Turin King List
also known as the Turin Royal Canon
Egyptian kingship forms an unbroken chain running from the reigns of the gods themselves down to the living king, and that chain can be counted, dynasty by dynasty, year by year.
- kingship traced continuously from gods to the living king
- regnal years recorded to the day
- badly fragmented after discovery, reconstruction still ongoing
- the principal source for pre-Ramesside Egyptian chronology
A hieratic papyrus compiled during the reign of Ramesses II, listing Egyptian rulers from mythical divine kings through the historical dynasties down to the Ramesside scribe's own time, recording exact regnal years, months, and days and grouping kings into sequences that roughly anticipate the later dynastic scheme of the Ptolemaic historian Manetho. Discovered by Bernardino Drovetti in 1820, it was already shattered into hundreds of fragments during transport to Turin, where reconstruction remains incomplete and about two-thirds of the original is lost. It is the single most important source for absolute Egyptian chronology before the Nineteenth Dynasty.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…