Manetho Rehabilitated: A New Analysis of His Second Intermediate Period.
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|
Dyn. |
Eusebius |
Africanus |
Josephus |
|
XIII |
Diospolis |
Diospolis |
N.A. |
|
XIV |
Xois |
Xois |
N.A. |
|
XV |
Diospolis |
Hyksos
|
Hyksos
|
|
XVI |
Thebes |
Hyksos |
Hyksos |
|
XVII |
Hyksos
|
Hyksos + Thebes * |
N.A. |
* Eusebius gives Diospolis as the capitol of the
Thirteenth and Fifteenth Dynasties and Thebes as the capitol of the
Sixteenth Dynasty. Africanus divides the Seventeenth Dynasty between
Thebes and the Hyksos, but identifies the Theben capitol as
“Thebes or Diospolis.” Thebes and Diospolis are alternative
Greek names for the same city.
** The Armenian Version of Eusebius lists Aphophis
after Archles; the Syncellus Version places Aphophis before Archles.
Both versions have the same lengths of reign for all four kings.
The Josephus account only covers a portion of the period and talks almost exclusively about the Hyksos kings. Unlike Africanus and Eusebius, he does not refer to dynasties by number, nor does he list the kings in tabular form.
Josephus lists six Hyksos kings along with their lengths of reign, giving a collective total of 259 years and 8 months. He then says that these kings were followed by an additional group of Hyksos kings (none named) and that all together the Hyksos kings ruled for 511 years.
Africanus, with only minor variations in the names, lists the same group of six kings as Josephus but has a slightly different order. Five of the six kings have the same lengths of reign as in Josephus, but for the sixth king, Apachnan, Africanus has 61 years where Josephus has 36 years. The reason for this 25-year difference will be discussed below.
For purposes of comparison, Table 1 aligns Josephus’s 511-year summation line with Africanus’s 518-year total for Dynasty XVI. In both cases, the two versions are describing the sequence of kings following the six named Hyksos kings, but the closeness of the two figures, 511 and 518, suggest different interpretations of the chronological sources. Josephus includes the six Hyksos kings in the total, Africanus excludes them. It should be noted that Africanus’s 518 year figure is exactly twice as long as Josephus’s 259 years for the six Hyksos kings, and provides a strong clue that Africanus has mistakenly read summation lines as additional sequences of kings.
Eusebius also refers to this same group of named Hyksos kings but omits two of the six from his list. Of his four kings, the first has the same length of reign as in the other two lists, his next two have slightly shorter reigns, and his fourth king, Aphophis, has a significantly shorter length of reign, 14 years versus 61 years in the other two lists. His four reigns have a collective duration of 103 years. While Africanus designates these kings as the Fifteenth Dynasty, Eusebius refers to them as the Seventeenth Dynasty.
Manetho is our chief source of information about the dynastic sequences in the Second Intermediate Period, but Africanus and Eusebius disagree on what that sequence is. The present practice, based on custom and usage, is to follow the Africanus scheme, identifying Dynasties XIII and XVII as consecutive Theban dynasties, Dynasties XV and XVI as concurrent Hyksos dynasties, and Dynasty XIV as either a concurrent Hyksos dynasty or a native line of vassal kings subservient to the Hyksos kings.
In my solution to the Manetho chronology, I follow the Eusebius arrangement. I identify three consecutive Theban dynasties, XIII, XVI, and XVII and two Hyksos dynasties, XIV and XV.
Table 2 outlines my analysis of Manetho’s Second Intermediate Period. Column A shows three Theban dynasties ruling respectively 69, 39 and 151 years. Column B shows two Hyksos dynasties ruling respectively 86 and 108 years. Surrounding these two columns are a series of summations. These summations correspond to the various dynastic totals described in each of the Manetho king-lists. How I arrived at these figures will be explained below. Note for now, however, that the five dynasties have a collective duration of 453 years, the same total given for Manetho’s Thirteenth Dynasty.
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|
A |
B |
C |
D |
|
|
|
THEBES |
HYKSOS |
SUM LINE |
DOUBLE-COUNT |
COMMENT |
|
1 |
DYN. XIII |
|
69 Years |
|
A1 = M’s Dyn. XIII |
|
2 |
DYN. XVI |
DYN. XIV |
125 Years |
250 Years |
A2 = M’s Dyn. XVI |
|
3 |
DYN. XVII |
DYN. XV |
259 Years |
518 Years |
A3 = M’s Dyn. XVII |
|
4 |
190 Years |
194 Years |
|
|
A4 = E’s Dyn. XVI |
|
5 |
|
|
453 Years |
|
C5 = E’s Dyn. XIII |
Eusebius Summary
Dyn. XIII = Sum of all five dynasties.
Dyn. XIV = Sum of Manetho’s Dyn. XIV and Dyn. XV.
(“194” years corrupted to “184” years.)
Dyn. XV = Double-count of Manetho’s Dyn. XIV and
Dyn. XVI.
Dyn. XVI = Sum of Manetho’s Dyn. XVI and Dyn. XVII.
Dyn. XVII = Manetho’s Dyn. XV, the Great Hyksos Dynasty.
Africanus Summary
Dyn. XIII = Sum of all five dynasties.
Dyn. XIV = Sum of Manetho’s Dyn. XIV and Dyn. XV.
(“194” years corrupted to “184” years.)
Dyn. XV = Sum of Manetho’s Dyn. XV and Dyn. XVII
plus 25 years from the reign of Ahmose.
Dyn. XVI = Double-count of Manetho’s Dyn. XV and
Dyn. XVII.
Dyn. XVII = Manetho’s Dyn. XVII.
Josephus Summary Great Hyksos Dynasty = Sum of Dyn. XV and Dyn. XVII
All Hyksos kings = Sum of Dyn. XV. and Dyn. XVII, plus sum lines.
(Total of 518 miscopied as 511.)
Before beginning that explanation, let me first comment on the Turin Canon. It provides a useful template that helps us analyze the conflicts in Manetho.
In the Turin Canon, the Second Intermediate Period appears in Columns VI through XI, but the papyrus is badly damaged and many sections are missing. Some scholars suggest that in this portion of the Turin Canon, each of the six columns had thirty lines. Gardiner, however, warns that it is unlikely that there were actually 180 kings in this period. Many of the preserved names, he says, have a suspect appearance.
The most important piece of chronological information in the Turin Canon comes from Column X, Line 21, which refers to six foreign kings ruling for 108 years. This is almost universally accepted as a reference to the Hyksos kings that were expelled by Ahmose at the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Because the Manetho texts also describe a group of six Hyksos kings, scholars identify the six Manetho kings with the six Turin Canon kings.
These six kings, following the terminology of Africanus, are classified as Dynasty XV and known as the Great Hyksos Dynasty. This would be the Hyksos dynasty defeated in about the fourth year of King Ahmose. So, utilizing the figure of 108 years from the Turin Canon, we can estimate that the Fifteenth Dynasty was founded about 104 years before the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
After the Turin Canon’s Hyksos summation line we have a sequence of Theban kings. Allowing for thirty lines per column, there is a maximum space of 39 lines for the Theban sequence before we reach the Eighteenth Dynasty. Since there should be at least one more summation line in that sequence, and perhaps more than one, there would be approximately 38 or 37 kings positioned in those slots.
Beginning, then, with the six Hyksos kings, we would have two groups of kings in the Turin Canon, one Hyksos and one Theban. In addition to listing the individual lengths of reign, there would have been at least one line of summation for each group. Combined, the two groups of kings would have numbered approximately 43 or 44 kings.
This sequence of Hyksos kings followed by Theban kings forms the pattern that I believe was misread by Manetho’s redactors as a single large group of Hyksos kings. Instead of seeing them as two distinct groups, they were merged together as if they were one continuous line of kings.
Turn now to Eusebius’s Seventeenth Dynasty. He has four kings ruling 103 years. Although he is two kings and five years short, he appears remarkably close to what is indicated in the Turin Canon.
Eusebius’s fourth and last king is Aphophis. Josephus also lists Aphophis as the fourth king, but has two additional kings after Aphophis. We know that Aphophis was on the throne during some unknown year in the reign of the Theban king Kamose.
Kamose, the last Theban king to rule before Ahmose defeated the Hyksos, has a high year marker of “3”. It is unlikely he was on the throne for more than about five years. This leaves only the balance of Kamose’s reign, and four additional years in which Hyksos kings could have served, a total period of 4 to 8 years. Eusebius’s Seventeenth Dynasty, therefore, appears to terminate at just about the point where Ahmose ascends the throne, ending the Hyksos dynasty with the start of Ahmose’s reign rather than with the expulsion of the Hyksos four years later.
Not only does Eusebius’s Seventeenth Dynasty accurately correspond to the Turin Canon’s six foreign chiefs ruling 108 years, unlike Josephus and Africanus, he also makes these Hyksos kings the last of the Hyksos rulers, as required by the historical record. That Eusebius could have accidentally stumbled into such a perfect set of correspondences is just too difficult to accept. The original Manetho must have had an accurate account of these six kings along with their lengths of reign. Why, then, did Josephus and Africanus diverge so widely from what Manetho wrote?
If we restore Eusebius’s Seventeenth Dynasty to its full 108 years, and place it alongside Africanus’s Seventeenth Dynasty, ruling 151 years, the answer becomes apparent. Adding the Africanus and Eusebius figures together gives a sum of 259 years, exactly the number of years that Josephus erroneously assigns to the six Hyksos kings.
Note also that Africanus has a confused description of the Seventeenth Dynasty in which he claims that there was a total of 43 kings, Hyksos and Theban. That number closely corresponds to the 43 or 44 kings that fit into the Turin Canon’s final sequence of Hyksos and Theban kings.
What these numbers suggest is that the Manetho source had a sequence of six Hyksos kings ruling for 108 years followed by a sequence of 37 Theban kings ruling 151 years. Eusebius’s Seventeenth Dynasty represents one part of the list; Africanus’s Seventeenth Dynasty represents the other part.
This sequential listing of concurrent dynasties must have caused a great deal of confusion among Manetho’s redactors, most if not all of whom had little if any knowledge about Egyptian history. This apparently led to several inconsistent summaries of what Manetho wrote, with Hyksos and Theban kings being combined in various combinations.
Africanus’s source made a further error. His total for all six kings equals 284 years, 25 more than the Josephus total. As noted earlier the entire discrepancy is contained in the length of reign for a single king, Apachnan. Josephus has 36 years, Africanus 61 years.
This error is due to confusion about whether Ahmose was the last Seventeenth Dynasty king or the first Eighteenth Dynasty king. Josephus names the first king Tethmosis, while Africanus and Eusebius have Ahmose. But where Josephus and Eusebius give the first king of the dynasty a reign of 25 years, Africanus omits the length of reign. Given the earlier 25 year difference between Africanus and Josephus over the length of reign for the Hyksos king Apachnan, this coincidence suggest that the missing 25 year reign for Ahmose was tacked on to Apachnan’s reign.
This would also explain why the six Hyksos kings in Josephus and Africanus have such excessive lengths of reign. One of the redactors must have attempted to add up the lengths of reign for all 43 kings in the sequence and put subtotals in the margin across from the Hyksos kings. Later redactors read those subtotals as actual lengths of reign for those Hyksos kings.
Both Africanus and Josephus have additional Hyksos kings after the merged Hyksos-Theban sequence. Africanus says there were an additional 518 years for a Sixteenth Dynasty while Josephus says the total Hyksos line encompassed 511 years. I suggest that these are alternative readings of the same information and that Josephus’s “511” is a corruption of “518”. The 518 years is simply a double-count of the earlier Hyksos-Theban sequence, with summation lines for the two groups of kings treated as if they were descriptions of additional groups of kings, causing them to be added on to the totals for the individual lengths of reign.
It is interesting to speculate on what event caused Manetho or his source to take Dynasty XVII as beginning 151 years before the Eighteenth Dynasty. The starting date for this group of Theban kings is just 48 years before the start of the Great Hyksos Dynasty. This coincides with many estimates as to when Avaris was founded as the Hyksos capital, and I believe that this was the political event that caused this group of Theban kings to be separated from its predecessors.
Josephus inadvertently lends some corroboration to this interpretation. In his description of the Hyksos kings he says that the first Hyksos king made his capital at Memphis and founded a city at Avaris. This is, of course, chronologically inaccurate. Avaris was established as a Hyksos capital about fifty years before the capture of Memphis at the start of Dynasty XV.
I suggest that Josephus’s error was caused by a misreading of the source document. I suspect that after describing the sequence of Theban kings, Manetho indicated that Avaris was founded in the reign of the first king of that dynasty. Since the Josephus source had already merged the Theban dynasty into the preceding Hyksos dynasty, Josephus thought the first king of the dynasty meant the first Hyksos king rather than the first Theban king.
The above analysis suggests that a number of summation lines for the Second Intermediate Period kings revolved around the political interplay between the Hyksos and Thebans. This leads to some assumptions about the earlier dynasties. Since the Hyksos kings must have been in power prior to the establishment of Avaris, it stands to reason that there should be a Hyksos dynasty that preceded the Fifteenth Dynasty and that dates to before the foundation of Avaris. An accurate king-list for the Second Intermediate Period would have had a line of summation for that group of kings as well as those of the Fifteenth Dynasty. I therefore assumed that there was a point in time when the first Hyksos dynasty was founded and that there had to be a line of summation indicating how long this group of Hyksos kings ruled. I further assumed that there would be some sort of indication as to when in the Theban sequence of kings the first Hyksos dynasty came to power.
Based on these assumptions and given that the Second Intermediate Period couldn’t have lasted much more than 200 to 250 years, I suggest that Manetho’s Fourteenth Dynasty of 76 kings from Xois was originally a summation line for the duration of both Hyksos dynasties. Additionally, I propose that Eusebius’s Sixteenth Dynasty of 5 Theban kings ruling for 190 years was also a summation line, for the length of time Theban kings ruled while the Hyksos kings were in power.
If I am right, then both summation lines start at the same time, with the foundation of the first Hyksos dynasty. But there is a slight problem with this thesis. The second Hyksos dynasty lasted about four years into the Eighteenth Dynasty. Therefore the Hyksos summation line should be four years longer than the corresponding Theban summation line. Instead, the proposed Theban summation line is 190 years and the proposed Hyksos summation line is only 184 years. This is inconsistent with the assumptions above.
I suspect, however, that in the original Manetho, the “184” years was originally “194” years” and the number was erroneously transmitted through editing mistakes. There are two possible source errors. One is that the “194” was simply miscopied as “184”. Another, and perhaps the more likely error, arises from the fact that in about Year 10 of Ahmose’s reign, after the Hyksos were expelled, Ahmose and the Hyksos fought another major battle which eventually resulted in another Hyksos defeat. The redactors may have mistakenly thought that both battles were one and the same, and that the 194 year total for the Hyksos kings ended with this battle instead of with the earlier battle in Year 4 of Ahmose’s reign. As a result, in order to get to the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty, they mistakenly subtracted ten years from “194” years, getting the figure of “184” instead. This view would be consistent with Eusebius ending the Great Hyksos Dynasty when Ahmose came to the throne rather than after the Hyksos were expelled.
Next, taking the Fourteenth Dynasty’s proposed 194 years as a summation line for the two Hyksos dynasties gives a period of 86 years for the predecessors to the Great Hyksos Dynasty. The Manetho text indicates a total of 76 kings for the Fourteenth Dynasty, but I suggest that the 76 kings constitutes a double-counting of 38 kings. Six of those kings belong to the Great Hyksos Dynasty. The other 32 kings belong to the earlier Hyksos dynasty. In support of this view, note that Africanus’s Sixteenth Dynasty has a total of 32 Hyksos kings, suggesting a possible separation between the six Hyksos kings in Dynasty XV and another 32 Hyksos kings outside the dynasty.
As noted above, I place the start of Eusebius’s Sixteenth Dynasty ruling 190 years at the same point in time as the start of the first Hyksos dynasty. Treating this as a summation line for the Theban kings down to the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty leaves a period of 39 years from the start of the Theban Sixteenth Dynasty to the start of the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty. The political event separating the one dynasty from the other, as noted earlier, was the foundation of Avaris as the Hyksos capital. Eusebius’s five kings in Dynasty XVI would have ruled only during this 39-year period.
This gives the Theban Sixteenth Dynasty and the Hyksos Fourteenth Dynasty a combined duration of 125 years, 39 years for one, 86 years for the other. Following the same pattern of errors described earlier for the Great Hyksos Dynasty and the Theban Seventeenth Dynasty, I suggest that the summation lines for Dynasties XIV and XVI were added onto the totals for the individual lengths of reign in those dynasties, doubling the duration from 125 to 250 years, which is the total for Eusebius’s Fifteenth Dynasty.
Finally, we come to the Thirteenth Dynasty, which contains what I believe to be the locking piece that holds the puzzle together. Both Manetho sources describe the dynasty as a Theban dynasty with 60 kings lasting 453 years.
It is commonly believed by scholars that the “453” years in Manetho is a miscopy of “153”. It is maintained that in Greek, the characters for “400” and “100” are easily confused, and, in fact there is some evidence for that view. One version of Eusebius assigns the Fourteenth Dynasty 184 years, another assigns 484 years.
Such a solution, however, is inconsistent with the reconciliation set forth above. It would require a total period of almost 350 years for the period from the start of Dynasty XIII to the end of Dynasty XVII, more than a century longer than any Egyptologist would allow. As an alternative, I suggest that 453 is an accurate transmission but that it is the combined sum for all five dynasties in the Second Intermediate Period. If this view is correct, then Manetho would have to have given the original Dynasty XIII a reign of 69 years. There is good evidence that this is what he did.
The proof lies in Manetho’s account of the Twelfth Dynasty. There are many problems surrounding Manetho’s account of that Dynasty, but, for the purposes of this discussion, we can briefly touch on the relevant issues that effect our analysis.
For the Twelfth Dynasty, Both Africanus and Eusebius agree on the sequence and lengths of reign for the first five kings, giving them a total duration of 156 years. After that the two lists diverge.
Africanus then names three kings with a combined reign of twenty years for a dynastic total of 176 years. Eusebius, however, indicates that after the fifth king an unknown number of successors ruled for 42 years. This would give a total duration of 196 years, but Eusebius then states the total duration of the dynasty was 245 years. Eusebius provides no explanation for this disparity between the number of years recorded and the number of years claimed.
Coincidentally, the difference between Africanus’s 176 years and Eusebius’s 245 years is 69 years, the proposed number of years for Dynasty XIII. This suggests that Eusebius’s figure of 245 years includes both the Twelfth Dynasty kings and the Thirteenth Dynasty kings, once again combining two consecutive dynasties for a single dynastic total.
The two versions of Manetho’s Twelfth Dynasty appear to diverge at approximately the point where Senwosre III ended his reign. Senwosre III was the last great Theban pharaoh prior to the onset of Hyksos rule and I suspect that the end of his reign must have served as a reference point in Manetho’s history. There would have been one summation line that began with the start of Dynasty XII and ended after Senwosre III, and another summation line from the end of Senwosre III to the foundation of the first Hyksos dynasty, a period that apparently lasted about 69 years. This second summation line, although it included part of the Twelfth Dynasty, mistakenly came to be identified as the Thirteenth Dynasty. The 60 Theban kings referred to in Dynasty XIII would be the total number of Theban kings from Sesostris to the start of Dynasty XVIII.
In summary, the evidence seems to suggest the following. Manetho’s description of the Second Intermediate Period appears to have incorporated a number of summation lines that focused on the relationship between the Thebans and the Hyksos. Rightly or wrongly, these summation lines came to be identified by Manetho’s redactors with dynastic divisions.
The key reference points in this history were the foundation of a Hyksos dynasty in Xois, the establishment of Avaris as the Hyksos capital, the capture of Memphis by the Great Hyksos Dynasty, and the defeat of the Hyksos by King Ahmose at the onset of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
The Hyksos period was divided into at least two subdivisions, with the capture of Memphis as the dividing point.
The Theban kings were divided into at least three groupings, one running from the end of Senwosre III to the foundation of the first Hyksos dynasty, one running from the foundation of the first Hyksos dynasty to the establishment of Avaris as the Hyksos capital, and one running from the establishment of Avaris as a capital to the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty.
Through a variety of misreadings and confusions Manetho’s redactors misunderstood these various lines of summation and frequently interpreted them as additional groups of kings, leading to double-counting of dynastic durations and concatenating of multiple groups of kings into a single dynasty. A chief cause of this confusion appears to be the attempt to use a sequential listing of kings to describe concurrently ruling dynasties.
