Kings and dynasties, law giving and building activity, wars and peace treaties of empires and kingdoms are allocated to centuries according to the rule of Egyptian chronology. When a document is unearthed which records the relations of some king with a pharaoh of a certain dynasty, the time of the king becomes fixed because the date of the pharaoh is known.

The succession of the Assyrian and Babylonian kings with the dates of their reigns is studied with the help of the so-called king-lists but is constantly being adjusted to comply with Egyptian dates wherever a synchronism is assumed. Thus the lawmaker king Hammurabi of the First Babylonian Dynasty, who for a long time was placed in about -2100, in recent decades has been transferred to about -1700, in order to synchronize the Egyptian Middle Kingdom with the First Dynasty of Babylon, on the basis of material from both places found in a common deposit on Crete. The past of Minoan culture on Crete and the past of Mycenae on the mainland of Hellas are likewise divided and apportioned among the centuries, with Egypt playing the defining role.

Egyptian chronology must be a mighty trunk to support branches of the history of many kingdoms and cultures of the past. Is Egyptian chronology itself really rooted in strong evidence? It would seem that it is now too late to raise the question: not only the entire scientific literature in Egyptology but also complete libraries dealing with man's past have been composed according to the scheme set up by Egyptologists for all other branches of ancient history.

Everyone is agreed that Egyptian chronology is so well devised, century by century, decade by decade, and often year by year, that no new evidence could break down this massive growth. What, then, is the foundation of this system, which the Egyptologists have concluded is absolutely firm and from which scholars in other fields have confidently borrowed their data and standards?

The Egyptians are not known to have any continuous system of counting years by eras. Events were dated according to the ruling years of the current monarch. Hathshepsut's visit to the Divine Land took place in the ninth year of the queen; the battle of Kadesh occurred in the fifth year of Ramses II. Sometimes, however, a king and his so ruled together; in that case the chronology of the dynasty cannot be build merely by adding the years of the ruler on the throne must be reduced by the number of years of corregency. Then, too, the length of the reigns can be established only approximately from the documents, the highest year number mentioned in a king's monumental inscription is accepted as a tentative terminal date, but it is not necessarily last year of his rule. In many instances it is impossible to establish from the data on the monumental documents, the succession of kings in a given dynasty. Nor - what is far more important and decisive, and I wish to stress it - is the sequence of the dynasties by any means definitely determined. In only a few individual cases is there historical evidence to indicate the order of two dynasties that ruled consecutively.

The monumental evidence, it is admitted, does not provide material sufficient by itself to construct a chronological system. If such a system can be built by other means, the monumental inscriptions may help here and there in fixing more precisely the dates of events in the reigns of individual kings.

A few documents, like the Torino Papyrus, broken into innumerable fragments and reassembled by painstaking yet not faultless efforts, and the Palermo Stone, both starting the genealogy of kings from the earliest times, do not really reach the age of the New Kingdom, which together with the Late Kingdom comprises the period of this reconstruction. Yet for the periods these documents cover, startling lines of succession are named, such as over one hundred kings for the Thirteenth Dynasty, the last of the Middle Kingdom. An exaggerate effort to make the early history of Egypt seem of great duration renders these documents of very limited value.

A Skeleton Clothed With Flesh

`It is no exaggeration to say that we continue to arrange the history of Egypt and to place the facts of this history in the very same order that is a legacy of Julius Africanus who wrote in the third Christian century.'[20] Africanus, one of the fathers of the Church, preserved the legacy of Manetho of the third pre-Christian century. Manetho was an Egyptian writer, historian, polemicist, and anti-Semite, inventor of a baseless identification of Moses with Typhon, the evil spirit, and the Israelites with the Hyksos; also, contradicting himself, he identified Moses with the rebellious priest Osarsiph, of much later times, who called on the lepers of Jerusalem to help him in his war with his own country.

In composing his history of Egypt and putting a register of its dynasties, Manetho was guided by the desire to prove to the Greeks, the masters of his land, that the Egyptian people and culture were much older than theirs or than the Babylonian nation and civilization. Berosus, a Chaldean priest and a contemporary of Manetho, tried to prove to the Greeks under the Seleucid rulers the antiquity of Assyro-Babylonian history and therefore he extended that history into tens of thousands of years. Similarly, Eratosthenes, a learned Greek from Cyrenaica, chief librarian at the Alexandrian library under Ptolemy II and III,and a younger contemporary of both Manetho and Berosus, tried to prove the excellence of his Greek nation by claiming for it a great antiquity reaching back into mythical times. It is to his reckoning that we owe the still much -accepted date -1183 for the fall of Troy (or 871 years before the beginning of the Seleucid era in -312).

This tendency similarly displayed by these three men must be kept in mind when we deal with the chronology of the ancient world.

Manetho's list of dynasties is preserved in two versions. Those of Eusebius and Africanus differ especially with respect to the duration of the dynasties; they are both at variance with the royal successions as quoted by Josephus from Manetho.[30] Besides these discrepancies, the main confusion arises from the fact that it is not easy to determine which of the kings known from monumental inscriptions are meant by Manetho. The list is `so terribly mangled by copyists that it would be most unsafe to trust its data ' unless it is confirmed by other evidence.[40]

Sequences of kings with strange names never found on monuments fill the various versions of Manetho. There is reason to think that the copyists mutilated a list that had come from the hand of its author in an already chaotic and untrustworthy state. `The chronolgy of Manetho' is `a late, careless and uncritical compilation, which can be proven wrong from the contemporary monuments in the vast majority of cases, where such monuments have survived.[50]

What we have of Manetho is `only a garbled abridgment in the works of the Christian chronographers [Africanus, Eusebius, and Syncellus] ....In spite of all the defects this division into dynasties has taken so firm a root ... that there is but little chance of its ever being abandoned. In the forms in which the book has reached us there are inaccuracies of the most glaring kind ... The royal names are apt to be incredibly distorted ... The length of reigns frequently differ in the two versions, as well as often showing wide departures from the definitely ascertained figures. When textual and other critics have done their best or worst, the reconstructed Manetho remains full of imperfections.None the less, his book still dominates our studies.[60]

Despite the fact that Manetho's lists were discredited by the documentary evidence of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, the best known of all and rich in documents, the dynasties for which there is no documentary evidence were preserved in accordance with Manetho's scheme, since there were no extant monuments to refute those parts of the lists. The fact that in many cases no documents were found to substantiate the existence of such dynasties was not always regarded as an obstacle sufficient by itself. There are almost no tangible clues even to the existence of Manetho's Seventh to Tenth Dynasties or some other, later dynasties. The totals of the years of Manetho's dynasties were earnestly debated; they were stretched or contracted according to conscience of the historiographers .This could be done without fear of challenge as no one in modern times credits Manetho with numerical exactness.

Efforts to identify the kings known from contemporary inscriptions with the kings in Manetho's lists are often reduced to mere choosing. To illuminate this, let us consider the following example. When rich monumental material was found regarding the reign of a pharaoh for whom historiographers selected the name of Ramses III., he was not identified with any king in the lists of Manetho. Not being found in these lists, he was assigned to the Twentieth Dynasty, probably because the kings of that dynasty are unnamed in the dynastic lists of Africanus and Eusebius, though Georgius Syncellus, a Byzantine monk and copyist, preserved a list of kings of that dynasty, but none with the royal name of Ramses III. The twelve (unnamed) kings of Diospolis of the Twentieth Dynasty reigned 135 years (Africanus) or 178 years (Eusebius), and it seemed safe to place Ramses III and succeeding Ramseses in this dynasty. Actually, as I tried to show in this volume Ramses III was Nectanebo of Manetho's lists, and he belonged to the last dynasty of Egyptian kings, the Thirtieth. To put ten dynasties after him - the Twenty first to the Thirtieth - is to create a distortion for which Manetho can be made to bear only a small share of the responsiblity, if any, for he did not assign Ramses III to the Twentieth Dynasty. Consequently this king is represented by a fictitious Ramses III in the twelfth century and by Nectanebo I in the fourth century.

The transition from the Twenty-first to the Twenty-second Dynasty is generally admitted to be a hazy chronological affair. As this re-construction discloses, the Twenty-first Dynasty reigned in the oasis before, during, and after the Twentieth Dynasty (the same as the "Twenty-ninth and the Thirtieth) in the valley of the Nile. The Twenty-second or Libyan Dynasty, however, reigned after the Eighteenth Dynasty, as is left to be demonstrated in one of the intermediate volumes of the present work.

About the Twenty-fourth Dynasty, Syncellus, copying Africanus' version of Manetho's list, wrote: `The twenty-fourth dynasty, Bochoris of Sais, for 6 years: in his reign a lamb spoke [here is a short lacuna in the manuscript] 990 years.' Eusebius wrote similarly, but he differs greatly regarding the duration of this dynasty: `Bochoris of Sais for 44 years: in his reign a lamb spoke. Total, 44 years.' Such information, in lieu of historical material, about the Twenty-fourth Dynasty is entirely useless. We have to guess whether 6 years or 44 or 990 is correct."

Notwithstanding the fact that the chronology of Manetho is branded as a `careless and uncritical compilation' which monumental evidence has shown to be wrong in the vast majority of cases, it serves as the framework of the history of Egypt. The division into dynasties, as given by Manetho, has remained in use to this day. His work is regarded as presenting the continuity of the historical traditions of Egypt, while the sequence of events in the past of peoples is lacking such continuous tradition remains speculative since there is no framework in which to order the archeological data.

`Absolute certainty in these matters is only possible where a continuous literary tradition has always existed. The modern study of European and American prehistoric archaeology, for instance, which has no literary tradition by its side, must always remain largely guesswork. The main scheme of the history of ancient Egypt is now a certainty, not a mere hypothesis; but it is very doubtful if it would ever have become a certainty if its construction had depended entirely on the archaeologists. The complete skeleton of the scheme was provided by the continuous literary tradition preserved by the Egyptian priest Manetho; this has been clothed with flesh by the archaeologists.[70]

These sentences were written by the same author (H.R. Hall) who was "quoted on a previous page concerning the mangled condition and untrustworthiness of the extant texts of Manetho. But actually it was not the archaeologists who originally filled out the scheme of Manetho with data derived from hieroglyphic texts chiseled on monuments or written on papyri. The strange fact is that long before the hieroglyphics were read for the first time the kings of Egypt were placed in the centuries in which conventional chronology still keeps them prisoner.

Who First Placed Ramses III in the Twelfth Century.

In 1799, four miles from Rosetta at the western mouth of the Delta, Monsieur Boussart, a French officer in General Bonaparte's army, found a stone inscribed three ways: in Greek, in hieroglyphics, and in an unknown cursive writing occasionally put on papyri, later called `Demotic' script. Thomas Young, English physician and physicist who was first to explain color sensation as due to the presence of specific nerve endings for red, green, and violet in the retina of the eye, first to understand and measure astigmatism and to discover the phenomenon of light interference, the strongest argument in favor of the wave theory of light, for which he was much derided, was also the first to read a few words in hieroglyphics, the name Ptolemy in the Rosetta Stone-the name was circled in an oval (cartouche) - having been the first clue. The story of his efforts and successes and tragic relations with Champollion is an engrossing one. It appears that Young achieved much more in reading hieroglyphics than is generally credited to him.

Jean Francois Champollion (1790-1832) at the age of eleven heard of the Rosetta Stone and determined to dedicate himself to the task of deciphering the hieroglyphics; the precocious boy studied Coptic and became engrossed in the philology of oriental languages. Only twenty years later, on December 21, 1821, the simple thought came to his mind that since there were about three times as many hieroglyphic signs on the Rosetta Stone as there were Greek words in the parallel text, the hieroglyphics, or pictures of men in various positions, and parts of the human body, flowers and birds, do not stand for ideas centuries-old conviction- and are not symbols in this sense, but are phonetic signs or letters (almost exclusively consonants, similar in this respect to the Hebrew script). On September 22, 1822, he announced his success to the Academie in Paris. In 1825 he was able to translate an inscription of Amenhotep III. Yet `for three more decades, even scientists were not willing to admit anything more than the fact that at best a few royal names could be deciphered, but they insisted that everything else was pure phantasy.' [80] Not until 1866 did the discovery of another three - script text - the Canopus Decree, of which the reader will find more on a later page - completely confirm Champollion's reading. By then he had been dead for thirty years. Then how soon after Champollion's first reading of the hieroglyphics did the deciphering of monumental inscriptions or papyri texts supply the clue to the problem we are interested in, namely, the date in an inscription of Tirhaka in one of the side-chambers of the dating of Ramses III's reign? One would surmise it must have been in the days of Lepsius (1810 - 84) or Chabas (1817 - 82) or H.Brugsch (1827 - 94), the men who advanced Egyptology to the level of an exact science - but this is not the case. The fact is that Ramses III was placed in the twelfth century before Champollion's reading of hieroglyphics and, thus before any monumental inscription would justify such allocation.

In a book by a Scottish psychiatrist, J.C. Prichard, published in 1819, or two years before that memorable day in Champollion's life, on page 61 it is stated that Ramses III started his reign in -1147. Obviously this estimate could not be based on any hieroglyphic text. Prichard apparently took his dates from some earlier chronologist. Then is there any reference to Ramses III is classical authors that permitted his conclusion? Neither Herodotus nor Thuycydides nor any other classical author-historian mentions Ramses III - at least, no such reference is known to exist.

The bas-reliefs of Medinet Habu, a very impressive group of battle scenes, had of course not been unnoticed - since antiquity every inquisitive traveler to Thebes who crossed the Nile to look at the Colossi of Memnon (statues of Amenhotep III), or the mortuary temple of Queen Hathshepsut at Deir el Bahari, or the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramses II, and the broken colossus of that king, lying in the dust, visited also the temple at Medinet Habu.The king who built mortuary temple received from modern scholars the name of Ramses III.

It appears that the French chronologist Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540 - 1609) made the earliest attempt to date the Egyptian dynasties of Manetho in his `Thesaurus temporum,' (1606). `Sothic period' calculation, an astronomical clue to Egyptian chronology, seemed to give some promise. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no new attempts to date the kings of Egypt were made. Prichard's date for Ramses III's mounting the throne was changed by Rosellini (1841) to -1477 with no explanation; Champollion-Figeac (1778-1867), the brother of the decipherer, in 1839 placed Ramses III in -1279, but, again, without giving any ground or authority.

When the texts accompanying the bas-reliefs of Medinet Habu were read it was found that the king fought the Philistines and this fitted well with his dating in the twelfth century, the time of the biblical Judges: in the book of Judges Philistines play an important role. Then was there any ground for revising the estimate of pre-Champollion days?

But did Ramses III battle the Philistines?

[10] O.G.S. Crawford, `Man and His Past,' (London, 1921), p. 72.

[20] R. Weill, `Bases, methodes et resultats de la chronology egyptienne,' Paris, 1926), p.1.

[30] Compiled in Manetho, trans. Waddell (Loeb Classical Library).

[40 H.R. Hall, `Egyptian Chronolgy,' Cambridge Ancient History, I, 167.

[50] Breasted, A History of Egypt, (2nd ed.), p.23.

[60] Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs, pp. 46-47.

[70] H.R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece, (1901), pp.18-19.

[80] Johannes Friedrich, Extinct Languages, (1957), p.25.