CORDIS

‘Challenging Time(s)’ – A New Approach to Written Sources for Ancient Egyptian Chronology (757951 - CT - ERC-2017-STG)

Ancient Egyptian chronology is a corner stone for the understanding of the rise and fall of early civilisations as well as their interactions. Besides material culture and archaeological excavations, texts and inscriptions are the main sources for establishing and refining Egyptian chronology. The evaluation of data from radiocarbon measurements, archaeo-astronomy and further scientific methodologies depend on a scaffolding of Egyptian history according to excavations and texts. Since the evaluation of none of those three sources of information is independent from the two others, it is indispensable to recognise dependencies and potential vicious circles like in the case of radiocarbon dates, which are usually interpreted and modelled on the basis of historical chronology, e.g. via Bayesian statistics. The data obtained from material culture and texts therefore urgently require proper assessment in their particular cultural context.

The research project ‘Challenging Time(s)’ is devoted to the study of written sources and aims at critically evaluating ancient kinglists such as Manetho’s, contemporaneous inscriptions from the respective kings’ reigns, and prosopographic data in order to establish genealogies. Information obtained from the kinglists will thus be checked against contemporaneous inscriptions, which will allow for the more precise recognition of how ancient Egyptians themselves perceived history and of how they passed along information on history and chronology. Genealogies in other prosopographic information will serve as an additional and until today essentially unexploited approach of testing chronological data from kinglists, historical inscriptions and documentary texts.

It is therefore the paramount goal of this research project to assess the written sources for ancient Egyptian chronology, to evaluate them in their proper cultural context, to judge their reliability, and to make the historical framework of chronology better applicable for further research. In particular, this research project aims at writing the first Egyptological commentary on Manetho’s Greek list of Egyptian kings, which still today is highly influential for Egyptian chronology with its concept of dynasties. The research project ‘Challenging Time(s)’ is thus highly important for a refinement of the chronology of the Near East around Egypt and for a more precise definition of cause and effect for key events of ancient history.