Through the Eras

Era Overviewto separate interpretations by over 1,000 years have nownarrowed to 10- to 25-year differences in dates assigned tokey kings such as Ahmose, Amenhotep III, and RamessesII. Even so, many Egyptologists refer to events as occurringin “the reign of King X” rather than in an absoluteyear. This allows scholars to ignore small differences inabsolute dates when discussing some historical issue.Every attempt has been made to include both the nameof a period or reign as well as dates when describing anevent. This will allow readers to connect the informationin this volume with other books about ancient Egypt.The absolute dates used in this volume were refined bythe American Egyptologist William J. Murnane. Theywere published in Civilizations of the Ancient Near Eastin 1995 and have been adopted by many scholars. Readersmight notice that a different set of dates is used inthe Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt published in2001. Conflicting sets of dates stem from different waysof interpreting the data. Egyptologists generally acceptthat there will be minor differences of opinion on theabsolute dates of ancient Egyptian history.PERIODS OF HISTORY. Egyptologists today use ascheme of periods that can be traced to the historianManetho who lived in Egypt in the second century B.C.E.Manetho worked from Egyptian texts to develop thirtydynasties of Egyptian kings. Manetho’s work remainsthe framework for all current chronologies of ancientEgypt. In modern times Egyptologists have grouped thedynasties into larger periods. Recent discoveries in Abydosin central Egypt have established the existence of aroyal dynasty predating the First Dynasty. It has beencalled Dynasty 0 for convenience. Otherwise, the periodbefore Dynasty One has been called the PredynasticPeriod. Dynasties One and Two are called the Archaicor Early Dynastic Period. Dynasties Three to Six formthe Old Kingdom. Dynasties Seven to Ten, a period ofdecentralization, are called the First Intermediate Period.That period is followed by the Middle Kingdom, DynastiesEleven to Thirteen. Dynasties Fourteen to Seventeen,when the west Semitic people called the Hyksosruled Lower Egypt, are called the Hyksos Period and/orthe Second Intermediate Period. From Dynasties Eighteento Twenty, when Egypt was an internationalpower, the period is called the New Kingdom. Subperiodsof the New Kingdom are the Amarna Period,when the religious radical Akhenaten ruled, and theRamesside Period—Dynasties Nineteen and Twenty—when kings who claimed descent from Ramesses I ruled.The Third Intermediate Period includes DynastiesTwenty-one to Twenty-five. It is followed by the LatePeriod, Dynasties Twenty-six to Thirty. Within the LatePeriod are the Saite Period (Dynasty Twenty-six) andthe Persian Period (Dynasty Twenty-seven). Finally, thePtolemaic Period follows Alexander the Great’s conquestof Egypt after 332 B.C.E. when kings and queens weredescended from Alexander’s general named Ptolemy.The Roman Period follows Cleopatra VII’s defeat at Actiumby the future Roman emperor Octavian.SPELLING. The spelling of kings’ names and ofplaces in ancient Egypt also presents a problem for modernwriters. The Egyptians wrote only the consonants intheir language, leaving modern scholars to pursue differenttheories of how to add the vowels to names. Theresult is a variety of naming systems that can be confusingto the lay reader. Many scholars have avoided thisproblem by following the spellings of ancient Greekhistorians in reproducing the names of Egyptian kings.Thus Khufu, the Fourth-dynasty king who built theGreat Pyramid, is known as Cheops, following the Greekpronunciation, in some books. This volume uses spellingsbased on the ancient Egyptian rather than ancient Greek,drawn specifically from the spellings established in Civilizationsof the Ancient Near East.EGYPTOLOGY AND EGYPTOSOPHY. This volume isa work of Egyptology. Egyptology is a modern academicdiscipline that grew directly from Jean-François Champollion’swork on the Rosetta Stone. In 1822 Champollionpublished A Letter to M. Dacier. This letter wasactually a scholarly article explaining that ancient Egyptianhieroglyphs formed a writing system that was basicallyphonetic and represented an ancient, but perfectlyordinary, human language. Reading this language wouldallow scholars to study ancient Egyptian words and togain knowledge of this ancient culture using ordinaryhistorical methods. Champollion’s discovery was judgedat the time, and in the following years to today, againsta nearly 2,000-year tradition that the Egyptologist ErikHornung called Egyptosophy. Egyptosophy regards ancientEgypt as the source of all wisdom and arcaneknowledge. Egyptosophists are not a unified group, butrather among them are people who hold a variety of viewsabout ancient Egypt. These views include the belief thatthe Egyptians invented usable astrology, alchemy, andmagic. Among Egyptosophists are also people who believethat they have access to “hidden” Egyptian knowledge.This alternative tradition also includes the work ofRosicrucians, Freemasons, the late eighteenth-centuryGerman Romantics, nineteenth-century Theosophists,Anthroposophists, and a wide variety of Internet contentproviders. None of these groups and individuals relyon knowledge of the ancient Egyptian language—theEgyptians’ own words—for their insights into EgyptianArts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.)xv