IV. —THE BOOK PF THE SOTHIS

1. Menes                             35               2776 a.m.

2. Kurodes                         63               2811

3. Aristarchos                   34                2874

4. Spanios                          36               2908

5,6                                       72               2944

7. Osiropis                        23                3016

8. Sesonchosis                 49                3039

9. Amenemes                    29               3088

10. Amasis                          2                 3117

11. Akesephthres              13                3119

12. Anchoneus                    9                3132

13. Armiyses                       4                 3141

14. Chamois                      12                  3145

15. Miamus                       14                  3157

16. Amesesis                     65                 3171

17. Uses                             50                 3236

18. Eameses                      29                 8286

19. Ramesomenes           15                   3315

20. Usimare                     31                   3330

21. Ramesseseos              23                  3361

22. Ramessameno          19                   3384

23. Ramesse Iubassz      39                  3403

24. Ramesse Uapliru      29                  3442

25. Koncharis                    5                    3471

26. Silites                          19                    3477

27. Baeon                         44                    3496

28. Apacluias                  86                     3540

29. Aphophis                  61                      3576

30. Sethos                       50                      3637

31. Kertos                       29                       3687

32. Aseth                       20                        3716

33. Amosis                    26                        3736

34. Chebron                  13                        3762

35. Amemphis              15                         3775

36. Amenses                 11                         3790

37. Misphragmuthosis 16                      3801

38. Misphres                 23                       3817

39. Tuthmosis               39                       3840

40. Amenophthis         34                        3879

41. Oros                         48                         3913

42. Achencheres          25                         3961

43. Athoris                    29                         3986

44. Chencheres            26                        4015

45. Acherres                   8                         4041

46. Armaeos                  9                          4049

47. Ramesses              68                           4058

48. Amenophis             8                           4126

49. Thuoris                  17                           4134

50. Nechepsos             19                          4151

51. Psammuthis           13                         4170

52                                    4                           4183

53. Kertos                     20                         4187

54. Rampsis                 45                          4207

55. Amenses                 26                         4252

56. Ochyras                  14                          4278

57. Amendes                27                          4292

58. Thuoris                  50                          4319

59. Athothis                 28                          4369

60. Kenkenes               39                          4397

61. Uennephis              42                          4436

62. Susakeim               34                           4478

63. Psuenos                  25                           4512

64. Ammenophis          9                           4537

65. Nephercheres         6                            4546

66. Saites                      15                           4552

67. Psinaches                 9                           4567

68. Petubastes             44                          4576

69. Osorthon                  9                          4620

70. Psammos                10                          4629

71. Koncharis                21                           4639

72. Osorthon                 15                          4660

73. Takalophis              13                          4675

74. Bokchoris               44                          4688

75. Sabakon                  12                          4732

76. Sebechon               12                           4744

77. Tarakes                  20                          4756

78. Amaes                   38                          4776

79. Stephinathes        27                          4814

80. Nechepsos           13                           4841

81. Nechos                   8                           4854

82. Psammitichos     14                           4862

83. Nechao                  9                           4876

84. Psamuthes           17                         4885

85. Uaphris                34                        4902

86. Amosis                 50                        4936

 

An examination of the versions of Manetho's King List according to Julius Africanus and Eusebius shows that they do not agree in many important particulars, i.e., in arrangement of dynasties, in the lengths of the reigns of the kings, and in the total numbers of kings assigned to the different dynasties. Moreover, according to Julius Africanus 561 kings reigned in about 5524 years, while according to Eusebius only about 361 kings reigned in 4480 or 4780 years. In the Old Chronicle the total number of kings given is 84, and they are declared to have reigned about 2140 years, and in the Book of the Sothis the total number of kings is 86 and the total duration of their reigns is given as about 2500 years. Now the information which we have obtained from the Egyptian monuments shows that the Old Chronicle and the Book of the Sothis are quite useless for chronological purposes, because it is self-evident that they do not contain complete lists of the kings, and that the names of the kings which are in them, as well as some of the dynasties, are out of order. This is a statement of fact and not a conjecture. But how are the discrepancies between the lists of Julius Africanus and Eusebius to be explained? The version of Julius Africanus is clearly the more accurate of the two, because it agrees best with the monuments, and Bunsen was probably right in saying that his object was not to arrange a system of Annals, but to give the traditions unaltered, and just as he found them. In fact, judging only by the mere forms of the kings’ names which he gives, and which (even after the lapse of 1600 years, and in spite of the ignorance and carelessness of subsequent copyists) are on the whole remarkably correct, it seems pretty certain that he must have had a copy of Manetho’s list before him. The version of Eusebius was based upon that of Africanus, and he appears to have been careless in copying both names and figures, and the names of many kings are wanting in the extant copies of his works. We know from Plutarch that Manetho was a high-priest and scribe connected with the mysteries in the temple of Heliopolis, and there is no doubt that, in compiling the work which he had received the royal command to undertake, he would be in a position to draw his information from sources which were regarded as authoritative and authentic by his brother priests. That his name carried weight, and that his reputation for learning was very great for centuries after his death, is evident from the fact that impostors endeavoured to obtain circulation for their own pseudo-historical works by issuing them under his name. We have no right to blame Manetho for the mistakes which his editors and copyists made, and in considering his list the wonder is that the version of Julius Africanus agrees as closely as it does with the monumental evidence. The discrepancies in the numbers are due chiefly to the misreading by the scribes of the Greek letters which stood for figures; the names, however, are generally given in correct order, and as instances of this fact we may quote those of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties.

The evidence of Herodotus (b.c. 450) and Diodorus Siculus (b.c. 57) concerning Egyptian chronology is interesting, especially that of the former writer. Some of the information given by Herodotus is, no doubt, derived from Hecataeus of Miletus, but, as is the case also with Diodorus, much of it is the result of his own inquiries and observation. The list of kings given in each of their works is, on the whole, of little value, for Herodotus apparently merely set down in writing the names of the kings whose buildings he passed 011 the Nile in the order in which he saw them, and Diodorus filled his history with a large amount of legendary matter from which, of course, no conclusion can be drawn. As an exception, however, it may be noted that the account of the kings who built the Pyramids in the IVth Dynasty agrees absolutely with the monuments as regards the names of the kings, the lengths of their reigns, and the order in which they reigned, and in several passages Diodorus1 correctly estimates the period of time which had elapsed since the beginning of the Egyptian monarchy at about 4700 years.

It will be evident from what has been said above that it is impossible from the King Lists in hieroglyphics and Greek to formulate any system of chronology which shall be more than approximately correct, and although the evidence derived from such lists and from the monuments of individual kings when taken together is wonderfully strong in favour of the high antiquity of Egyptian civilization generally, it does not enable us to fix the period when we may assume that Egyptian history began. The Tablet of Abydos and the ver­sions of Manetho ascribed to Julius Africanus and Eusebius, and even the worthless Book of the Sothis, all agree in making Mena to be the first historical king of Egypt, though we now know that he was not the first king of Egypt, but none of these authorities affords the information which will enable us with certainty to assign a date for his reign. Nevertheless, attempts have been made to obtain some fixed point in the King Lists from which it might be possible to deduce his date, and the means employed have been :—1. The Sothic Period ; 2. Synchronisms ; 3. The Orientation of Egyptian Temples. Of the Sothic Period we have five mentions in the inscriptions; three of these have been submitted to strict examination by Sir Norman Lockyer, K.C.B., and he thinks that the rising of Sirius on the 27th day of Epiphi, in the reign of Pepi-Meri-Ea, took place about b.c. 3192, and that the other risings of Sirius mentioned by Brugsch took place about b.c. 1728 and b.c. 270 respectively.3 Now Pepi-Meri-Ra’s name is the thirty-sixth on the Tablet of Abydos, and it is clear that he is either Phios or Phiops, i.e., a king of the VIth Dynasty according to the version of Manetho given by Julius Africanus; this being so, and by adding Manetho’s totals of the years of the first five dynasties, i.e., 253 + 302 +214 4­274 +248, or 1291 years to BC 3192, we arrive at the date for Mena of BC 4483. No one can pretend to accept this as a definite date, but it is at least useful as showing that the evidence derived from the use of the Sothic Period in Egyptian chronology indicates an antiquity for the civilization of Egypt which is higher than some are prepared to admit; on the other hand, Mr. Cecil Torr believes that the Sothic cycle was invented by the later Greeks at Alexandria, and he thinks that there is very little hope of correcting any dates in history by reference to the cycles of the phoenix1 and the dog­star, or other things pertaining to the calendar. In a recent paper 3 an attempt has been made to fix the date of Usertsen III, a king of the XIIth Dynasty, by means of two of the Kahun papyri which mention the rising of Sirius on the 16th day of the IVth month of the winter of the 7th year of the king’s reign, and the festival gifts which were made on the following day; and it is argued that this took place between BC 1876 and BC 1872. It is further argued that between Usertsen III and Amenophis I, whose ninth year (according to a calculation based upon a statement in respect of Sothis in the Ebers Papyrus) corresponds with BC 1545—1542, we must only allow a period of 330 years, and that between the end of the XIIth and the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty we must only allow from 200 to 210 years in our calculations. That assertions of this kind must be received with caution is evident from the fact that another investigator, using the same data, declares that the true date of Usertsen III is BC 1945; i.e., there is a difference of about seventy years in the results of the calculations of the two writers on the subject. But according to Censorinus, the Dog-star, or Sirius, rose on the first day of the first month of the Egyptian year AD 139, and therefore the preceding Sothic Period began in BC 1322; this date is called by Theon of Alexandria “the era of Menophres,” who has been identified by Prof. Petrie with Rameses I, whose prenomen is Men-peh-Ra, and this identification may possibly be correct. Now Prof. Mahler has asserted that a Set Festival, i.e,, the festival which was observed at the end of a period of thirty years, which was celebrated on the 28th day of a certain month of Epiphi in the reign of Thothmes III, was commemorated in the year BC 1470, and as a period of about 150 years probably elapsed between the reigns of Thothmes III and Rameses I, the two dates are, more or less, in agreement. It must, however, be remembered that, as said above, very little reliance is to be placed on any calculations of this kind in attempting to formulate an exact chronology, especially as authorities, both ancient and modern, are not agreed as to the exact date in the second century of our era when the Sothic Period ended on which they based their calculations. We may note in passing that the date assigned by Prof. Mahler to the reign of Thothmes III, i.e., from BC 1503 to BC 1449, is proved to be about half a century too low by the synchronisms of Burna-buriash and Ashur-uballit with Amenophis III and Amenophis IV, as we have shown below; the arguments adduced by Prof. Petrie in favour of Prof. Mahler’s date for Thothmes III, to the effect that the Set Festival celebrated by Mer-en-Ptah in the second year of his reign took place BC 1206, and the rising of Sirius in the ninth year of Amenophis . took place BC 1546, do not confirm Prof. Mahler’s arguments, because the calculations by which these elates are arrived at both start, the one forwards and the other backwards, from BC 1478, the date adopted by Prof. Mahler. This likewise is an unsatisfactory method of arriving at an exact system of Egyptian chronology.

In connection with the Sothic Period must be mentioned Prof. Petrie’s attempt to extract the means of arriving at a date for the reign of Mer-en-Ra, a king of the VIth Dynasty, from the inscription of the official Una, whose labours in the service of his royal master are so well known. Near the end of his inscription Una says that his Majesty Mer-en-Ra sent him to the quarry of Het-nub to hew out a large alabaster table for offerings; this he did, and placing it in a broad boat, he floated it down the river to Memphis in seventeen days. The boat measured sixty cubits by thirty cubits, and he built the boat, or raft, and quarried the table for offerings in seventeen days in the month of Epiphi. Una then says,   i.e., “behold there was no water on the thesu, i.e., shoals or sandbanks,” but notwithstanding the difficulty, he adds, he brought the boat, or raft, safely into port at the Pyramid of Khanefer of Mer-en-Ra, in peace. Prof. Petrie argues from this statement that when Una arrived off Memphis in the month of Epiphi the waters of the Nile had subsided so greatly that he was unable to float the boat or barge with its heavy load over the land which had been recently inundated, for the depth of the water on the land did not permit him to do so. So far all is clear, and this is undoubtedly what the words in hieroglyphics indicate. But Prof. Petrie adds, “This fact shows the season of the month Epiphi in that age, from which—by the shifting of the calendar round the seasons in each Sothis period of 1460 years—it is possible to get an approximate date for the reign of Mer-en-Ra at about 3350 BC.” What Una narrates may show that the month of Epiphi was considerably out of place in the year when he went to Het-nub, but the possibility of deducing any date for the reigning king from this circumstance is too remote to be seriously entertained for a moment.

Of more interest, and of much greater value, are the synchronisms which can certainly be established between Amenophis IV, king of Egypt, and Burra-buriash, king of Karaduniyash, or Babylonia, and between Shashanq I, king of Egypt, and Rehoboam, king of Israel. Now we know from the form of the name Burna-buriash or Burra-buriyash that we are dealing with a member of the Kassite Dynasty which ruled over Babylonia, and we also know that the period of their rule was about BC 1400, because Nabonidus, who reigned from about 555 to BC 538, tells us in one of his inscriptions that Shagash-alti-buriyash, who was one of the Kassite kings, reigned 800 years before him. From the Synchronous History, we know that Burra-buriyash was a contemporary of Puzur-Ashur, king of Assyria, and we know that Puzur-Ashur lived at an earlier period than Ashur-uballit, king of Assyria. Now Nabonidus also tells us that Burra-buriyash lived 700 years after Hammurabi; we have therefore to fix the period for the reign of the latter king before the information can be of much value to us. Now Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria, who reigned from 668 to 626, says that the Elamite king Kudur-Nankhundi invaded Babylonia 1635 or 1535 years before he himself conquered Susa, i.e., Kudur-Nankhundi invaded Babylonia about BC 2285 or 2185. But it was this same Elamite power which Hammurabi crushed, and so he must have lived after Kudur-Nankhundi; we may therefore at the latest place the date of his reign at about BC 2200. If, then, Burra-buriyash lived 700 years after Hammurabi, the date of his reign would be about BC. 1450 or 1400. We must return for a moment to Ashur-uballit, king of Assyria, who was one of the successors of Puzur-Ashur, king of Assyria, and whose date may be fixed by the following facts. On a slab in the British Museum, No. 44,85s, Ramman-nirari states that he is the great-grandson of Ashur-uballit; in another inscription Shalmaneser I states that he is the son of Ramman-nirari I, and in another Tukulti-Ninib asserts that he is the son of Shalmaneser I; from these three statements it is clear that Ashur-uballit was the great-great-great-grandfather of Tukulti-Ninib. Now, Sennacherib made a copy upon clay of an inscription of Tukulti-Ninib which had been cut upon a lapis-lazuli seal; this seal had been carried off to Babylon by some successful conqueror of Assyria, and Sennacherib found it there after he had vanquished the Babylonians and had captured their city. We know that Sennacherib reigned from about. 705 to BC 681, and he tells us in a few lines added to his copy of the writing on Tukulti-Ninib’s seal that the lapis-lazuli seal was carried off to Babylon 600 years before his own time; therefore Tukulti-Ninib must have reigned at least as far back as BC 1280, and as there is no evidence to show that the seal was carried off during his lifetime, we may assume rightly that Tukulti-Ninib’s date is about BC 1300. But we have seen that Ashur-uballit was Tukulti-Ninib’s great­great-great-grandfather, and therefore he can hardly have lived less than 100 years before Tukulti-Ninib; thus it is clear that the date which we must assign to the reign of Ashur-uballit cannot be later than BC 1400. Now we know that the Tell el-Amarna tablet at Berlinwas written to Amenophis IV by Ashur-uballit, therefore these two kings were contemporaries, and the date of Amenophis IV cannot be later than BC 1400. We have seen above that Burra-buriyash was a contemporary of Puzur-Ashur, king of Assyria, the predecessor of Ashur-uballit, and his date may, at the lowest computation, be fixed at about BC 1430; but we know that Burra-buriyash wrote letters to Amenophis III, and therefore we shall be right in saying that the beginning of the reign of this king cannot be much later than BC1450. This synchronism is thus well established.

The next synchronism to be mentioned is that of Shashanq I, king of Egypt, with Jeroboam, king of Israel, and Rehoboam, king of Judah, about BC 950. The date of this synchronism is calculated from the earliest certain date or event in Syrian history, i.e., the battle of Karkar, which took place BC 854; in this battle Ahab and his allies were defeated by Shalmaneser II, king of Assyria, who reigned from 859 to 825 BC. It is well known that as far back as 893 BC nearly all the principal events in Assyrian history may be dated by the names in the Eponym Canon, and although the battle of Karkar is not mentioned in the Bible narrative, the evidence for its date is as certain as such things can ever be.

Finally, we may refer to the synchronism of Gyges, king of Lydia, with Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, and Psammetichus I, king of Egypt. We know from the inscriptions of Ashurbanipal that he waged war against Gyges, and that Gyges assisted Psammetichus in his revolt against the Assyrian king, and there is no doubt that these events took place about 650 BC. An indirect confirmation of this statement is supplied by the Greek poet Archilochos, a contemporary of Gyges, who mentions a total eclipse of the sun which took place at midday, and it has been calculated astronomically that this eclipse took place on April 6th, 648 BC.

In recent years Sir Norman Lockyer has devoted very considerable time and labour to the working out of the important question of the astronomical basis upon which ancient Egyptian temples were oriented, and he has arrived at the conclusion that it is possible to assign dates to the periods when many of the largest and most venerable of these edifices were founded. He has obtained his results by means of purely astronomical calculations, and they agree generally with the evidence which may be deduced from the discoveries concerning the “New Race” and the kings of the 1st Dynasty, which have been made since the Dawn of Astronomy was written. There can be no doubt about the correctness of many of his assertions as to the refounding and reconstruction of the largest of the temples, and it is important to note that the dates proposed by him for the original foundings for certain temples, although at one time believed by some to be too early, may now be regarded as probably correct. Astronomical evidence supports the evidence derived from every other source in assigning a remote antiquity to the period when Egyptian civilization began; but unfortunately it does not assist us in formulating a complete system of Egyptian chronology with exact dates.

We may now sum up the results which may be fairly deduced from the facts set forth above. The King Lists, whether written in hieroglyphics or Greek, contain omissions and conflicting statements, but the evidence of such Lists as a whole, when taken into consideration with the information on Egyptian history which is supplied by the monuments, may be regarded as generally correct and quite credible. From the King Lists the Royal Papyrus of Turin must, of course, be excluded, for the small fragments into which it was reduced in the box on its way to Turin were pieced together by a man whose system of hieroglyphic decipherment has been universally rejected, and whose knowledge of the hieratic character was so small as to be useless for the purpose to which he tried to apply it; moreover, according to the testimony of de Rouge, whose learning and integrity are beyond question, and whose statement on the subject must be regarded as final, 110 arguments can be rightly based upon the position of the fragments which seem to contain the names of kings of the so-called XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties. The difficulty which besets the Egyptologist who tries to assign a date to the reign of Menes, the first king of Egypt according to the Tablet of Abydos, is well illustrated by the fact that Champollion-Figeac gives as his date 5867 BC; Boeckli, 5702 BC; Lepsius, 3892 BC; Mariette, 5004 BC; Bunsen, 3623 BC; Wilkinson, 2320 BC; and Brugsch, 4455 or 4400 BC. Of these writers the only ones whose chrono­logical views are to be seriously considered are Lepsius, Mariette, and Brugsch, between whose highest and lowest dates is an interval of over 1100 years. Viewed in the light of recent investigations, the date of Lepsius seems to be too low, whilst that of Mariette, in the same way, seems to be too high ; we have therefore to consider the date for Menes arrived at by Brugsch. This eminent Egyptologist based his system of chronology upon the well-known calculation of Herodotus, that the duration of three consecutive human lives represents a century, and he thought that he could determine approximately 1 the periods of time which have elapsed between Menes and the end of the XIIth Dynasty, and from the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty to the end of the XXVIth, by means of the King Lists and the pedigrees of high Egyptian officials. Although this system is open to many objections on the score of inaccuracy in respect of the dates of certain events which may now be fixed with considerable exactness, it has much to recommend it, and is on the whole the best that has been devised; in any case, the knowledge which Brugsch possessed of Egyptology in all its branches was so vast, that in a general question of this kind his opinion carries great weight, and is entitled to the utmost respect. The present writer here, as elsewhere, has adopted Brugsch’s system, with certain modifications which were rendered necessary by recent discoveries, e.g., the date of Thothmes III must be brought down from 1600 to between 1550 and 1500 BC; the interval between the XIIth and the XVIIIth Dynasties, as stated by Brugsch, can hardly have been so long. But in view of our ignorance of the historical events which took place between the end of the XIIth and the end of the XVIIth Dynasty, it has been well to retain his dating of the kings of the Middle Empire, i.e., those of the XIth, XIItli, XIIIth, and XVIth Dynasties. The length of the duration of the two great gaps in Egyptian history, i.e., from the end of the VIth to the beginning of the XIth Dynasty, and from the end of the XIIIth to the end of the XVIIth Dynasty, is at present unknown ; all we can now say is that they seem to have been shorter than was assumed by Brugsch, who based his opinion on Manetho’s figures, which in this section are certainly garbled. Until we obtain monumental authority for filling up these gaps, any attempt to do so which is based upon the Royal Papyrus of Turin, or upon the evidence of the unidentified royal names which are found on scarabs, is quite futile; this being so, it is far more satisfactory to employ for the Ancient and Middle Empires the dates computed by Brugsch. It must, however, be distinctly understood that, when Brugsch gives the date for, let us say, Amenemhat I as 2466 BC, he does not mean to imply that Amenenhat I ascended the throne in that year, but that his generation falls roughly about that time, i.e., about thirty years earlier or later than 2466 BC. Similarly, he does not intend his readers to think that he believed Rameses I to have begun to reign 1333 BC, but only in the second half of the XIVth century BC. It is very important that this fact should be borne in mind, lest the system of Brugsch be confused with the systems which assign exact dates to every Egyptian king, for no exact dates can be assigned to any Egyptian kings before the XXVIth Dynasty, although as far back as the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty no greater error than fifty years is possible.