Problems with Egyptian Dynasties

[Dave Beatty]

Anyone out there up to date on the continuing discussion/argument about "fixing" the many problems with dating Egyptian dynasties? I'm particularly interested in the 26th dynasty...

[Patrick Waterson]

Certainly Dave.

Anything specific you had in mind?

[RichT]

Uh oh.

[Duncan Head]

The major problems with Egyptian chronology, and the various alternate chronologies proposed, are concentrated on periods earlier than Dynasty XXVI (the Saitic dynasty). I'm not aware of any major dating issues with XXVI, though some events may be uncertain within a few years.

Patrick holds an individual view that identifies Dyn XXVI with one of the earlier dynasties, arguing for duplication. This is not widely accepted within academia. However, I am not sure whether this view actually impacts the generally accepted dates for Dyn XXVI itself or its individual rulers or events.

Edit: You might find http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/5088/1/Boast07MPhil.pdf, "An analysis of Egypt's foreign policy during the Saite period", useful; it does mention dating uncertainties for some particular events.

[Dave Beatty]

Thanks for the point Duncan, I'll read it directly.

I'm in a friendly discussion with a chappie who holds that Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt in 564 BC and laid waste to the entire country to such a degree that Egypt was desolate for 50 or so years.

I freely admit that beyond fielding a 15mm Saite Egyptian army just because of the cool option of masses of Reg D MI archers coupled with Greek hoplites I am clueless on the topic and, short of spending weeks researching it all thought I'd ask you guys....

Problem seems to be that gap in the army list from 525BC to 404 BC and I'm told the forty-four year rule of Ahmose-sa-Neith is in there somewhere...

My antagonist is of the opinion that Amasis' reign should move forward 121 years, overlapping the end of the 27th dynasty, dragging the  earlier  Saite   kings  and  Taharka  along with it and dutifully drawing  dynasties  22 through  24  in  their  wake.

I have been vaguely aware of some sort of ongoing (like for maybe a couple of hundred years?) and apparently heated discussion of things dynastic Egyptian-wise but I fear it is mostly jibberish to me and beg to be enlightened by those wiser in the ways of Egyptology than this old cowboy...

[Andreas Johansson]

Problem seems to be that gap in the army list from 525BC to 404 BC and I'm told the forty-four year rule of Ahmose-sa-Neith is in there somewhere...

525-404 is the First Persian Period, also known as 27th dynasty, when Egypt was part of the Achaemenid Empire and ruled by a Persian satrap.

Neither I nor Wikipedia know of a pharaoh Ahmose-sa-Neith, tho they later mentions a courtier of that name under the 26th dynasty pharaoh Ahmose (Amasis) II, who was apparently important enough to be mentioned in 30th dynasty texts (mid-4th century BC).

[RichT]

Sounds like this:

http://www.displaceddynasties.com/uploads/6/2/6/5/6265423/displaced_dynasties_chapter_10_-_amasis__the_greeks.pdf

Be warned - for some reason Egyptian chronology attracts more than its fair share of individuals who claim to have solved all problems and be the sole discoverers of some true chronology which uniquely fits the facts. Such individuals generally find that the vast majority of those working in the field dismiss their ideas - which serves only to strengthen, rather than weaken, their certainty that they are right (see under 'Galileo fallacy'). Keep that in mind as you read this stuff.

[Duncan Head]

Problem seems to be that gap in the army list from 525BC to 404 BC and I'm told the forty-four year rule of Ahmose-sa-Neith is in there somewhere...

525-404 is the First Persian Period, also known as 27th dynasty, when Egypt was part of the Achaemenid Empire and ruled by a Persian satrap.

There are quite substantial rebellions in that period, of course, notably Inaros who had Athenian help. Ideally he would be covered by any set of army lists which aims at near-universality,  though I don't know without checking whether he is.

[Patrick Waterson]

Problem seems to be that gap in the army list from 525BC to 404 BC and I'm told the forty-four year rule of Ahmose-sa-Neith is in there somewhere...

525-404 is the First Persian Period, also known as 27th dynasty, when Egypt was part of the Achaemenid Empire and ruled by a Persian satrap.

Neither I nor Wikipedia know of a pharaoh Ahmose-sa-Neith ...

Look at the royal titulary of 'Amasis II'.

I have been vaguely aware of some sort of ongoing (like for maybe a couple of hundred years?) and apparently heated discussion of things dynastic Egyptian-wise but I fear it is mostly jibberish to me and beg to be enlightened by those wiser in the ways of Egyptology than this old cowboy...

Dave, I may be able to shed some light on the dynastic problem.

Around the start of the 20th century Egyptologists had Manetho's scheme of 31 Dynasties from the supposed beginnings of Egypt under Menes until Alexander's conquest.  They had various reign lengths tramsmitted by Josephus, Eusebius and Africanus, but these did not entirely match up and they had only summaries (e.g. Ninth and Tenth Dynasties, eighteen Heracleopolitans) for some periods.

It should be noted that prior to Manetho the Egyptians had never assigned numbers to their dynasties or, for that matter, split their rulers into dynasties.  What they had were lists of kings and, in some cases, their notable deeds, as is evident from Herodotus' account of what the priests told him about Egyptian history or, more accurately, what he noted down about the history of the New Kingdom, dismissing anything previous as of no account.

Early European Egyptologists thus had a scheme (Manetho) but no dates on which to pin it, apart from an end date (332 BC, Alexander's liberation of Egypt).  By working backwards they could attempt to put reasonably firm dates on the dynasties Manetho gives as:
31st (Persians, 343-32 BC)
30th (Native pharaohs, c.395-343 BC)
29th (Native rebels, c.460 BC)
28th (Native rebels, c.485 BC)
27th (Persians, 525 to approx 395 BC)
26th Native pharaohs, 663-525 BC

This much was reasonably firm, as it could be fixed with reference to dates from other cultures by mutually shared events (notab ly conquests and liberations of Egypt covered by Greek historians).  What was less clear was the identity of the actual pharaohs involved, because Greek historians give names like (for the '26th' Dynasty of 663-525 BC):
Psammetichus
Necho
Psammis
Apries
Amasis
Psamennitus
and equating these with the names on any Egyptian royal monument defeated Egyptologists (they did eventually dragoon up a number of unlikely-looking characters, e.g. a Psamshek for Psammetichus, a Wahabra for Apries, etc. but the monumental deeds of these fellows fell far short of those they were attributed by Greek historians and Hebrew accounts).

This led to a problem: as soon as the supply of Greek accounts dried up, so did the supply of reliable dates.  Hebrew accounts might have helped, only there seemed to be no correspondence between Hebrew and Egyptian history once one went back beyond the Greek sources.

And nobody could make any sense of the pharaohs of Herodotus.

Egyptologists were thus left with a lot of unknowns.  They had a plenitude of royal mummies* and inscriptions to slot into dynasties, and they had dynasties to slot into timelines.  What they sought was an anchor stone to which they could moor their drifting timeline and work the nebulous dynasties into some form of temporal shape.

*Although rather fewer than they might have obtained without the invention of the railway, given the tendency of locomotive operators in Egypt to use mummies for fuel.

The talisman sought was the dating of the so-called Sothic Cycle, which was said to have taken 1,461 years.  it is a measure of just how adrift any scheme of Egyptian chronology was that in the early 20th century the 'long' chronology (two Sothic Cycles from the 'Era of Menophres' to Censorinus' De Natali Liber mention of AD 140) was competing with the 'short chronology' (one Sothic Cycle from same to same).  In any event, the 'Era of Menophres' mentioned by Censorinus became the holy grail of Egyptologists, who searched for anyone named 'Menophres' in order to put him in 1321 BC.

They did not however feel they had an open choice: Menoferre of the Hyksos was rejected in favour of MenmaatRa of the 19th Dynasty, a pharaoh we know as Seti I.  The most promising candidate was rejected in favour of the least promising, and ever since then Egyptology has failed to correspond to dates of other civilisations which are not themselves derived from Egyptology.

The Sothic Cycle problem is discussed here, a page which also contains a few notes on alternative histories (without any particular conclusion except that Egyptology is a lot more tenuous than its practitioners admit).

Attempting to place Seti I in 1321 BC was fatal for any understanding of Egyptian history, let alone any timescale.  If you are genuinely interested as to why, I suggest contacting me privately, as certain gentlemen here seem to dislike mention of the subject on this forum.

[RichT]

I'm not aware that anyone dislikes this or any other subject, though it's fair to say that in this case there is a danger of veering into territory best avoided - the page referenced above is on 'faithweb', its author is author of 'A Biblical Interpretation of World History', and a few moments spent Googling 'problems with Egyptian chronology' will show that, on the internet at least, Egyptian chronology is as much a religious issue as a historical one. The general advice (which I'm sure Dave is perfectly aware of already) is that the internet (and the type of publishing that preceded the internet) can be a great source of disinformation as well as information, and the best starting point for someone new to the field is usually to become familiar with the consensus view before becoming embroiled with the alternatives. Not that I have any particular reading to recommend I'm afraid, it's not my period. It's just a general caveat lector - there are some delusional cranks out there among the unacknowledged geniuses.

[Patrick Waterson]

Be warned - for some reason Egyptian chronology attracts more than its fair share of individuals who claim to have solved all problems and be the sole discoverers of some true chronology which uniquely fits the facts.

Having been in this particular field, I can attest to the truth of this statement.

The general advice (which I'm sure Dave is perfectly aware of already) is that the internet (and the type of publishing that preceded the internet) can be a great source of disinformation as well as information, and the best starting point for someone new to the field is usually to become familiar with the consensus view before becoming embroiled with the alternatives. Not that I have any particular reading to recommend I'm afraid, it's not my period. It's just a general caveat lector - there are some delusional cranks out there among the unacknowledged geniuses.

In my experience, the only way to separate wheat from chaff is to go through the evidence for oneself.  Part of the problem is that often people get something right, something else wrong and cannot seem to tell the difference.  Only by looking at it oneself and seriously questioning how it all hangs together does any coherent system emerge.  To say this takes time and effort is an understatement, so best to be very interested.

For any who want a relatively painless rundown of the conventional chronology of Egypt, try the Wikipedia entry for Egyptian Chronology.  This is an outline, and allows you to hyperlink individual dynasties until you get bored or bemused doing so.  It is in any case a good idea to become familiar with the conventional chronology as this provides a good basis for general familiarisation and allows easier description of how it became scrambled.

I'm not aware that anyone dislikes this or any other subject, though it's fair to say that in this case there is a danger of veering into territory best avoided - the page referenced above is on 'faithweb', its author is author of 'A Biblical Interpretation of World History', and a few moments spent Googling 'problems with Egyptian chronology' will show that, on the internet at least, Egyptian chronology is as much a religious issue as a historical one.

One reason why Christians tend to favour non-conventional chronologies is that under the conventional chronology there is no link-up between the Bible and the chronology of Egypt as it stands (well, there is one, but it is a false link*) and hence the Bible is cast into disrepute as a historical source.  This in itself has serious ramifications for Hebrew history (not to mention present-day Middle Eastern politics, a subject perhaps best avoided on this forum).  Intriguingly, under Velikovsky's chronology the Bible is largely rehabilitated as a good historical source.

*A Sheshonk of the Libyan Dynasty is assumed to be the 'Shishak' of 1 Kings 14:25.  In fact he is the 'So' of 2 Kings 17:4.

[Duncan Head]

*A Sheshonk of the Libyan Dynasty is assumed to be the 'Shishak' of 1 Kings 14:25.  In fact he is the 'So' of 2 Kings 17:4.

Ah, the endearingly casual way that some people use the word "fact" ...

[Dave Beatty]

Intriguingly, under Velikovsky's chronology the Bible is largely rehabilitated as a good historical source.

I wondered if anyone would bring Velikovsky into the discussion.... was he the dude who started this whole 'problem'? I have a vague recollection of some argument about dating dynasties between French and British archaeologists back in the 1920s or 1930s but my memory gets fuzzy that far back... But didn't Vellly get hung up on the 19th and 20th dynasties having nowhere to move when he moved the 18th dynasty from the 16th-14th centuries to the 11th-9th? So I hear anyway. I really know nothing at all about it...

[RichT]

He mentioned the V word...

Velikovsky was the originator of the Othismos Interpretation - the theory that all hoplite battles were decided by the timely intervention of an army of Atlantaeans who, on horseback, wielding lances, formed on an 18" frontage and organised in files, would pass through enemy formations like a knife through butter, thus proving the historical reliability of biblical accounts and the veracity, in all circumstances, of Herodotus. The Greeks left statues on Mars to commemorate these events, thus indisputably corroborating Velikovsky's work. Or am I misremembering?

Or for a closer approximation to fact, you could read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky

[Erpingham]

So I hear anyway. I really know nothing at all about it...

Don't worry Dave, Patrick is a Velikovsky devotee - he'll soon have you sorted