history is barely reflected in
the standard native Egyptian accounts of their past that are
king lists or annals. Manetho was confused over his
Dynasties 12 and 14. The valuable Turin Canon was prepared
in the nineteenth dynasty as a detailed papyrus of the
pharaohs and their reigns and appears to In many ways, the
Turin Canon provides a more exact basis for historical
periodization than any other native source, Manetho
included. The twelfth dynasty is explicitly indicated, although
its location is given (the Northern capital of Itjtawy) rather
than a dynasty number. The kings who followed after that
dynasty were noted, as well as the earlier Theban state of
the eleventh dynasty. A useful totaling up of reigns is given,
such as from the first dynasty to the fifth or from the first to
the eighth, the latter clearly indicating a time in which unity
prevailed. Hence, the Turin Canon can be conceived as a
precursor to Manetho, as well as to the modem scholarly
divisions called "Kingdoms." Yet the chronological divisions
called "Intermediate Periods" remain outside that ancient
detailed list of pharaohs and regnal years. Since the divisions
of ruling houses were mainly based on geographical
locations, any disunity or conflicting states within Egypt was
avoided. For that reason, the Turin Canon reads as if none of
the dynasties overlapped but instead occurred in a purely
sequential fashion. The document assumes as well the
existence of a Memphite monarchy from the first dynasty
onward (until the eighth dynasty), and thus it provides a
false impression of the earliest phase of pharaonic unity.
Nevertheless, the Turin Canon records, in the native
language, a useful parallel to Manetho; for example, the
various gods and demigods of Predynastic Egypt were
included, thereby paralleling Manetho's records of early
divine rulers and later "heroes" connect all of the native
rulers of Dynasty 12 with those of Dynasty 17. Although the
Hyksos kings were treated separately from the Egyptian
kings, problems still occur among the other numerous
pharaohs on this list. Long series of royal names, often called
king lists, also help in the reconstruction of the historical
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aspect of this foreign domination; however, they ignore the

foreign rulers of the North, preferring to include some (but by
no means all) pharaohs of the Second Intermediate Period.
The king lists have also been useful in reconstructing the
various royal lines, but these documents do nothing more
than place the names one after another. Found mainly in
temples, these royal lists were drawn up for reasons other
than presenting all the known pharaohs (or at least the
presumed legitimate ones); in addition, no regnal years were
given. The best-known king lists are located at the Karnak
temple in Thebes, in the holy cult area of Abydos, and at the
royal cemetery of Saqqara. The Karnak list indicates those
rulers who had a statue of themselves set up within the
precinct walls of the Great Temple of Amun at Kamak. The
pharaoh who oversaw the work, Thutmose III, laid great
stress on the cult of those royal ancestors, so such king lists
should be considered in a very different light than those
solely connected to royal lineages or to the chronological
arrangement of the pharaohs. That is to say, the religious or
cultic interests of the commissioner of the listin this case
Thutmose IIIlay at the basis of the rows of cartouches
carved into the temple walls. Not surprisingly, those rulers
who were not associated with the Great Temple of Amun are
not represented in the Karnak list (e.g., the Herakleopolitans
of the ninth and tenth dynasties or the Hyksos).
If such epoch-names as the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms
are useful today, it is because they reflect an expansive and
economically stable Egyptian state. At the same time, we
can develop an exact chronology for these three main eras of
pharaonic success, since many inscriptions deal with
chronological matters. Through astronomical correlations,
the Middle and New Kingdoms can be placed on a relatively
secure chronological base, and independent of each other.
The New Kingdom has been dated by two major occurrences
of lunar and civil calendar equivalences (dated to the reigns
of Thutmose III and Ramesses II), wherein a specific day in
the civil calendar was equated with a day from the lunar
calendar. In addition, there is a useful record of the heliacal
rising of the star Sothis (Sinus) set within the reign of
Thutmose III, and from that a possible exact date for the
event can be determined. Other similar astronomical
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occurrences, albeit of a more contentious nature, have also

aided in reconstructing a tight chronological outline for the
New Kingdom. Nevertheless, it was mainly the Turin Canon,
Manetho's works, the king lists, and an important series of
dated monuments and texts that helped establish a
relatively accurate arrangement of the pharaohs and their
regnal years. The main points of contention remain
concentrated on the interpretation of the astronomical data.
For example, within the New Kingdom, the beginnings of the
reigns of Thutmose III and Ramesses II are disputed, with
various modern chronologies set into a schema of three
choices. (The consensus places the commencement of the
reigns of Thutmose III at 1479 BCE and that of Ramesses II at
1279 BCE, although some prefer 1504 BCE and 1304,
respectively.)
Dates for the Middle Kingdom, interestingly enough, have to
be reconstructed independent from the New Kingdom. Papyri
archives from a temple at Illahun have provided another date
for the heliacal rising of Sothis in Year 7 of Senwosret III.
Even this seemingly exact point is disputed, if only owing to
the location from which Sothis was sighted: if it was seen in
the South at Elephantine then the date would compute
earlier than if it was seen at Heliopolis in the Norththe
choice is either 1872 or 1830 BCE.
For the Old Kingdom, no firm bases exist for a fixed point in
time; the same may be said for the Intermediate Periods.
Except for the Palermo Stone, which ends in the mid-fifth
dynasty, and the list that goes into the sixth dynasty, no
evidence yet provides a relatively tight or exact chronology
from the first dynasty to the eighth. Therefore, the count has
been back from the twelfth dynasty, using the evidence from
the Turin Canon; the procedure ultimately contends with the
First Intermediate Period's two rival housesHerakleopolis
(ninth and tenth dynasties) and Thebes (eleventh dynasty)
and their rivalry for control. Then, too, the effective end of
the old Memphite monarchy (the eighth dynasty) is also
impossible to determine, owing to the scarcity of
contemporary dateable sources. Therefore, the chronology
earlier than the eleventh dynasty is approximate at best, and
the presumed unification of Egypt by Menes at the beginning
of the first dynasty is still disputed (within a range of about
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one hundred yearsc.3050-2950 BCEthe best but

nevertheless a highly unsatisfactory solution).
Scholars are still unsure of the exact dates of any phase of
Egyptian civilization, except those of the Saite period, the
twentysixth dynasty, 664-525 BCE. For that period, the
wealth of native plus foreign sources (in particular Greek but
also Assyrian and Babylonian) has resolved the problem. For
the earlier phases of Egyptian history, such is not the case.
Attempted synchronisms of the New Kingdom with Babylon
and the Hittites has not yielded precise dates. Even the
astronomical events cited earlier provide, at best, an interval
in time rather than a specific point. Lunar-civil calendar
correlations yield an interval within fifty years; Sothic datings
also vary and depend on knowing the place of this star's
sighting. Finally, no useful synchronisms exist for Egypt and
her neighbors before the New Kingdom. The dates offered by
scholars, with regard to Egyptian civilization, remain
approximate, and they become even more so as they refer to
earlier time.

SPALINGER A. J., Chronology and

Periodization // Redford D.B., The
Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient
Egypt (vol. I). New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001, pag. 2648.