Talk:Conventional Egyptian chronology

Much work still to do in creating links to existing articles on particular rulers! I have deliberately not just linked every name, two minds about this but I thought it wise to actually check the links as they are made. It will happen gradually, maybe one dynasty at a time. Andrewa 14:16 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hey, are the dates for the middle kingdom given here really "conventional"? The long-time used 1991-1786 dates for the 12th dynasty still seem to be in place in a lot of books. john 00:37, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The dates in the article for the Middle Kingdom are the conventional dates, & hang from calculations made based on the Sothic Cycle. (I know, there's no article yet; I've been busy accumulating the material for one, so you can consider the following as an advance peak at what I've been working one.)

It is believed that the ancient Egyptian Calendar was not only 365 days long, but did not have any intercalary days added to keep it in alignment with the real year with was about 365.25 days long. (The Tropical year & Sidereal year vary from this figure by 0.01 days, so this is accurate enough for the following exposition.) As a result, the first day of the year slowly arrived earlier as the years progressed, until after 1461 years it finally fell at the same point in time, as measured by the seasons or the stars. This phenomena was first noticed by Eduard Meyer in 1904, who then carefully combed the known Egyptian inscriptions & written materials to find any mention of the calendar date when Sirius rose. He found six of them, on which the dates of much of the Conventional chronology is based, one of which is believed to date to the 7th year of Sesostris III.

Because Sesostris is listed in a section of the Turin Papyrus without any lacunae -- this papyrus being an early document that records all of Egyptian kings & the length of their reigns down to the New Kingdom -- this synchronicity with the Sothic Cycle allows us to give absolute dates to rulers over 955 years of Egyptian history. This is the source for these dates from 1991 BC to 1786 BC. However, a number of criticisms have been levelled against the reliablity of the Sothic Cycle. Some are vital enough to warrant attention (e.g., was the civil year unchanged through the thousands of years of Egyptian history?), & some aren't as serious (e.g., there is no contemporary mention of the Sothic Cycle in the Egyptian corpus).

To paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous remark about governments, dating by the Sothic Cycle is the worst possible system -- except for all of the others. While various scholars, eager to solve the problem & for fame have been attempting to find a better system -- counting all of the recorded years, radiocarbon dating, records of dates the Nile flooded -- none have proven as objective & invulnerable to repeated special explanations as calculating against the Sothic Cycle. -- llywrch 01:30, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Llywrch, doesn't that mean we should use the conventional Sothic dates, rather than the dates currently provided here (1937-1759)? john 02:07, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

John, I seem to have answered your question a little too quickly; I thought the dates in the main article matched the dates in my reference, but taking another look, I see that they don't match.

The problem lies in these words in the main article: "taking his low chronology." Due to uncertaincies about where the recorded observation was made (either Thebes or Memphis), there is a High & a Low Chronology for this period, whose dates vary by about 60 years. If a synchonism could be found with another dating system (say from Mesopotamia), we could then determine which is correct; but from about the Middle Kingdom earlier, Egyptian history exists in isolation. As a result, some historicans dispense with exact dates for the Old Kingdom.

Perhaps a note that would explain to readers how to adjust dates between the two systems is needed. -- llywrch 20:12, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

We should certainly explaining all the dating problems more fully. But further than that, I think we should use the High Chronology dates for the Middle Kingdom, which are much more commonly found, while mentioning the existence of low chronology dates. john 20:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

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A group of us over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Egypt have been discussing making radical changes to this & related pages. If you'd like to offer your opinion, join the conversatino on the Talk page. -- llywrch 20:10, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Dates for Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV?

Why aren't any dates provided for Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV? john k 13:45, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)