DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0094
68
EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY
Meyer, for instance, begins the Xllth Dynasty at 2000,
and the XHIth at 1788. They are partly influenced by
a priori considerations of the length of time necessary
for the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos period, but mainly
by the discovery at Kahun of a Xllth Dynasty Temple
Book, in which a priest tells his subordinates that a
rising of Sothis or Sirius will occur on the 16th day of
Pharmouthi, the eighth calendar month, in the seventh
year of Senusert III. This is the word we used to read
as Usertesen, till it was suggested that the name of
the goddess Usert was written but not pronounced
first, and that the transposition to Senusert or Senwosret
would bring the word into connection with the Sesostris
of Herodotus.1 The astronomical argument that is
based on this new " Sothic rising " would not touch the
well-authenticated date of the XVIIIth Dynasty, which
would still begin at about B.C. 1580 ; it would merely
pack very much closer all that intervenes between it and
the Xllth, and thus significantly reduce the period of the
bloom of Minoan art.
The leading American Egyptologist, Professor J. H.
Breasted, has accepted this new dating without qualifica-
tion.2 Professor von Bissing of Munich1 and most
members of the English school4 are as yet inclined to
hold their hands, and suggest that there must be some-
thing wrong with the new astronomical arguments,
though they do not commit themselves as to what it is.
Professor Petrie, however, has taken the bull by the horns
in the best Minoan manner. He accepts the astronomical
principles propounded by the Berlin school, and agrees
that we have a right to place the Xllth Dynasty at a
particular point in a " Sothic cycle " of 1460 years. So
1 Hall, O.C.G. p. 320.
2 A.R. 1906, vol. i., p. 26 seq.
3 In letter to me of January 1907, which he has kindly allowed
me to make use of.
4 E.g. Hall in C.R. xix. 1905, p. 82, n. 1.
EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY
Meyer, for instance, begins the Xllth Dynasty at 2000,
and the XHIth at 1788. They are partly influenced by
a priori considerations of the length of time necessary
for the Middle Kingdom and Hyksos period, but mainly
by the discovery at Kahun of a Xllth Dynasty Temple
Book, in which a priest tells his subordinates that a
rising of Sothis or Sirius will occur on the 16th day of
Pharmouthi, the eighth calendar month, in the seventh
year of Senusert III. This is the word we used to read
as Usertesen, till it was suggested that the name of
the goddess Usert was written but not pronounced
first, and that the transposition to Senusert or Senwosret
would bring the word into connection with the Sesostris
of Herodotus.1 The astronomical argument that is
based on this new " Sothic rising " would not touch the
well-authenticated date of the XVIIIth Dynasty, which
would still begin at about B.C. 1580 ; it would merely
pack very much closer all that intervenes between it and
the Xllth, and thus significantly reduce the period of the
bloom of Minoan art.
The leading American Egyptologist, Professor J. H.
Breasted, has accepted this new dating without qualifica-
tion.2 Professor von Bissing of Munich1 and most
members of the English school4 are as yet inclined to
hold their hands, and suggest that there must be some-
thing wrong with the new astronomical arguments,
though they do not commit themselves as to what it is.
Professor Petrie, however, has taken the bull by the horns
in the best Minoan manner. He accepts the astronomical
principles propounded by the Berlin school, and agrees
that we have a right to place the Xllth Dynasty at a
particular point in a " Sothic cycle " of 1460 years. So
1 Hall, O.C.G. p. 320.
2 A.R. 1906, vol. i., p. 26 seq.
3 In letter to me of January 1907, which he has kindly allowed
me to make use of.
4 E.g. Hall in C.R. xix. 1905, p. 82, n. 1.