History
Egypt is unique among Earth’s ancient cultures, as the Egyptians kept records longer than most cultures existed. Around 300 BC the Egyptian historian Manetho compiled a record of Egyptian History for the Greeks. It was the height of Greek cultural influence. The Greeks were ruling everything from southern Italy to northwest India, and had established colonies as far west as France, and as far north as Crimea. Manetho’s book Aegyptiaca, circulated far and wide within the Greek world, and then the Roman and Sassanian Empires that rose up to consume the Greek world. Within Aegyptiaca, the dynastic history of Egypt was divided into 30 dynasties, the same dynasties Egyptologists use today. Manetho was the first to refer to the ancient Egyptian royal families as dynasties, however, his account matches the Turin King List dating to the New Kingdom era a thousand years earlier and is believed to be an accurate account of what the Egyptians of his period believed. The Turin King List only listed the kings and queens up until the time of the New Kingdom, and Manetho only listed the kings and queens up until the last independent Egyptian royal family. Subsequently, the 31st Dynasty was added, which was the last Persian period of rule, which was followed by the Greek and Roman eras. While Manetho and modern Egyptologists do agree on the general outline of Egyptian history, there are some striking differences, modern Egyptologists have removed over a hundred kings from Manetho’s timeline, compressing Egyptian history from a dynastic period that should have started in 5510 BC, to a dynastic period that starts in 3100 BC. There are also ongoing efforts to change the foundation date of the 1st Dynasty of Egypt to 3000 BC (Ian Shaw) or 2770 BC (David Rohl). These ongoing attemptsto revise Egyptian ‘history’ create more and more fictional history, as dynasties are either forced to coexist or erases them entirely from the timeline. Manetho’s 7th Dynasty is now considered fictitious by Egyptologists,1even though it was mentioned in the Turin King List, and the names of the kings were recorded in the Abydos King Lists, both lists dating from the New Kingdom era.