Ancient Egypt chronology and dating: what a mess !

This post is also available in: French

To help to clarify this confusion of dating, I will try to explain it as simply as possible … This confusion on the dating and Ancient Egypt chronology is mainly due to the fact that we still have to discover 90% of the physical evidence of the Ancient Egyptian  legacy  because we need to excavate much more the territory … Indeed, we lack of many elements because we are only at the beginning of Egyptology, it is a science still recent, dating from the campaign of Egypt by Bonaparte (from 1798 to August 31, 1801) , who had brought with him a group of 160 extraordinary scientists who begun to map and document the monumental and archaeological finds of the country.

Bonaparte at the pyramids by Maurice Orange [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

And today, every day, archaeologists find something, dig new sites! It is a fantastic quest that takes a lot of time because of the tons of sand accumulated for centuries and because three months a year, sandstorms rages in Egypt and covers what has been discovered the few previous months!

But let us deepen this problem of dating by speaking of the first Egyptian writings. Two facts are dominant:                                                                                                                                                                  First, Until now, the oldest recognized historical document in Egypt was the Narmer palette, found at the end of the 19th century in the ruins of the ancient Hierakonpolis (Nekhen) and dated 3100 BC.. In 1999, Dr. John Coleman Darnell of the Yale team,  in Gebel Tjauti, a cliff in the desert, 20 km northwest of Luxor, found inscriptions appearing to be very ancient hieroglyphs and a scene with symbols of more than 5,250 years representing a victorious king. That is to say, dating from before the first Pharaoh of the First Dynasty in the classical list that we recognize.…and when you know that the invention of writing is regarded as the great divide between prehistory and history, this discovery pushed back the beginning of Egypt well before the one commonly admitted. It will be necessary one day, to accept the existence of the dynasties before the so-called first ones (officially called the ZERO dynasty!), Whereas we have plenty of evidence today of previous dynasties! In any case, the discovery of Coleman is a significant addition to a growing body of evidence that the first true writing, began in Egypt – and not in the ancient Sumer (in what is now Irak), as the researchers have believed.

Gigal going inside Hiérakonpolis, Nekhen archaeologic site-Photo©Gigal-2016

Then, there are the findings of Dr Dreyer, director of the German Archaeological Institute in Egypt, who found in an Abydos tomb, inscriptions with phonetic elements, on pots, bones and ivory plates, very old hieroglyphics , and it was dated earlier than 3250 B.C. :

‘‘This precedes writing in Mesopotamia, which started early as an accounting system but took time to move from simple pictures to signs that represent sounds of speech.”

Thanks to recent excavations we can be sure that dynasties existed before Dynasty one and that they were historical ones, with writings !!! It was completely denied a few years ago !

Archaeologist walking behind Abydos and beside the predynastic tombs in the Khasekhemwy fort-Photo©Gigal-2016

So, there are dating evidences not yet discovered for the chronology, because of the many sites not yet excavated (over 80% of the territory) or  evidences just discovered and in the process of being accepted even if it is long and unbearable for some people.

Then, there are: Ancient evidences forgotten, or poorly translated! Thus, the famous French Egyptologist Maspero,  who said in 1885 about the early texts of the ancient Egyptians:

They were already perfectly composed before the first dynasty.“

Gaston Maspero, French egyptologist (1846-1916)-Public domain-Photo1883-

It is nevertheless extraordinary to note that the earliest Egyptologists, men of the field, and with a genuine knowledge of the whole Egyptian territory for having traversed it, in its totality (which is not the case for those of now !), had seen right, and it is totally forgotten! And Maspero is not the only one. We have also, the work on the first dynasty made by the French archeologist Emile Amelineau around 1890 who found evidences of the existence of an advanced people before the first official dynasty. Amelineau found many artefacts in Abydos. The name of this black people was: Anu / Aunu (nothing to do with Annunaki). They have built the cities of ESNA (Anutseni), Arment (Anu Menti), Gebelein (Anu), they had extensive agriculture, cattle breeding, they had fortress, they knew writing, metal tools, etc… And experts like Chandler for example, think that Osiris, Horus, Hermes etc., were Aunu . And Anu was also the name of Osiris, and he was supposed to be the 4th Pharaoh on Earth, then the Greeks called him: Onnuphris: “The Good”.

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Egyptologist Flinders Petrie- Public Domain Via Wikkicommons-

The great Flinders Petrie found at Abydos a fantastic Aunu document: It is a faience tile in which is depicted a chief Aunu with his name and address at Ermant. But they are not the only ones predynastic: you also have the MESNITU coming from Punt, in Somalia. They were metalworkers. There are also other groups like the Beja and the Rekhytu coming from Coptos in the Nile Valley. There are the AAMU with Asian traits but dressed as Egyptians and living in the mountains and the NEHESY coming from Southern Sudan, the TEMEHU from the western desert and Libya (and Tassili drawings from southeastern Algeria), and all these people were not simple natives but were very organized and had a lot of knowledge.

An archaeological discovery of a much earlier dating of civilization was discovered a few years ago, 250 km south of Aswan in Quadan, in tombs with physical proofs of high-level civilization. The dating obtained is from 13000 to 9000 years BC, which is much older than the Sumerian period (or even the period of Ubaïd beginning only 6000 years BC). A Belgian team also discovered a human skeleton near Denderah, in the Taramsa hill with pottery dating from 30,000 to 33,000 years ago. (look at the pdf in bibliography)We see here how necessary it is to excavate incessantly and even more in this vast territory that is Egypt to strengthen the truth.

The Palermo Stone-via Wikki Commons- Public Domain-

Ancient Egyptians have always regarded their civilization as a direct inheritance of divine beings that existed in Egypt thousands of years before the official dynasties that we recognize today. And this is attested in the Papyrus of Turin (the royal canon of Turin) dating from Ramses II, listing all the pharaohs and not only the dynastics we know, but also the so-called “divine” pharaohs before the reign of the first ” Officially recognized “: Menes.  Ancient Egyptians were not in the habit of mixing fiction with reality especially in lists as important as those of the leaders of their country and they did not lie, so one must one day consider the real existence of these Pharaohs before Menes, as so many different documents attest to their existence. But suddenly it is a lot of things in relation to the geopolitics and the beliefs that would be turned upside down, putting in play many collateral datings in the Middle East …

And then we also have the so-called Stele of Palermo giving the names of  these divine pharaohs. And in this list there is Horus for example, who is considered to have ruled as a normal human person.

We also have fortunately, the Egyptian historian Manetho, three centuries before Christ: his Egyptian name was Ma-n-Thot, the Master of Secrets and he had access to the Library of Alexandria and wrote an history of Egypt in 30 volumes for his pharaoh.

He is an historian recognized as very serious by the academics of today even they regard him as the Father of Egyptology as far as his work on his list of Pharaohs of the 1st Dynasty is concerned, because his dating is still in use today in the universities. But the funny thing is that: they completely avoid his list part before the 1st dynasty, they do not want to consider his list as a whole! And  despite the fact that Manetho has told us many very interesting details about the so-called “Divine dynasties”. He explained that they are divided into 3 parts: ” The Gods”,  the “Heroes” with “supernatural” skills and the “Manes”: Glorious beings in fact our spiritual ancestors. As for the Gods, Manetho explained that they are divided into 7 kinds and that: “These gods are originating from the earth and that then, they have become celestial, going to heaven.” Thus: “native” from the earth, it is interesting !

Gigal in the undergrounds of Egypt-Photo©Gigal-2016

Osiris himself says in the Egyptian Book of the Dead (the right translation of the title is: The book of coming forth by day):

” The tunnels of the Earth gave birth to me!”

They were intraterrestrials! This is why may be, the underground network is so important in Egypt! Plutarch, the influential Greek philosopher and historian wrote: “… Osiris became the Pharaoh of Egypt with Isis and they built Theba (Luxor).” Osiris and the other gods had, according the ancients Texts, a real earthly, historical life.

These historians, all are speaking first of a genealogy of the Gods reigning in Egypt over 200 years and then of the “Shemsu Hor” reigning for 13,400 years, and then the “official” pharaohs that we know. The reign of each “divine” king is about hundreds of years, so this is unacceptable for academics. But I ask then, why they accept for example, the long life span of the prophets of the Bible alike Enoch for example, who lived 360 years? Many factors can explain today such a lifetime … Earth’s gravity was may be different at the time, aging was may be slower, density could be less, DNA could be better protected, and so on…

So all this, is adding to the confusion of the chronology and this, of course, has great repercussions on the dating. Moreover, other errors occur sometimes when the dating of a monument is made. For example, for the Great Pyramid: samples of mortar  were taken  neither high enough nor deep enough in it. And the problem is that the Pharaohs of all the dynasties have made restorations of their monuments. And so, one often gets a dating of one of the restorations, but not the dating of the origin of a monument, and that happens more often than one thinks! Not long ago, academics refused the mere fact that multiple restorations were carried out by different pharaohs! Fortunately it changes. But we also tend to take the last cartouche affixed to a monument as a reliable dating when often, several Pharaohs had affixed their cartouches before, erasing their predecessors.

Only field people, having worked on sites during years, and having the general archaeological culture of the whole of Egypt are able to determine a good dating and  having an open and impartial mind to consider a chronology as a whole .

Text, Photos & collage ©AntoineGigal-2016

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Bibliography: 

Émile Amélineau, Nouvelles Fouilles d'Abydos, 1895-6, 1896-7 & 1897-8  (full  report of the excavations), Paris: Ed. Leroux, 1901, 1902 & 1904-5.
 Émile Amélineau, Prolégomènes à l'étude de la religion égyptienne, Paris: Ed. Leroux, 1916.
Van Peer & Vermersch : Taramsa burial 210 http://www.academia.edu/1234230/Taramsa_Burial_2010
 Dr. G. Elliot Smith, The Ancient Egyptians, Harper, 1923.
 Dimitri Meeks, Chapter 4: "Locating Punt", Mysterious Lands, David B. O'Connor & Stephen Quirke, UCL Press, 2003.

Antoine Gigal:  Egypt before the pharaohs,2010 : http://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/publications-pharaohs.php

This post is also available in: French