r two
years at most. The lengths of several reigns in the XIIth, XVIIIth and
XIXth Dynasties are known, and the sum total for the XIIth Dynasty is
preserved better than any other in the Turin Papyrus, which was written
under the XIXth Dynasty. The succession and number of the kings are also
ascertained for other dynasties, together with many regnal dates, but
very serious gaps exist in the records of the Egyptian monuments, the
worst being between the XIIth and the XVIIIth Dynasties, between the
XIth and the VIth, and at Dynasties I.-III. For the chronology before
the time of the XXVIth Dynasty Herodotus's history is quite worthless.
Manetho alone of all authorities offers a complete chronology from the
1st Dynasty to the XXXth. In the case of the six kings of the XXVIth
Dynasty, Africanus, the best of his excerptors, gives correct figures
for five reigns, but attributes six instead of sixteen years to Necho;
the other excerptors have wrong numbers throughout. For the XIXth
Dynasty Manetho's figures are wrong wherever we can check them; the
names, too, are seriously faulty. In the XVIIIth Dynasty he has too many
names and few are clearly identifiable, while the numbers are
incomprehensible. In the XIIth Dynasty the number of the kings is
correct and many of the names can be justified, but the reign-lengths
are nearly, if not quite, all wrong. The summations of years for the
Dynasties XII. and XVIII. are likewise wrong. It seems, therefore, that
the known texts of Manetho, serviceable as they have been in the
reconstruction of Egyptian history, cannot be employed as a serious
guide to the early chronology, since they are faulty wherever we can
check them, even in the XXVIth Dynasty whose kings were so celebrated
among the Greeks. There remain the astronomical data. Of these, the
Sothic date furnished by a calendar in the Ebers Papyrus of the 9th year
of Amenophis I. (when interpreted on the assumption stated above), and
another at Elephantine of an uncertain year of Tethmosis III., tally
well with each other (1550-1546, 1474-1470 B.C.) and with the Babylonian
synchronism (not yet accurately determined) under Amenhotp IV.
(Akhenaton). Another Sothic date of the 7th year of Senwosri III. on a
Berlin papyrus from Kahun, similarly interpreted (1882-1878 B.C.), gives
for the XIIth Dynasty a range from 2000 to 1788 B.C. This (discovered by
L. Borchardt in 1899) seems to offer a welcome ray, piercing the
obscurity of early Egypt