I’ll be presenting my paper Towards a Theory of Egypt’s God-King Chronology on May 21st at 9 A.M. EST (2 P.M UK time.). The conference is being presented by the 7th Birmingham Egyptology Annual Symposium in conjunction with the Egypt Exploration Society. It is a virtual conference over Zoom and attendance is free. You can use this link to register and get details.
I have placed my abstract below along with a copy of the program schedule. The schedule lists event times in UK and Egypt.
After I present this paper, I plan to get back to more active blogging. I have had a busy month or so.
ABSTRACT OF MY PRESENTATION
Ancient Egypt’s only known multi-dynasty chronologies, the Turin Canon of Kings (c. 12th century B.C.E.) and Manetho’s Aegyptiaca (c. 3rd century B.C.E.), indicate that the First Dynasty was preceded by a long list of god-kings with assigned lengths of reign. Unfortunately, the Turin Canon papyrus is very badly damaged in this section and many of the god names and much of the associated chronology are either damaged or missing. As to Manetho’s history, his original text is lost and what we know about this time frame was preserved in wildly inconsistent versions preserved by several Christian scribes several centuries later who took great liberties with Manetho’s chronology and who explained why they made many changes to what Manetho wrote.
This paper introduces the theory that behind these two chronological texts stands a systematic unfolding of the Theban Creation theology with lengths of reign based on solar, lunar and stellar cycles, and that this data can be recovered by tracing error patterns in the Manetho sources. As an introduction to the thesis, this paper will focus on the Manetho texts and (1) outline several arithmetic errors made by the scribes who passed on the manuscripts, (2) demonstrate several interpretive errors by the redactors that led to erroneous data being used in the various Manetho sources, and (3) offer one major new insight as to what the redactors misunderstood, which, when placed in context, will provide the key to unlocking the chronological and sequential arrays and explain the various inconsistencies in the Manetho sources.
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
7th Annual Birmingham Egyptology Symposium Schedule
‘Biography in Ancient Egypt’
10:15– 10:30 (UK) Welcome
11:15 – 11.30 (Egypt)
10:30– 11:00 (UK) Keynote Talk
11:30– 12:00 (Egypt) Dr Leire Olabarria, University of Birmingham
Session One
11:00 – 11:30 (UK) Small Image, Big Picture. Theoretical Approaches to Scenes of Daily Life
12:00 -12:30 (Egypt) Genevieve Holt (Macquarie University, Sydney)
11:30 – 12:00 (UK) The Chronicle of Prince Osorkon (B): some illuminations on the
12:30 – 13:00 (Egypt) professional career system
Karim Mohsen El Ridy (Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Cairo University)
12:00 – 12:30 (UK) Deciphering Ptolemy I: a study of archaeological evidence to establish
13:00 – 13:30 (Egypt) his provenance and later role as Pharaoh
Ana Rumi (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
12:30 – 13:30 (UK) Lunch break
13:30 – 14:30 (Egypt)
Session Two:
13:30 – 14:00 (UK) Investigating the language of Amarna Period
14:30 – 15:00 (Egypt) Sherouk Shehada (Helwan University)
14:00 – 14:30 (UK) Towards a Theory of Egypt’s God-Kings
15:00 – 15:30 (Egypt) Gary Greenberg (Independent Researcher)
14:30 – 15:00 (UK) Break
15.30 – 16.00 (Egypt)
Session Three
15:00 – 15:30 (UK) Expressions of Female Agency & Morality in ancient Egyptian
16:00 – 16:30 (Egypt) Biographical Texts
Mariam Ayad (The American University in Cairo)
15:30 – 16:00 (UK) Biography of Representations of Ancient Egyptian Culture in Video Game
16:30 – 17:00 (Egypt) Matthew Stapleton (University of Central Florida)
16:00 – 16:30 (UK) Biography of Ancient Egyptian Bead nets
17:00 – 17.30 (Egypt) Debora Spizzichino (Independent Researcher)