EGYPTIAN - CHRONOLOGY.
The chronology of Ancient Egypt has been ascertained by means of the various statements of classical authors, by regnal years and the numerous other indications on the monuments, by the results of close archaeological study, and the ascertaining of certain fixed astronomical data, checked by comparison with the known chronology of the ancient nations which afford synchro nisms with events in Egyptian history. The Egyptians never pos sessed a regular era, as the Assyrians did with their list of limmu officials (see ASSYRIA). Only once is an era mentioned, in the de scription of Rameses II., mentioning the 400th year of the Hyksos king (?) Nubti which fell in his reign. We only hear of such and such a regnal year of a king or, in early days, of the years of cer tain fiscal numberings. Regular regnal annals are very rarely pre served, though we have fragments of them in the Old Kingdom in the Palermo Stone, and there is of course the famous Turin Papy rus of Kings, which is invaluable even in its mutilated condition. Under the 12th and 22nd Dynasties the custom of the association of fathers and sons on the throne enables us to check the chron ology of the overlapping years of those periods (as when the loth year of one king is stated to be the first of another), and so recon stitute the length of the dynasty with some accuracy. The use of synchronisms with Mesopotamian history is evident when we see that the reign of Rameses II. is contemporary with that (of certain date) of Shalmaneser I. of Assyria (c. 125o B.c.), a datum with which other synchronisms agree. And dates fixed astronomi cally are of great importance. The Egyptian did not note eclipses as the Mesopotamian did, so that we have not this evidence. But we have the observations of the heliacal risings of the star Sothis (Sirius), which have supplied us with certain fixed dates which are of great importance, the more so as they agree with the results obtained from synchronisms. The Egyptian calendar was regulated by the observations of the heliacal risings of Sirius, which were supposed to take place on the first day of the first month of the year. But as an additional leap year day was not intercalated every four years in addition to the year of 360-5 "epagomenal" days, the months gradually lost all relation to the seasons, and it was not till 1,46o years after the last accurate coincidence that the heliacal rising of Sirius again took place accurately on the first day of the first month. When it did the event was celebrated as the beginning of a new "Sothic cycle." We know that a new cycle began either in 139 or in 143 A.D. An Alexandrian mathematician calls the initial year of the preceding cycle (13 21 or 1317 B.c.) the "epoch of Menophres." The "throne-name" of Rameses I., who began to reign, it is known from the synchronism of Rameses II. with Shalmaneser III., about 132o B.C., is Menpehtira or more shortly Menpehra` (a form that constantly occurs), which is ob viously "Menophres." Now it would appear from contemporary evidence that Sothis rose heliacally on the first day of the month Pharmouthi in the seventh year of Senusret III., of the 12th Dynasty ; so that it would seem easy to calculate that the seventh year of that king should be 1876 or 1872 B.C. (although another computer [Nicklin] has arrived at the date 1924 B.C. for the same year), on the assumption that this king reigned during the immedi ately preceding cycle which began in 2781 or 2778 B.C. Here, since synchronisms fail us, our knowledge of the historical devel opment of Egyptian civilization and art comes to our aid to assure us that this must have been so, in spite of the fact that it is very difficult to square the lengthy list of kings given us by the Egyp tians themselves with so short an interval as the two hundred years only which, if this conclusion is right, can have elapsed be tween the end of the 12th Dynasty and the beginning of the 18th. If it is right, the 12th Dynasty must have ended about 1788 B.c., and we know that the 18th cannot have begun later than 158o, from our full knowledge of the length of the reigns of that dy nasty, confirmed by records of certain new-moon festivals at the time, as well as by synchronisms. So short is this period that Prof. Sir Flinders Petrie has preferred the view that Senusret and the I2th Dynasty really belong to the preceding cycle, and so go back to the fourth millennium B.C. This view however goes clearly against our archaeological knowledge. The resemblances between the culture of the early i8th Dynasty and the 12th are enough to forbid us to suppose that 1600 years elapsed between them, an epoch as long as that which separates Augustus from Queen Eliza beth. And our knowledge of the development of Minoan civiliza tion (see AEGEAN CIVILIZATION) confirms this prohibition. The 12th Dynasty was contemporary with the Second Middle Minoan period; the early i8th with the First Late Minoan period. No student of Minoan archaeology could admit that these two Cretan epochs were separated by more than two or three centuries ; 16 is impossible. Yet the fact remains that only two centuries or at the most three between the I2th and the i8th Dynasties are rather hard to accept. Four would seem more probable ; and so it remains a moot question whether or not something has happened, some mistake in the observation of the star, or some unrecorded modification of the calendar, which would invalidate the modern calculation of the distance of time between Senusret and Rameses I. If, however, it is maintained that no such mistake is possible, then we must accept 1788 as the latest date of the end of the I2th Dynasty, 1861 B.C., as the earliest. The length of the dynasty we know from its recorded reigns to have been 212 years, so that it began about 2000 B.C. or about a century earlier, unless we choose to allow a little more time for a possible error, and suppose a date for it of c. 2212-2000 B.C. Further back we reach a state of great uncertainty. There are no synchronisms and no Sothic records to help us. The length of time between the beginning of the 12th Dynasty and the end of the 6th is unknown, but it cannot have been longer than two or three centuries. The Turin papyrus comes to our help with the statement that 955 years elapsed between the beginning of the 1st Dynasty and the end of the 8th, a statement that agrees with historical and archaeological probability, and if we reckon the latter at about 2400 B.C. we reach 335o as that of "Menes," the conflate founder of the kingdom (=the historical kings "Scorpion," Narmerza, and "Ahai") (see EGYPT : History; Art). But Prof. Meyer now takes c. 3200 B.C. as the date of "Menes," assuming, as we have not, that the Sothic date of Senu sret III. is incontrovertible. We have assumed 2 212 as the begin ning of the 12th Dynasty, and 237o as that of the beginning of the The 8th may well have been contemporary with the 9th and loth (Herakleopolites) and have lasted until c. 2400. If the "Kahun" date is correct, as Meyer assumes, and the end of the 8th dynasty is brought down to 2300, the Sothic cycle that began in 2 781 or 2778 B.C. will then have fallen about the time of the 3rd Dynasty. If 2400 is taken as the date it will have fallen as late as the 5th. In either case, the yet earlier cycle-era in 4241 or 4238 B.c. will belong well before the beginning of the kingdom. And it has been supposed that the calendar must have been invented at that time, because the calendar was known before the 4th Dynasty. But the invention of a calendar presupposes a settled state and civilization, not the undeveloped culture of the predynastic period, though we do not know that there did not exist in Lower Egypt before the unification a political state where culture was sufficiently developed for such an invention to be made, and there have been considered to exist indications of the existence of such a state. Still, eight centuries between the invention and the unification under Menes is a very long time for such a hypothetical civiliza tion to have endured apart from the fact that such an invention as a calendar must have occurred at the end of its development rather than its beginning; and recently a suggestion has been made by Dr. Scharff that revolutionizes our ideas on this point. This is that since the older date is so improbable the invention of the calendar in reality took place in 2781-2778 B.C., and since it was known be fore the time of the 4th Dynasty, this dynasty must in reality be later than that date, so that this Sothic cycle probably began about the time of the 3rd Dynasty. And it is significant that it is pre cisely in the time of the 3rd Dynasty, in the reign of king Zoser, that the great development of Egyptian culture took place that is ascribed to the inspiration of that king's minister, Imhotep, who was later deified as the patron of art and learning, including medi cine, architecture, astronomy and science generally. It is then sur mised that the calendar was invented by Imhotep or in his time, and that therefore the date 2781-2778 falls in the reign of Zoser. Now if this new surmise is correct, the 1st Dynasty will have be gun rather later than 3200 B.c., and then the end of the 8th Dy nasty will certainly fall about 2300. But in this case we shall have to assume the astronomically calculated "Kahun" date of Senusret III. to be unquestionably correct, as Meyer does, and must accept two centuries only between the 12th Dynasty and the 18th, in spite of the long Turin list of kings of this period, who then must have been mostly very ephemeral rulers. In any case the ancient list compilers were evidently as much at sea in the two "intermediate" periods (6th-12th and I2th-18th Dynasties), as we are, for they suffered from absence of reliable material just as we do.
In later days, after the time of Rameses II., we have various data to help us. The date of Sheshonk (Shishak), the contempor ary of Rehoboam and founder of the 22nd Dynasty, is fixed to c. 93o B.C. by Assyrian and biblical evidence, and for the Ethiopian kings, Shabak, Taharka and the rest, we have the fixed synchro nisms with Assyrian kings whose dates are fixed by the limmu lists. From the time of Psammetichus I., the founder of the 26th Dynasty, Babylonian and Greek authorities assist us, and his date is definitely known to be 663 (651 independent of Assyria)-6o9 B.C. After him we are dealing with the known facts of general ancient history as reported by the classical historians.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-E. Meyer, Die iiltere Chronologie Babyloniens, Bibliography.-E. Meyer, Die iiltere Chronologie Babyloniens, Assyriens u. Aegyptens (1925), Aegyptische Chronologie, Bbh. Berlin Acad. (1904), Nach f rage zur dg. Chr., do. (1907) ; T. Nicklin, "The Origin of the Egyptian Year," Class. Rev. 1900, pp. 146-148; H. R. Hall, Anc. Hist. Near East (1924), p. 15 ff. Cambr. Anc. Hist. i. p. 166 ff; Scharff, Grundzuge d. Aegyptische Vorgeschichte (1927), p. 46 ff ; "Beitrag zur Chronologie der 4ten Aegyptischen Dynastie," Oriental ische Litterarische Zeitung (1928) p. 73 ff. (H. R. H.)