Egyptian art in the Days of the Pharaohs [antikvár]

Chronology and the Dating of Egyptian Works of Art Manetho, the learned High Priest in Heliopolis who was commissioned by Ptolemy I in the third century bc to write a history of Egypt, divided into thirty-one dynasties the entire chronicle of events, from the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes, the first pharaoh, to the conquest of Alexander the Great in 332 bc. Although Manetho's work has not survived, his list of kings and their years of rule have been extensively preserved in the writings of early Christian chronographers. Modern historians still make selective use of these, and accept the numbering of Manetho's dynasties, which seems to follow very ancient practice. They also often render the names of the pharaohs in his Greek versions, where they exist, a system which is followed in this book. Surviving records, in which the ancient Egyptians noted certain celestial phenomena as occurring on specific days in their calendars, have enabled correspondences to be made with the modern calendar; but even so, the chronology of ancient Egypt before the first millennium bc is still not settled, particularly for the remoter and more troubled periods. The system adopted in this book follows that proposed by the Oriental Institute ofthe University of Chicago, with some modifications in the dating ofthe Eighteenth Dynasty. The thirty-one dynasties of Manetho have been further grouped by modern historians into larger time-spans, coinciding with periods when a distinct cultural pattern prevailed, separated by obscure interludes of political upheaval. In the following pages they are defined as follows: Dynasty Period Approximate Date BC I-II Archaic 3168-2705 III-VI Old Kingdom 2705-2250 VII-X First Intermediate 2250-2035 XI-XIII Middle Kingdom 2035-1668 XIV-XVIII Second Intermediate 1720-15 50 XVIII-XX New Kingdom 1552-1070 XXI Tanite 1070-946 XXII-XXIV Libyan 946-712