Fig. 1. Front and Back views of the Narmer Tablet, Cairo Museum
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How to Date a Pharaoh
Old Kingdom. Middle Kingdom. New Kingdom. 31 Dynasties. 170 Pharaohs. Nice, neat, concise historical data. But where did it all originate from? Let’s start with the terminology.
What is a pharaoh? In Egyptian history, the term derives from ‘Per-aa’, literally the Great House, the private residence of the King. Around 1200 B.C., this term gradually came to refer to the King who lived there. The current spelling and pronunciation has three probable sources: from the Latin ‘Pharaonem,’ the Greek ‘Pharao,’ and the Hebrew ‘Par’oh.’ Pharaohs were perceived as both God and King.
Having around 170 Pharaohs to track, the system of dynasties was implemented. From the Greek word ‘Dynasteia,’ meaning power, lordship, or sovereignty, it refers to a series of leaders in the same family or business.
The man responsible for the system of Dynasties used in Egyptology was a Graeco-Egyptian priest, Manetho, born about 300 B.C., in the Delta town of Sebenaytos. His name translates to “beloved Of Thoth,” the god of wisdom and writing. Manetho served in the temple of Ra Heliopolis, which allowed him access to all the historical information stored there. This information became the basis for his book, Aegyptiac, the “History of Egypt.” Few remnants of this text remain; much of what is known of the original text comes from references used by other ancient historians over the following centuries.
Manetho set himself the nearly impossible task of reconciling the data known as “king lists,” including the papyrus known as the Turin Canon, which dates from the about 1200 B.C. . A king list is exactly what it sounds like; a list of Egyptian kings. There exists a half dozen, plus Mantheo’s list named for their discovery site. The other four are the Abydos King List (to Seti I 1291-1278 B.C.), the Karnak King List (to Tuthmosis III, 1504-1450 B.C.), the Saqqara Tablet (to Ramesses II, 1279-1213 B.C.), and the Westcar Papyrus (to Kamose 1573-1570 B.C.). So, you may ask, what could be so difficult in putting a bunch of dates in chronological order? Almost everything!
Let’s start with a closer look at the Mantheo King List. It starts with Menes as the First King of Egypt, as described on the Narmer Tablet (Fig. 1). Menes, also known as Narmer, united Upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom. No credit is given to any of the kings who ruled only Upper or Lower Egypt before Narmer, also known as Menes. Problem Number One is a simple problem that really complicates things fast: Egyptian kings had many names, not limited to the additional four throne names, added to their birth name, that were bestowed upon their coronation. The Palmero Stone lists rulers that predate Menes/Narmer and continues up to the fifth dynasty (2498-2345 B.C.), but has lost most of the information for the first and second dynasties due to damage. This king list goes back in time far enough to include mythical god kings (Fig. 2) .
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Fig. 3. Beginning of Abydos King List
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Fig. 4. Copy of Abydos KL Fragment
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Problem Number Two is there are names missing; damage has already been cited as one cause. The king lists were not recorded simply as historical documents, but as a way for the priesthood to pay homage to their living God Kings. Like many celebrity lists in our modern times, if you were not popular for whatever reason, you didn’t make it on the list.
Problem Number Three is still currently a world problem: politics. Incestuous royal marriages were a popular way to keep the royal bloodlines intact, but they did not always produce an heir. This would result in the beginning of a new Royal Dynasty, but usually after some periods of confusion and conflict. In her book, The History of the Ancient World from the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome (Norton & Co., New York 2007, pp. 246-247), Susan Wise Bauer discusses the end of the eighteenth dynasty, when one of Egypt’s best known ancient Pharaohs, King Tut, died without an heir.
“The short answer to this is that the general chaos at the end of the 18th Dynasty
wreaked havoc not only on the succession itself, but on its later records. Ay took
over some of Tutankhamun’s [AKA Tut] monuments as his own; Horemheb did the
same to Ay; and the two best-known versions of the Egyptian king list skip straight
over Tut and Ay and go straight to Horemheb. He appears as the last pharaoh of
the 18th Dynasty primarily because he claimed that his wife was a sister of
Akhenaten’s chief wife, which (barely) qualified him as an heir through the female
line; and because he did his best to wipe out all traces of Akhenaton, Tut, and Ay,
adding their years of reign to his own so that king lists engraved under his patronage
go straight from Amenhotep III to Horemheb. Later, though, he is occasionally listed
as the founding pharaoh of the 19th instead of the last of the 18th.”
This is only one of the lines of succession for the dynasties. Multiply these types of problems times thirty-one dynasties and you have an idea of the complexity involved in the overall task. Mantheo provided a strong framework for dating the pharaohs, but it has been up to our recent historians and archeologists to fill in the gaps. How is this accomplished?
The work of modern Egyptology exerts tremendous effort into providing the most accurate and up-to-date information in their quest to do so. They utilize three primary methods:
Relative dating, such as sequence dating of artifacts is
also known as statigraphic excavation, with credit given to
Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942). In 1899, he greatly advanced archaeology by developing a systematic method to recover and preserve artifacts. His system involved dating layers based on pottery and ceramics. Prior to his new system, artifacts were recovered and removed at random, with little or no documentation of when and where the discovery occurred.
Fig. 5. Petrie, known as ‘The Father of Egyptian Archaeology.’
2. Absolute chronologies, based on calendars and astronomy records obtained from ancient texts. The civil and astrology calendars of Ancient Egypt utilized the Sothic cycle of 1460 years, based upon the rising of Sothis (Sirius), the “dog star.” The Egyptian New Year began on the new moon after Sothis first appeared on the eastern horizon. This signaled that the Nile flood season would soon begin.
The calendar consisted of three seasons (inundation, sowing, and harvest) totaling 365 days, not 365 ¼ days, allowing for gradual inaccuracies.
For example, Senusret III, from the 12th dynasty, ruled between 1878-1841 B.C. . To refer to the Sothis rising in 1872 B.C., his 7th year of reign, it would read “the 16th day of the 4th month of the 2nd season in regnal year 7.”
Egyptian chronology can be calculated by counting forwards or backwards from the heliacal risings of Sothis/Sirius in 2773 B.C., 1317 B.C., and 139 A.D. . This type of dating is considered to have a smaller margin of error over radiocarbon dating by plus or minus 1 or 2 standard deviations.
3. Radiometric methods, such as radiocarbon dating and thermoluminescence. The more commonly known radiocarbon dating determines the age of organic materials, such as wood, based on the content of radioisotope carbon-14. This radioisotope is acquired from the atmosphere when the living plants are formed (photosynthesis). The carbon-14 decays into nonradioactive nitrogen-14. The amount of carbon-14 decreases proportionally to the time of death (it has a half-life of 5730 years), allowing the date of death to be estimated. With the use of dendrochronological calibration curves, radiocarbon years can be converted into a range of possible calendar years. The technique was developed by Professor Willard Libby and his colleagues from the University of Chicago in 1949. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work in 1960.
Thermoluminescence, developed during the 1960’s by physicists, replaces radiocarbon when it is inappropriate for usage, such as with sediment or ceramics. This is a chronometric method of dating inanimate materials by measuring the stored energy created when they were first fired. There are unique physiochemical properties in certain minerals (quartz and feldspar) that are emitted as measurable ultraviolet light during testing. In archeology, this technique is invaluable for dating pottery and ceramics.
The history of Ancient Egypt is a magnificent tapestry woven over millennia. This tapestry, as we know it, involves everything from the stars in the skies, to back breaking labor on earth, and extends to include the most modern of technologies. Whether you are reading about the Pharaohs in a book, or studying artifacts in a museum, pause for a moment and say a silent “Thank-you!”
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Fig. 6. Queen Nefetari Playing the Game of Senet
(Royal Name Cartouche with White Background)
Thebes. Werner Forman Archive
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Written by Cathe Beebe, A.A., B.S.
March 10th 2018
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