DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0093
THE XIIth DYNASTY 67
figure of Diorite found 2,\ feet below the pavement of
the Central Court at Knossos. This figure, of which only
the lower part is preserved, tells us, in the Egyptian
inscription that is cut on it, of a private gentleman called
Ab-nub-mes-wazet-user; and his formidable name, so
Egyptologists tell us, could only have been perpetrated
about the time of the Xlllth Dynasty.1 Still more definite
is the discovery, in an early deposit near the Northern
Bath, in company with the serpentine vases described
above,8 of the lid of an alabastron with the cartouche of
the Hyksos king Khyan.' It is thus certain that Middle
Minoan III. did not end before the XVth Dynasty.
At this point certainty ends. The XIIth, Xlllth,
and XVth Dynasties alike are at the present moment
enveloped in a controversy in which a thousand years are
but as yesterday. The traditional dating, still followed
by most English Egyptologists, connects the XIIth
Dynasty with the centuries immediately surrounding
B.C. 2500. There is thus ample space for the intervening
Dynasties before the well-established beginning of the
XVIIIth at about 1580. Professor Petrie, for instance,
till a year ago, placed the XIIth Dynasty from 2778 to
2565, and the Xlllth from 2565 to 2112 ; 4 Mr. Evans,
drawing his equations from the later side of such
dating, places his Middle Minoan II. from 2500 to
2200, and Middle Minoan III. from 2200 to 1800.6
Many of the leading German Egyptologists, how-
ever, such as Erman, Mahler,' and Borchardt,7 and
historians of early civilisation like Eduard Meyer,*
argue for a date later by six or seven hundred years;
1 B.S.A. vi. p. 27.
3 See p. 63.
3 B.S.A. vii. fig. 20, p. 64, fig. 21, p. 65.
4 Hist. i. 190^2, pp. 147, 206. 5 See Ashmolean Cases.
• O.L.Z. viii. 1905, pp. 473-83. 535-41-
7 Z. Aeg. S. xxvii. 1899, p. 99 seq., where the Kahun Papyrus
was itself first fully published.
8 A.P.A. 1904. The fullest discussion of the subject.
figure of Diorite found 2,\ feet below the pavement of
the Central Court at Knossos. This figure, of which only
the lower part is preserved, tells us, in the Egyptian
inscription that is cut on it, of a private gentleman called
Ab-nub-mes-wazet-user; and his formidable name, so
Egyptologists tell us, could only have been perpetrated
about the time of the Xlllth Dynasty.1 Still more definite
is the discovery, in an early deposit near the Northern
Bath, in company with the serpentine vases described
above,8 of the lid of an alabastron with the cartouche of
the Hyksos king Khyan.' It is thus certain that Middle
Minoan III. did not end before the XVth Dynasty.
At this point certainty ends. The XIIth, Xlllth,
and XVth Dynasties alike are at the present moment
enveloped in a controversy in which a thousand years are
but as yesterday. The traditional dating, still followed
by most English Egyptologists, connects the XIIth
Dynasty with the centuries immediately surrounding
B.C. 2500. There is thus ample space for the intervening
Dynasties before the well-established beginning of the
XVIIIth at about 1580. Professor Petrie, for instance,
till a year ago, placed the XIIth Dynasty from 2778 to
2565, and the Xlllth from 2565 to 2112 ; 4 Mr. Evans,
drawing his equations from the later side of such
dating, places his Middle Minoan II. from 2500 to
2200, and Middle Minoan III. from 2200 to 1800.6
Many of the leading German Egyptologists, how-
ever, such as Erman, Mahler,' and Borchardt,7 and
historians of early civilisation like Eduard Meyer,*
argue for a date later by six or seven hundred years;
1 B.S.A. vi. p. 27.
3 See p. 63.
3 B.S.A. vii. fig. 20, p. 64, fig. 21, p. 65.
4 Hist. i. 190^2, pp. 147, 206. 5 See Ashmolean Cases.
• O.L.Z. viii. 1905, pp. 473-83. 535-41-
7 Z. Aeg. S. xxvii. 1899, p. 99 seq., where the Kahun Papyrus
was itself first fully published.
8 A.P.A. 1904. The fullest discussion of the subject.