Egyptian Chronology - Counting Regnal Years

Counting Regnal Years

The first problem the student of Egyptian chronology faces is that the ancient Egyptians used no single system of dating, or consistent system of regnal years. They had no concept of an era similar to Anno Domini, Anno Hajirae, or even the concept of named years like limmu used in Mesopotamia. As a result, the chronologer is forced to compile a list of pharaohs, determine the length of their reigns, and adjust for any interregnums or coregencies. This leads to other problems:

• All ancient Egyptian king lists are either comprehensive but have significant gaps in their text (for example, the Turin King List), or are textually complete but fail to provide a complete list of rulers, even for a short period of Egyptian history.

• There is conflicting information on the same regnal period from different versions of the same text; the Egyptian historian Manetho's history of Egypt is only known by extensive references to it made by subsequent writers, such as Eusebius and Sextus Julius Africanus. Unfortunately the dates for the same pharaoh often vary substantially depending on the intermediate source.

• For almost all kings of Egypt, we lack an accurate count for the length of their reigns. Inscriptions which date a particular monument to "year 2 of Pharaoh 33" can only provide a minimum length of reign, which may or may not include any coregencies with a predecessor or successor.

• Religious bias due to the Bible. This was most pervasive before the 1850s, when Manetho's figures were realized to conflict with the age of the Earth as recorded in the Biblical chronology, and especially with the date of the Biblical Flood.

• Some Egyptian dynasties may have overlapped, with different pharaohs ruling in different regions at the same time, rather than serially. Not knowing whether monarchies were simultaneous or sequential may lead to widely differing chronological interpretations.