The California Institute for Ancient Studies - List of Dynasties Old Kingdom
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Some readers like to think that the chronology of the ancient Egyptian kings down to when they reigned and for how long is fairly well known. Such textbook assertions are, however, nothing but scholarly surmisings and the proverbial `Castles in the Sky'. The fact is we do not know for sure when these kings lived but can only make suggestions.

Kings of the Early Theban List with Suggested Identifications - For additional source information on the early dynasties visit: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/francescoraf/.

The Theban King List

(No Dynasties specified)
Menes............................................35-Helck/62yrs
Athothes (Djer?)............................................59
Athothes II....................................................32


Miabaes........................................................19
Pemphos......................................................18


Moncheiri.....................................................79
Stoichos.........................................................6
Gosormies....................................................30
Mares...........................................................26
Anoyphis......................................................20


Sirius............................................................18
Chnubos (Gneuros).......................................22





Rayosis........................................................131
Biyres..........................................................102 		List of Modern Times

Dynasty 0

Scorpion (?)
1. Narmer

Dynasty I

2. Aha [25]
3. Djer 2c)
4. Djet (Wadji) [30]
5. Den (Wedimu) [40]
6. Anedjib
7. Semerkhet
8. Khasekhemwey

[`Biblical Archaeologist', Sep. 1985, p. 247]

The tomb of King Aha was found by F. Petrie in 1900 near Abydos. More recently further tombs containing human skeletons were found 1.5 km away. They are thought to represent his courtiers or servants. David O'Conner said the discovery was significant because the reign of Aha is associated with major changes in royal architecture, `The form and plan of Aha's enclosure as well as the chapel within is set as the model followed by all subsequent royal enclosures at Abydos.'

Manetho's King List

Dynasty I
Mena.............................28 yrs
Athothis........................13
Kenkenes......................20
Uenephes/Uonephes....7
Usaphaidos...................20.....`Usaph' spells like `Yusef'/Joseph.
Miebidos.......................44
Semempses.....................9
Bieneches......................44
Dynasty II
Boethos........................38 yrs .......Horus Hotepsekhemway
Kaiechos.......................39 yrs .......Horus Reneb
Binothris.......................47 yrs .......Horus Ninetjer
Tlas..............................17 yrs .......Weneg
Sethenes/Perabsen.........41 - (Sekhemib?/Horus name; Perabsen/Seth name)
Chaires.........................17 yrs .......Horus Sekhemib(?)
Nepercheres.................25 yrs .......?Horus Ba
Sesochris......................48 yrs .......?Horus Senerka
Cheneres.......................30 yrs .......Horus/Set Khasekhemway
[Comment: While Manetho ends his 2nd Dynasty List with Cheneres the Abydos List has an additional king Zazay. The Turin List renders the name Zazati and the Sakkarah List as Beby.]
5th Dynasty
Userkheres....................28 yrs
Sefres............................13

For more on the 2nd Dynasty, including the tomb of the Horus Qaa at Abydos, see KMT, Summer 1996, Vol. 7.
See Mary Wright, `Contacts between Egypt and Syro-Palestine during the Protodynastic Period', Bibl. Arch., Dec. 1985, p. 240-253. Also discusses conventionally the Narmer Palette. The names on that palette are: Narmer, Aha, Djer, Djet and Den. Of Den we have an ebony label showing a `sed festival'. [S. Quirke, `Who Were the Pharaohs', p. 22 & Jacques Kinnaer, What is really known about the N.P in KMT, Spring 2004, p. 48-54] Dynasty III
Sekhem-ka ........... ?
Necherophes ........ 28
Djoser / Zoser .. 29
7 insignificant kings 		[25] A Hundred Years at Abydos in Egyptian Archaeology, 1993, p. 10-12.
[30] For the well known tombstone, see Cyril Aldred, `Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom', London, 1965, p. 51.
[40] An ivory plaque showing king Den smiting an Asiatic can be seen in KMT, Spring 2001, p. 22.
A) According to older information: "All the kings of the 1st dynasty bear Horus names, i.e. the Falcon (Horus) of Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt surmounts the palace facade in which their names are written. They were primarily chieftains of the Falcon Nome, or State, of Upper Egypt. In the 2nd dyn. we find with Perabsen that in place of the Falcon ... there is a Set-animal, which certainly indicates that the chieftains of the Set had gained supremacy in Egypt, had overthrown the Falcons and seized the throne. With Khasekhemui the palace name of the king is surmounted by the Set animal on one side, and the Falcon on the other, which suggests an alliance of the royal families of the Falcon and Set nomes." [See Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1, 1914, p. 3 & also PSBA, Vol. XXVI, 1904, p. 295-299.]

001) Ratoises in 4th Dynasty
002) Bicheris in 4th Dynasty
003) For an article and images of early (2nd?) dynastic fortified enclosures see KMT, Spring 2001, Vol. 12, p. 60-72. Ex. The `fort' build by King Khasekhemway at the end of the 2nd dynasty.
004) For an article on Pharaoh Djoser see F. Friedman, `The Underground Relief Panels of King Djoser at the Step Pyramid Complex' in JARCE, Vol. XXXII, 1995, p. 1-42.
005) Dr. Zahi Hawass explained recently: "Egyptologists wondered: Why the kings from Dynasty 1 appeared to have two tombs, one in the north at Saqqara and one in the south at Abydos. They thought that maybe the tomb in Saqqara represented the king as the king of the south. Other scholars suggested that the tombs at Abydos could be for the temporary burial and the actual burial is in Saqqara. More theories included the ideas that the Abydos tombs could be for the storage of the canopic jars or the dummy for the solar cult or the crowns. However, recently scholars, found that the tombs of Saqqara are not for the kings of Dynasty 1 but for the officials who lived under the kings from this dynasty. Therefore, the tombs in Abydos are the tombs of the kings from Dynasty 1."
006) "In 1995 we wanted to build a new storage for the antiquities at Saqqara and while we were making the plans for this storage facility we discovered a large mastaba that dates to Dynasty 1, located 50 m. to the west of Imry. The tomb is about 52 m X 32 m and 3 m high. The entrance of the tomb was blocked with stone rubble and in the burial chamber we found large quantities of broken pottery, flint tools and pieces of alabaster that contain the name of the king Nefer-sieka. He is not a well-known king because very few monuments have been found for him." [http://www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/new_discovery_from_dynasty_1.htm]
007) Information on the fine quality statue of a priest, Hetepdief, thought to date to 2nd dynasty times, can be read and seen in Archaeology Odyssey, May/Jun 2004, p. 47.
008) Black basalt lugg vessels described as of the Naqada I-II period conventionally dated to 3900-3300 BC and manufactured in the Cairo area but discovered far away in Upper Egypt can be seen in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and in Dorothea Arnold's `A New Gateway to Ancient Egypt' in KMT, Vol. 15, Summer 2004, p. 22-(26)-26. Also shown is the museum's display of the Old Kingdom (conv. ca. 3050-2181 BC) a) tomb of Perneb, the stela of King Raneb (conv. ca. 2740) and a recumbant lion from Herakleopolis; b) A painted female figure of the same Naqada period; c) An ivory knife handle from the Carnarvon collection showing three rows of animals - top, storks / middle 3 lions following 1 elephant - bottom, same as middle.; d) a broken grey whacke ceremonial palette of a bearded man wearing a hair band.; e) the 5th dynasty chapel of Raemkai with 2 detail images of a butcher and a man leading an Ibis.; f) The entry into Perneb's tomb and him seated at an offering table with readable hieroglyphics on the wall.; g) Roman period items - A sandstone fragment of Harendotes, the painted and gilded plaster head of Artemidora from Meir.
009) Examples of Naqada I and II style pottery can be seen in Bryan Fagan, `Egypt of the Pharaohs', printed by National Geographic 2001, p. 25 and 30; and in C. Hobson's, The World of the Pharaohs, p. 50.
010) "To the Egyptians, Byblos was the key to the "God's Land", the Lebanon on whose steep slopes grow the timber trees they coveted. ... the twenty foot beams which spanned the floors and roofs of the royal tombs of the 1st Dynasty at Saqqara and Abydos came from conifers such as pine, fig or cedar and even in pre-dynastic graves traces of coniferous wood are found which can only have come from the north." [John MacDonald, `Egyptian Interests in Western Asia to the End of the Middle Kingdom' in AJBA, Vol. II, 1972, p. 72-98.]
011) In the early part of the Dynastic Period, in the middle of the reign of Djer (Iti) of Dyn. I, there is a year called, `The Year of the smiting the land of Setjet'. [Ibid. from 010) p. 73.]
012) According to dated information, the Louvre 2nd dynasty (museum Aix-en-Provence) bas-relief of king `Sethenes' and a prophet of his whose name `Schera' (Oxford stone #794 `Mormora Oxoniama' in Lepsius, Auswahl', II, 1, fig. 5, pl. 9) appears also on a naos (#996) which used to be in the Bulag Museum. "... the kings of the ancient empire always introduced their cult during their lifetime ... After their death the cult usually ceased, the successor being too much interested in his own, to find time to think of supporting priests of his ancestors, or to control the offerings required by the dead monarch's institutions. Therefore we see the king's cult lasting only a very short time, and hardly ever transfered from one dynasty to the following one. It is very easy to prove this fact by comparing the list of the priestdoms occupied by different personages buried at Gizeh and Saqqarah. So we may be sure that usually the men quoted as priests of certain kings are their contemporaries, or lived at least at a not very much later period." [PSBA, May 1887, p. 180-181.]
014) The development of royal sepulchral architecture during 2nd and 3rd dynasty times led from wooden roofs in dyn II times to corbelled vaults of brick and in dyn III times burial chambers were entirely hewn out of rock. In the necropolis of Ezbet el-Walda near Helwan a tomb was made of a stairway lined with slabs of stones instead of wooden planks. This change was interpreted as an innovation for tomb robbers would burn tombs with wood construction to get the treasures. But the Ezbet tomb featured the sealings of the reigns of Udimu and Anezib.
In the tomb of Hemaka were found copper adzes with wooden handles and a saw which had once such a handle. From the tomb of Hetep-heres came a good example of a copper chisel with a flanged blade for added strength. The tomb of Zer yielded chisel ended flint pike heads, bracelets of gold, amethyst and lapis lazuli (Pl. XI) and copper vases were reportedly found in a 1st dyn tomb at Saqqara. The following kings had a tomb at Abydos: Aha, Zer and Queen Merneith and the remaining Thinite pharaohs, each had a second tomb at Saqqara. [V.Gordon Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East, NY, 1953, p. 86f.]

In English und in Deutsch Dr. Courville's Eight Lines of Evidence that the 1st and 3rd Dynasties were Contemporaneous
Conventional Dates: Dynasty I (ca. 3050-2890 BC) - Dynasty II (ca. 2890-2685 BC) - Dynasty III (ca. 2685-2613 BC)

Dr. Courvilles Acht Anmerkungen, warum die Erste und Dritte Dynastien Parallel existierten
Konventional Daten: Erste Dynastie (ca. -3050-2890) - Zweite Dynastie (ca. -2890-2685) - Dritte Dynastie (ca. -2685-2613)
English
1. The tomb of Khasekhemui is totally different from those of the kings of Dynasty II, providing a strong suggestion that he does not belong to the era of late Dynasty II as currently placed.
Yet there is convincing evidence that he was the progenitor of the kingly line of Dynasty III.

Deutsch
1. Das Grabmal des Chasechemui ist vollständig anderer Art im Vergleich zu denen der Könige der II. Dynastie. Diese Tatsache ist ein bedeutender Grund warum dieser Herrscher nicht in die Zeit der späten Dynastie II gehört, wo er sich im geschichtlichen Verständnis unserer Zeit befindet. 		English
2. The monuments of Khasekhemui reveal a mastery of workmanship unparalleled in Dynasty II but which compares favorably with the more sophisticated art at the beginning of the pyramid age of Dynasties III and IV.

Deutsch
2. Die Bauten Chasechemuis offenbaren eine Meisterschaft der Baukunst die man sonst nicht zur Zeit der II. Dynastie finden kann, die aber sehr gut mit der hochentwickelten Kunst der Zeit der Pyramidenerbauer der III. und IV. Dynastie zu vergleichen ist.
English
3. The placement of Khasekhemui at the end of Dynasty II is not defensible and is based on the demands of an assumed sequence of Dynasties II and III, an assumption that has not been established.

Deutsch
3. Chasechemui die Zeit am Ende der Zweiten Dynastie anzuweisen kann nicht bewiesen werden und hat mit der Annahme zu tun, das die Zweite und Dritte Dynastie in aufsteigender numerischer Reihenfolge verliefen. 		English
4. The ceramics of the early IIIrd Dynasty are like those of Dynasty I and reveal characteristics not encountered at any time in Dynasty II. The suggestion is again strong that the long period of Dynasty II did not separate Dynasty III from Dynasty I. The writing of Dynasty III reveals characteristics of Dynasty I, hardly to be expected if a period of centuries separated the two dynasties.
Comment: Later evidence also suggests that Dynasty I and III were contemporary on the basis of the large tomb of Har-Aha which had 27 store rooms at ground level for funerary equipment, and five rooms below ground. Importantly for our purposes, "the mudbrick exterior was paneled all round in a style referred to as the `palace facade', which it resembles. This was to be copied later as a decorative element in jewelry and for the first time in stone nearby in the 3rd Dynasty complex of Djoser." [P.Clayton, `Chronicle of the Pharaohs', p. 21]
In our view it was not later but in the same general era.

Deutsch
4. Die keramischen Produkte der frühen Dritten Dynastie sehen so aus wie die der Ersten Dynastie und offenbaren Merkmale die man nicht in der Zeit der Zweiten Dynastie vorfindet. Dies bedeutet wiederum, das die lange Zeit der Zweiten Dynastie nicht die Dritte von der Ersten Dynastie trennte. Die Schreibweise der Dritten hat auch Merkmale wie die der Ersten Dynastie, was nicht der Fall sein sollte wenn diese beiden Jahrhunderte getrennt verliefen.
Anmerkung: Nach dem Dr. Courville dies schrieb fanden Archäologen das der architektonische Stil der `Palastwände' auch Merkmale der Ersten und Dritten Dynastien sind.
English
5. Manetho records that Uenephes (4th king of Dynasty I) built pyramids near Kochome (near Sakkarah). This is an anachronism with Dynasty I separated from the beginning of the pyramid age by a matter of centuries. It is so clearly an anachronism that the implication of the statement must be rejected in order to retain the sequence arrangement between Dynasties II and III.
The earliest reference to a pyramid otherwise is the step pyramid built by Zoser. With the beginning of Dynasty III set as shown above, Zoser was a contemporary of Manetho's Uenephes. The step pyramid of Zoser and the pyramid of Uenephes are then from the same general era and were erected in the same general area.

Deutsch
5. Manetho schrieb, das Uenephes Pyramiden bei Kochome baute. Diese ist zeitlich unvereinbar, da die Zeit der Ersten Dynastie durch Jahrhunderte von der Zeit der Pyramidenerbauer getrennt ist. Es ist so klar eine zeitliche Unmöglichkeit, das die Bedeutung der Annahme abgewiesen werden muss, um die konventionale Reihenfolge von der Zweiten zur Dritten Dynastie zu retten. Wir finden die erste Erwähnung zu Pyramiden zur Zeit der Stufenpyramide des Zoser. Zoser war jedoch ein Zeitgenosse des Uenephes von den Schriften Manethos. Die Stufenpyramide und die Pyramide des Uenephes gehören deshalb in die gleiche ungefähre Zeitspanne. 		English
6. Confirming the contemporaneity of Zoser with Uenephes are the references to severe famine in the reigns of both kings. By the altered chronology, these are references to one and the same famine and provide the basis for an approximate synchronism between the two dynasties.

Deutsch
6. Die Erwähnungen von ernsten Hungerzeiten während dier Regierungszeiten des Zoser und Uenephes bestätigen, das beide in den gleichen Zeitraum gehören. In der revidierten Geschichte handelt es sich um die selbe Hungerzeit, die somit dabei hilft die zwei Dynastien parallel zu datieren.
English
7. Brief annals on the Palermo Stone refer to events in the reign of some Ist Dynasty king, whose name was evidently given on the no-longer extant part of the damaged inscription. On the basis of records of similar incidents on jar sealings from the reign of Udimu (Usaphaidos, successor to Uenephes), it has been logically concluded that the annals are of the reign of this king. One of these annals indicates clearly a divided rule in Egypt at this time, with different kings ruling contemporaneously.

Deutsch
7. Der Palermostein erwähnt einige Ereignisse zur Zeit eines Königs der Ersten Dynastie, dessen Name sich wohl auf dem heute fehlenden Teil befand. Auf Grund von Aussagen in Siegeln von Tonkrügen, die in die Zeit des Udimu (Usapaidos, Nachfolger des Uenephes) gehören, kann man logischerweise annehmen, das die Schriftzeugen bedeuten, das sie aus der Zeit des gleichen, einzigen Königs stammen. Eine dieser Urkunden zeigt, das verschiedene Herrscher zur gleichen Zeit über Ägypten regierten. 		English
8. The inscriptions of Khasekhemui, now recognized as the progenitor of Dynasty III, record a conflict between the Thinites in southern Egypt and a people of the north, who are identified only as `northern enemies'. It has been suggested unconvincingly that these `northern enemies' were the Libyans who were attempting an invasion of the Delta. These inscriptions picture clearly a religious war between the followers of the god Horus in southern Egypt and the followers of the god Set in northern Egypt. The fact that prevents an unqualified recognition of this war, as a war between the Egyptians of the north and the south, over the acceptability of the god Set as an equal to the god Horus, is the absence of any evidence, whatever, of such difficulty at the end of Dynasty II. ... It is obviously the concept of a sequence between Dynasties II and III which stands in the way of this interpretation. (italics my own paraphrase)
[Donovan Courville, `The Exodus Problem and Its Ramifications', Loma Linda, 1971, Vol. I, pp. 170-176]

Deutsch
8. Die Inschriften des Chasechemui, Vorvater der Dritten Dynastie, erwähnen Streitereien zwischen den Thinitern der südlichen Ägypter mit den Leuten vom Norden, die nur als nördliche Feinde identifiziert werden. Man schlug unüberzeugbarer Weise vor, daß diese nördlichen Feinde die Lybier waren, die versuchten das Delta einzunehmen. Diese Inschriften weisen aber ziemlich klar auf einen religiösen Krieg hin zwischen den Nachfolgern des Horus der südlichen Bewohner und den Nachfolgern Sets im Norden. Der Umstand, der es verhindert einzusehen, daß es sich hier um einen Krieg zwischen dem Süden und Norden handelt, ist die Tatsache, daß man nichts von solchen Schwierigkeiten am Ende der Zweiten Dynastie weiß. ...Es ist augenscheinlich die Anordnung von der II. zur III. Dynastie, die es verhindert solche Zusammenhänge zu erkennen. [Quelle wie oben.]
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