Chronological information about the rulers of Ancient Egypt is extremely scarce. The time span is enormous; Ancient Egypt vanished more than 2000 years ago, and the origin of the kingdom goes back to 3000 BC. There are three categories of king lists:
- Monuments – inscriptions in a temple or tomb.
- Annals – inscriptions of events on a year-by-year basis.
- Archives – records on papyrus concerning earlier rulers.
The government and priesthood kept records of previous kings for administrative, political and religious reasons. As time passed and new generations of administrators took over from the previous ones, it became increasingly likely that these documents would be lost, destroyed or corrupted because they were written on papyrus, which is susceptible to deterioration. Papyrus thrives in Egypt's dry climate, but it is fragile and vulnerable to insects and both wet and dry conditions. Handling alone caused deterioration, especially when it was repeatedly unrolled. When discovered in modern times, the ageing process, sudden exposure to moisture and careless handling often caused irreparable damage to fragile papyri.
Ancient scribes had to constantly make copies of the older text to preserve damaged or old, brittle papyri. Copying texts by hand is a laborious process and changes are inevitable, most of them unintentional. It is almost impossible to reproduce a handwritten text accurately; omission of letters or whole words, spelling errors, or incorrect grammar or syntax are common. The quality of the copy is influenced by the clarity of the original text and the competence and literacy of the scribe. Scribes may also make their own corrections if they believe the original to be incorrect, despite misreading the text, and if the scribe was fluent in the language, they would be less likely to make copying errors.
The largest and most influential temples would have kept their own records, while it is possible that there was a formal 'master list' of ancestral kings written on papyrus. Most of the documents were probably lost over time, as the prosperity of individual temples fluctuated over the centuries. The Turin List of Kings is the only such list that survives today, and although it is the most comprehensive list of ancient Egyptian kings, it is incomplete and in very poor condition, having been written on papyrus.
The rows of kings inscribed in stone were organised for religious and political purposes: to honour revered ancestors and to emphasise the legitimacy of the reigning king as the latest in a long line of rulers dating back to the time of the gods, rather than for historical accuracy. Certain ancestors on the inscribed lists were deliberately excluded, and the varying names of some kings confirm that there must have been more than one master list of kings.
| King list | Kings | Remarks | Dyn. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turin king list | 223 | Royal Canon of Turin, (Turin, Italy) | 19 |
| Abydos Canon | 76 | Temple of Seti I, Abydos | 19 |
| Karnak Canon | 61 | Temple of Thutmose III, Karnak | 18 |
| Saqqara Canon | 58 | Tomb of Tjunery, Saqqara (Cairo) | 19 |
| Abydos Table | 30 | Temple of Ramesses II, Abydos | 19 |
| Royal Annals | 26 | Memphis? | 5 |
| Genealogy of Ankhefensekhmet | 26 | Memphis? | 5 |
| Table of Qenhirkhopshef | 17 | Karnak Temple Complex, (Marseille) | 19 |
| Ramesseum Canon | 14 | Ramesseum Temple, Thebes | 19 |
| Tomb of Amenmose | 12 | TT 19, Thebes | 19 |
| Medinet Habu Canon | 9 | Medinet Habu Temple, Thebes | 20 |
| Seal of Qaa | 8 | Tomb Q, Abydos | 1 |
| Tomb of Inherkhau | 7 | TT 359, Thebes | 20 |
| Giza writing board | 6 | Cedar wood and gypsum | 5 |
| Tomb of Netjerpunesut | 6 | Giza, central field, small mastaba. | 5 |
| Seal of Den | 5 | Abydos tomb T | 1 |
| Tomb of Sekhemkara | 5 | G 8146, Giza | 5 |
| Wadi Hammamat king list | 5 | Rock inscription, Wadi Hammamat | 12 |
| South Saqqara Stone | 4 | Erased annals, sarcophagus lid, Saqqara | 6 |
Attempting to establish an absolute chronology of dates in terms of the Gregorian calendar based on the available information from the king lists is a challenging endeavour, primarily due to the fragmentary nature of the king lists and the scarcity of contemporary records that have survived. The surviving astronomical records permit the determination of absolute dates for specific events, thereby corroborating the assertion that a given king actually ruled on a given date. The king lists agree only on a small number of kings, which is to be expected, given that there were more than two hundred kings and that the lists themselves were most likely derived from different sources and periods.
King lists of Antiquity
Greek historians visiting Egypt in antiquity were the first to share information about the Egyptian kings, but the accounts were incomplete and suffered by the transcription of the foreign Egyptian language into Greek. For example, Herodotus heard the priests talk about pharaoh Khufu, yet wrote down it as Cheops, which to his ears was the closest approximation. It should be noted that throughout the 2,500 years that followed Khufu's passing, the pronunciation of his name changed as the Egyptian language evolved. Due to the nature of the hieroglyphs, we can only speculate as to the precise names that the pharaohs were known by to their contemporaries.
The Ptolemaic Dynasty ushered in a new era of interest in ancient Egypt, repairing and restoring many of the ancient crumbling temples and monuments, while also building new ones over the next centuries. It also inspired an Egyptian priest named Manetho to address the many inaccuracies and misconceptions about the long history of the kingdom in his book Aegyptiaca (the History of Egypt), sourced from the three categories above; the original was probably the most complete source for the names of the kings ever compiled. We only have indirect knowledge of the original Aegyptiaca, and in subsequent centuries it was replaced by Epitomes (summaries). The extent to which the epitomes preserved Manetho’s original writing is unclear, but each subsequent hand-written copy undoubtedly introduced some further corruption of the original. The authors whose works have survived clearly only had access to epitomes of Aegyptiaca.
https://pharaoh.se/ancient-egypt/kinglists/