Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 1): The Neolithic and Early and Middle Minoan Ages (London, 1921)

THE EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGICAL SYSTEM

3i

recent researches of Monsieur Raymond Weill1 who, after an elaborate examination R.Weill
of the evidence, considers it possible to reduce the interval between the Twelfth and the

on in-
terval be-

Eighteenth Dynasty to about 210 years, the period required by the Sothic dating. It tween

must be remembered that a fixed Sothic date in the other direction is supplied by the T^6£t-ll1

Calendar of the Ebers Papyrus, from which it follows that the ninth year of Amen- teenth&

hotep I was 332 years later (within 3 years) than the seventh year of Senusert III. Dynasty,
The date of the accession of Aahmes, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, thus
works out approximately at 1580 B. C.2

On the other hand Prof. Flinders Petrie's severely logical proposal {Researches in Petrie's

Sinai, 1006, pp. 163-85, ch. xii, and Historical Studies, 1911, pp. 10-23) to solve the h'Sh dat_

difBculty by pushing back Senusert III a whole Sothic Cycle of 1461 years and thus plftible°m~

raising his date to 3300 B.C. seems to me to be quite incompatible with the Cretan with

evidence. The recent discovery of a cylinder of the First Babylonian dynasty in evjVence
association with Cretan scarabs imitating early Twelfth Dynasty types also supplies
a valuable chronological equation quite inconsistent with this higher dating.

The characteristic polychrome wares of the Second Middle Minoan Period have M.M. II

been shown by Professor Petrie's discoveries at Kahun and by the tomb found by contem-

Professor Garstang at Abydos—where they were accompanied by cylinder-seals of with '

Senusert III and Amenemhat III (see below, p. 268 seqq.)—to be contemporary with Twelfth

the Twelfth Dynasty. It further appears that these wares overlapped the Thirteenth. Thir- ^

But between the well-defined Knossian stratum containing pottery of the Middle teenth

Minoan polychrome style and the Late Minoan deposits of ascertained connexions ^sties

going back to the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty, or approximately 1580 B.C., Qnjy M

there are only remains of a single phase of culture, the 'Third Middle Minoan '. This M.IIIbe-

Age of transition is itself marked by successive phases, but it seems unreasonable an^EHi-

to extend it over more than four or five generations. teenth

This rough estimate would bring the close of M. M. II and. with it, of the early part D>'nasty-
of the Thirteenth Dynasty to a date approaching 1700 B.C. Such an approximate
term agrees, in fact, very well with Meyer's dating for the Twelfth Dynasty. When
the alternative to this is to raise the Sothic dating by 1461 years, and to attribute
therefore a duration of something like a millennium and a half to the Third Middle
Minoan Period, it can hardly be doubted on which side the greater probability lies.

For the earlier dynasties I have taken the higher margin allowed by Dr. Meyer.

1 ' Monuments et histoire de la periode com- {Classical Review, xiv, 1900, p. 148 ; cf. Hall,

prise entre la fin de la XIIe Dynastie et la toe. cit.) makes the seventh year of Senusert

restauration Th£baineJourn. Asiatique, Rec. either 1978 or 1945 B.C., that is from about

des Me moires 70 to somewhat over 100 years earlier than

2

The independent calculation of T. Nicklin the date given by Borchardt and Meyer.