Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

84

OHAPTEE V.

DYNASTIES XIIL-XV1I.1

The Tablet of Abydos passes at once from the Twelfth
to the Eighteenth Dynasty, and places Amen-hotep, the
first king, immediately after the princess Sebek-neferu-Ba.
The traditions of the ancients concerning this obscure
period lead but to confusion and error, and the Turin
Papyrus, the only document which could serve as a
guide, has such frightful gaps where the list of the
Thirteenth Dynasty kings should be, that it is prac-
tically useless. Fate has thus done its worst to place
the greatest difficulties in the way of the solution of
this question. All that scientific research has succeeded
in attaining is the well-grounded belief that long after
the conclusion of the Twelfth Dynasty native kings
ruled with unlimited power in the land until princes
of foreign origin, already settled in the eastern lowlands,
gradually drove back the old race, so as to establish the
right of conquest over the true heirs of the throne.

Before narrating the history of these foreign con-
querors it will be advisable to give here the succession
of the Egyptian dynasties, the number of their kings,
and the time of their total duration, according to the
Manethonian sources, and on the authority of the best
and most recent researches.

Xlllth dynasty, of Thebes, 60 kings 453 years.
XlVth „ of Xois, 76 „ 484 „

XVth „ Hyksos, 6 „ 260 „

XVIth „ Hyksos, ? „ 251 „

XVIIth „ of Thebes, 1 „ ? „

1 For Table of Kings see p. 87.