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Periodizing Egyptian History: Manetho, Convention, and Beyond1

Thomas Schneider

§1 Manetho and Egyptological convention

In his essay Ramesside Egypt in a Changing World. An Institutional Ap-proach, Mario Liverani takes his starting point from the observation that while historians of the Ancient Near East consider the 12th century BC a turning point of history and a real break, Egyptologists view the very same period under the mark of continuity.2 Remarkably enough, those same Egyptologists who adopted Manetho’s dynastic grid (and so the two Ramesside dynasties as distinct units) did not follow him in his setting apart the 19th and the 20th dynasty and assigning them to two different periods of history. The second book of the Ptolemaic histo-rian’s Aigyptiaka once covered dynasties 12-19, with dynasties 20-30 (and maybe 31) treated separately in the third volume. The exception here is Alfred Wiedemann in his Egyptian History of 1884 who still adopted the division.3 It is now common sense in Egyptology to speak about the Ramesside Age as a well-defined historical period stretching from the founder of dynasty 19, Ramesses I, to Ramesses XI, the last

1 The main ideas of this contribution were first formulated for a lecture given at the University of Chicago in January 2001 and published in German as T. Schneider, Die Periodisierung der ägyptischen Geschichte: Problem und Perspektive für die ägypto-logische Historiographie, in: T. Hofmann / A. Sturm (Hgg.), Menschen-Bilder / Bil-der-Menschen. Kunst und Kultur im Alten Ägypten, Norderstedt 2003, 241-256, where a periodization attempt was made for the 1st millennium BC. This section has been omitted here and the main text partly modified and revised. I should like to thank Mrs Ruth Washington (Zurich) for having improved the style of my Chicago paper and Dr. Kasia Szpakowska for having read and commented upon the present version.

2 M. Liverani, Ramesside Egypt in a Changing World. An Institutional Approach, in: I. Brancoli (Hg.), L’impero ramesside. Convegno internazionale in onore di Sergio Donadoni, Roma 1997, 101-115 (who sees territory vs. ethnicity as the distinctive fea-tures of Bronze Age vs. Iron Age states, 113f.).

3 A. Wiedemann, Ägyptische Geschichte, Gotha 1884.

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182 Thomas Schneider

ruler of dynasty 20, all the more as it appears quite naturally delimited by two other historical periods, the erratic block of the Amarna Period and the distinct Third Intermediate Period. Is it important to reappraise this and other traditional divisions of Egyptian history? In a memoran-dum on the historiography of the Ancient Near East, Marc van de Mieroop has emphasized with regard to classic periodization schemes that „such images are not entirely invented, but (...) their determinism (is) so strong, that they impede historical insight“.4 This view is not commonly accepted in Egyptology. It is true that Donald B. Redford has argued, along the same lines, that the shape given by Manetho to our sense of Egyptian history is by no means sacrosanct, or even mean-ingful, and cries out to be abandoned.5 More reluctant to do so was William Murnane who called for not discarding lightly the ancient Egyptian framework and maintained that he did not see Manetho as monopolizing, or exerting any kind of stranglehold on our understand-ing of Egyptian history.6 It is crucial here to clarify that the structure given to the Egyptian past by modern Egyptology is only partly Manethonian (or even genuinely Egyptian). Its key elements were forged in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th cen-tury when a preliminary modern understanding of Egyptian history was superimposed on a much more basic chronological grid. This dy-nastic grid was provided by Manetho, while the superimposed struc-ture was directly informed by the political state of affairs of to the late 19th and early 20th century. This conventional framework that is basic to presentations of Egyptian history is characterized by a sequence of golden ages and alleged times of crisis. The prevalent designation of the former ones as „Kingdom“, „empire“ and „Reich“ was modeled in the latter half of the 19th and the early 20th century on contemporary models of European national states labeled. The first to propose a tri-partite division for Egypt’s history was C.C.J. Bunsen in 1845 (with the three periods of Altes Reich = Menes until the beginning of dynasty 13, Mittleres Reich = Hyksos until dynasty 17, and Neues Reich = the history from the 18th dynasty onward). In this periodization, the Old Kingdom included what is today the Middle Kingdom, whereas Bunsen’s Middle Kingdom encompassed what is today the Second Intermediate Period.

4 M. van de Mieroop, On Writing a History of the Ancient Near East, in: BiOr 54 (1997), 285-505: 290ff., citation from p. 292.

5 D. B. Redford, The Writing of the History of Ancient Egypt, in: Z. Hawass (Hg.), Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century. Proceedings of the Eighth In-ternational Congress of Egyptologists, Cairo 2000, vol. 2, Cairo 2003, 1-11: p. 4.

6 W. Murnane, Response to D. B. Redford, in: Hawass (Hg.), Egyptology (as n. 5), 15-19: p. 17.



Periodizing Egyptian History: Manetho, Convention, and Beyond 183

This idea of a tripartite division was taken over by W. Brunet de Presle in France in 1850 („ancien royaume“, „royaume moyen“, „nouveau royaume“),7 while a scholar like R. Lepsius still adhered to a rough bipartite division in 1858 („Altes Reich“ = dynasties 1-16, „Neues Reich“ = dynasties 17-31).8 Where a tripartite division was adopted in the second half of the 19th century, however, the demarcation between the three ages was handled and legitimized in different ways. This is best visible in works by A. Mariette9 and A. Wiedemann,10 respectively, where the distribution is as follows: Old Kingdom = Dynasties 1-10 andPrehistory until dynasty 11, respectively; Middle Kingdom = Dynasties 11-17 and Dynasties 12-19, respectively; New Kingdom and „Basses Époques“ = dynasties 18-30 (Mariette), and dynasties 20-31 seen as a period of decline (Wiedemann), respectively. The long extension of the New Kingdom which was still defended by H. Gauthier in his Livre des rois in the early 20th century (Ancien Empire = dynasties 1-10; Moyen Empire = dynasties 11-17; Nouvel Empire = dynasties 17-25, and Epoque saïto-persane = dynasties 26-31)11 had been confined according to our modern understanding already at the times of Mariette and Wiede-mann by A. Erman, however.12 The periods singled out nowadays as Intermediate Periods were recognized by 19th century Egyptological his-toriography but were linked up to the preceding ages as times of inter-val or transition instead of giving them independent status. An exam-ple is Eduard Meyer’s treatment of what is today labelled the First Intermediate Period.13 It was patently after the First World War that the times between dynasty 6 and dynasty 12 were assigned historiographi-cal independence and a clearer terminological precision by coining for them the notion of an Intermediate Period. The first evidence for this comes from works by G. Steindorff14 and H. Frankfort15 from 1926,

7 R. Müller-Wollermann, Krisenfaktoren im ägyptischen Staat des ausgehenden Alten Reichs, Diss. Tübingen 1986, 4f.

8 E.g. R. Lepsius, Königsbuch der Alten Ägypter, Berlin 1858. 9 A. Mariette, Aperçu de l'histoire ancienne d'Égypte, Paris 1867, 14; ders., Itinéraire

de la Haute-Égypte, 3e édition revue et augmentée, Paris 1880, 19-27. 10 Wiedemann, Ägyptische Geschichte (as n. 3). 11 H. Gauthier, Le livre des rois d'Egypte, 1907–1917. 12 E.g. in A. Erman, Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben im Altertum, Tübingen 1885, 63

(where it extends to 1050 BCE). 13 Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I, 1, Stuttgart 1884, 41921, 240 and passim. On

the notion of „transitional“ or „intermediate times“ cf. A. Demandt, Metaphern für Geschichte. Sprachbilder und Gleichnisse im historisch-politischen Denken, Mün-chen 1978, 218ff.

14 G. Steindorff, Die Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches, Bielefeld / Leipzig 1926, 217 (chart with the classification „Zwischenzeit“ = 7th-10th dynasties).




whereafter the new terminology gained wider approval.16 It seems as if the catastrophy of the World War and the cataclysms of the subsequent years (end of the European monarchies, revolution, economic crisis) contributed to the First Intermediate Period gaining in profile: its al-leged description in the Egyptian Umsturzliteratur was indeed per-ceived as a template of the present. Adolf Erman spoke about both periods – that of the First Intermediate Period and of the years after the World War as a „time of revolution“,17 while Max Piper, in 1928, drew this explicit comparison with regard to the Complaints of Ipuwer:

„Ungefähr um 2500 v. Chr. ist der Staat des Alten Reiches zugrunde ge-gangen, und zwar durch eine große Katastrophe, die an die Ereignisse der letzten Zeit gemahnt. (...) »Eine bolschewistische Revolution im Alten Ägyp-ten,« das ist der verblüffende erste Eindruck. Es sieht so aus, als würde das unterste zu oberst gekehrt, ganz wie in den letzten Jahren [text highlighted by TS].“ 18

The notion of „First Intermediate Period” was well established by the 1940s.19 At the same time, fostered by the use of the term in H. Stock’s study of 1942,20 the notion of Intermediate Period was increasingly adop-ted for the time of dynasties 13-17 („Second Intermediate Period”), to which the notion of Third Intermediate Period was coined as a final ana-

15 H. Frankfort, Egypt and Syria in the First Intermediate Period [highlighted TS], in: JEA 12 (1926), 80-99. In J. H. Breasted’s earlier History of Egypt, the time of the First In-termediate Period is still linked directly to the Old Kingdom without any term of its own.

16 An attestation from 1929 is referred to by R. Müller-Wollermann, Krisenfaktoren (as n. 7), 7. Cf. also A. M. Blackman / E. Peet, The Intermediate Period and Middle King-dom [highlighted TS], in: E. Denison Ross (Hg.), The Art of Egypt through the Ages, London 1931, 21-28. In 1933, H. Junker, Die Ägypter, in: H. Junker / L. Delaporte, Die Völker des Alten Orients, Freiburg i.Br. 1933, uses the paraphrasing term „Die Über-gangszeit zwischen Altem und Mittlerem Reich“, whereas H. Kees (Ägypten, Mün-chen 1933, 356) adheres to the dynastic reference „Herakleopolitenzeit“.

17 A. Erman, Eine Revolutionszeit im Alten Ägypten, in: Internationale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 6 (1912), 19-30 (designation applied to the time described in the Admonitions); „in der Revolutionszeit“ (= time after the First World War): A. Erman, Mein Leben und Wirken. Erinnerungen eines alten Berliner Gelehr-ten, Leipzig 1929, 289.

18 M. Pieper, Die ägyptische Literatur, Wildpark-Potsdam 1928, 22.25. 19 E.g. J. Vandier, Stèles de soldats de la Première Période Intermédiaire, 1943;

H. Stock, Die erste Zwischenzeit Ägyptens (Studia Aegyptiaca II), 1949 (ms. comple-ted in 1947); J. J. Clère / J. Vandier, Textes de la Première Période Intermédiaire et de la XIe dynastie (BiAeg 10), Brüssel 1948; A. Weigall, Histoire de l'Égypte Ancienne, Paris 1949.

20 H. Stock, Studien zur Geschichte und Archäologie der 13. bis 17. Dynastie unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Skarabäen dieser Zwischenzeit [highlighted TS] (ÄgFo 12), Glückstadt 1942 (ms. completed in 1940).




logy and proliferated through K.A. Kitchen’s seminal study of 1978. This terminology has currently successfully superseded more neutral older designations labelled after lines of kingship or reigning dynasties.

It is evident that we are dealing here with an exemplary pattern of classification between good and bad, flourishing and decadent times. The decisive criterion for understanding a certain time as a „kingdom“ or „intermediate period“ in Egyptology has been essentially Egypt’s territorial integrity under one rule. It cannot be denied that a classifica-tion pattern well known in historiography whereby allegedly bad times are frequently labelled primitive or early stages when lying before peri-ods considered good, but decadent when following those good ep-ochs,21 is patent in Egyptological sequences. Cf. only the sequels Thiniteperiod („Frühzeit“) – Old Kingdom – First Intermediate Period; Middle King-dom – Second Intermediate Period; and New Kingdom – Third Intermediate.Only in the first instance, the period perceived widely as introducing the Old Kingdom is not marked negatively, while seeing the First and the Second Intermediate Periods as positive run-ups to the Middle and New Kingdoms instead of periods of decline has had a much more difficult standing.

It is true that shorter units have been segmented within larger peri-ods, but they tend to run along dynastic boundaries (Ramesside Age, Saite Period) and are hardly ever defined in terms of their internal characteristics (Amarna Age). The structuring adopted conventionally risks to be taken for the historical reality. This is visible in frequent derogatory judgments about the so-called Intermediate Periods, a ten-dency countered recently only by way of using different terminology („Zeit der Regionen“,22 „Hyksoszeit“23). Often, thematic issues have

21 H. Ritter, art. Periodization, in: id., Dictionary of Concepts in History, New York etc. 1986, 313-319: 316. On the category of times of decline cf. also R. Koselleck / P. Wid-mer (Hgg.), Niedergang. Studien zu einem geschichtlichen Thema (Sprache und Ge-schichte, Band 2), Stuttgart 1980. Cf. also Robert Ritner’s pertinent remarks in: id., Implicit Models of Cross-Cultural Interaction: A Question of Noses, Soap, and Pre-judice, in: J. Johnson, Life in a Multi-Cultural Society: Egypt from Cambyses to Cons-tantine and Beyond (SAOC 51), Chicago 1992, 283-290: p. 284.

22 Cf. L. D. Morenz, Personennamen und eine familiäre Gottesbeziehung in der Zeit der Regionen (Erste Zwischenzeit), in: BN 101 (2000); id., Geschichte(n) der Zeit der Regionen („Erste Zwischenzeit“) im Spiegel der Gebelein-Region. Eine fragmenta-risch dichte Beschreibung, unpublished Habilitationsschrift Universität Tübingen 2001.

23 T. Schneider, Ausländer in Ägypten während des Mittleren Reiches und der Hyk-soszeit. Teil I: Die ausländischen Könige (ÄAT 42/1), Wiesbaden 1998, 167. Cf. id., The Relative Chronology of Dynasties 12-17, in: E. Hornung / R. Krauss / D. A. War-burton, Ancient Egyptian Chronology (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1: The Near and Middle East, 83), Leiden / Boston 2006, n.1.




also been treated within the external boundaries of conventional time periods which threatens correct historical insight. I would like here to quote an exemplary judgment by Jan Assmann who maintained:

„Die Form der pharaonischen Geschichte Ägyptens ist nun in der Tat höchst eigenartig. Zwei Eigenschaften dieser Form springen als besonders auffallend und möglicherweise einzigartig ins Auge. Die eine ist die unge-heuere Dauer dieser Kultur (...). Die andere Eigenschaft ist das Auf und Ab ihrer Bewegung innerhalb dieses gewaltigen Zeitrahmens. In ihrem zykli-schen Aufbau und ihrem Wechsel von Blüte- und Zwischenzeiten wirkt die ägyptische Geschichte geradezu wie ein Kunstwerk.”24

It needs to be said here that the work of art singled out here as extraor-dinary by Assmann is not so much a pattern modelled by the past but an artificial construction set up by modern historiography. In general terms, assuming history to be so simply patterned is very improbable. As the historian R.G. Collongwood put it: „This (...) is not and never can be historically true. It tells us much about the historians who study the facts, but nothing about the facts they study.“25 Egyptological usage of the aforementioned conventional periodization may have had some pragmatic or didactic value. But, as Harry Ritter in the Dictionary of Concepts in History holds, „convention easily seduces the unwary into taking periodization too literally and naively confusing mental con-structs with the events one wishes to analyze; thus, concepts such as ‘antiquity,’ ‘middle ages,’ or ‘Renaissance’ are often endowed with a cognitive status they do not deserve.“26 It seems apparent that the Ma-nethonian dynastic grid and conventional periodization which have become the two-layered structure for standard interpretations of Egyp-tian history are a stranglehold. The very fact that no other attempts at periodizing Egyptian history exist and that the description of cultural phenomena has been conducted more often than not along these preset framelines is an outspoken proof to the fact that this view can indeed be seen as a compulsion.

§2 Periodization as a historiographic tool

Periodization27 is one of the historian‘s most important tools of large scale interpretation. It is an aid that gives history an internal structure

24 J. Assmann, Ägypten. Eine Sinngeschichte, München / Wien 1996, 33. 25 R. G. Collongwood, The Idea of History, Oxford / New York [1946] 1956, 327. 26 Ritter, Periodization (as n. 21). 27 For literature on the issue of periodization s. N. Luhmann, Weltzeit und Systemge-

schichte. Über Beziehungen zwischen Zeithorizonten und sozialen Strukturen ge-




and cohesion beyond purely superficial arrangements such as chronol-ogy. It gives shape to the insight that historical process is constant, but not uniform. The historian attempts to seize and understand constancy and change. He attributes the multitude of phenomena to specific cate-gories and judges them. He persues questions of cause, effect, relation and break. He may delimit specific sequences of time which seem co-herent in terms of mentality, social conditions, or culture, and define them as periods of certain characteristics. A modern Polish theorist of history, Jerzy Topolski, speaks in this respect as of differences in histori-cal coherence. To him, certain events of history represent a kind of natu-ral coherence, e.g. the subsequent battles of Alexander the Great, while the historians‘ concept of period imposes a theoretical coherence upon history which reflects a higher level of interpretation. It is, in fact, the broadest conceptual pattern of historiography, and offers to public consciousness a kind of distillation of lower level historiographic work in form of period terms such as „Renaissance“, or „Enlightenment“. In conclusion, Jerzy Topolski has stated: „Periodization is one of the most

sellschaftlicher Systeme, in: P. C. Ludz (Hg.), Soziologie und Sozialgeschichte, Opla-den 1972, 81-115; F. Schalk, Über Epoche und Historie, in: H. Diller / F. Schalk (Hgg.), Studien zur Periodisierung und zum Epochenbegriff (Akad. d. Wiss. u. der Lit. Mainz, Abh. d. geistes- und sozialwiss. Kl., Jg. 1972, Nr.4), 12-38; D. Gerhard, Pe-riodization in History, in: P. P. Wiener (Hg.), Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 3, 1973, 476-481; E. Engelberg, Genese und Gültigkeit von Epochenbegriffen: theore-tisch-methodologische Prinzipien der Periodisierung, Berlin(-Ost) 1974; R. Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten, Frankfurt a.M. 1979, 31995; C. von Buxhoeveden, Geschichtswissenschaft und Politik in der DDR. Das Problem der Periodisierung, Köln 1980; A. Esch, Zeitalter und Menschenalter. Die Perspektiven historischer Periodisierung, in: HZ 239 (1984), 309-351; H. Ritter, art. Periodization, in: id., Dictionary of Concepts in History, New York etc. 1986, 313-319; R. Herzog / R. Koselleck (Hgg.), Epochenschwelle und Epochenbewusstsein, Mün-chen 1987 (Poetik und Hermeneutik, 12); J. Rüsen, Zeit und Sinn. Strategien histori-schen Denkens, Frankfurt a.M. 1990; O. Dumoulin / R. Valéry (Hgg.), Périodes. La construction du temps historique. Actes du Ve colloque d‘Histoire au Présent, Paris 1991; J.R. Hall, Periodization / Sequences, in: P. N. Stearns (Hg.), Encyclopedia of So-cial History, New York / London 1994, 558-561; L. Besserman (Hg.), The Challenge of Periodization: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, New York etc. 1996, 3-27; H.-J. Goertz, Umgang mit Geschichte. Eine Einführung in die Geschichtstheorie, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1996, 168ff.; J. Topolski, Periodyzacja w konstrukcji narracyjnej [Perio-dization in the narrative construction], in: id., Jak sie pisze i rozumie historie. Tajem-nice narracji historycznej [How to write and understand history. The secrets of histo-rical narration], Warszawa 1996, 129-140; M. Golden / P. Toohey (Hgg.), Inventing Ancient Culture. Historicism, Periodization, and the Ancient World, London / New York 1997; K. E. Müller / J. Rüsen (Hgg.), Historische Sinnbildung: Problemstellun-gen, Zeitkonzepte, Wahrnehmungshorizonte, Darstellungsstrategien, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1997; J. H. J. van der Pot, Sinndeutung und Periodisierung der Geschichte. Eine systematische Übersicht der Theorien und Auffassungen, Leiden / Boston / Köln 1999; R. Bonnaud, Tournants et périodes. Essais sur les durées historiques et les années récentes, Paris 2000.




important tools in creating historical concepts reconstructing a past reality, and simultaneously one of the most active factors of creating historical pictures in public consciousness. Pictures that are decisive for the comprehension of history and the process of history. Periodisation is the main element, or at least a very essential one, of historical concep-tualization. Delimiting a historical epoch means implicitly accounting for judging its place and its role in the course of history. Periodising is thus, most fundamental to the historian himself and for social (and scientific) reception of history. Changing a given periodization may lead to a changed view on history.“28

There have been fierce attacks against such optimistic views on pe-riodization. Critics have emphasized the continuity of the past and doubted the possibility of delimiting discontinuities within it. The phi-losopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl has argued (highlighted words T.S.):

„Hauptproblem ist (...) die Frage nach der Begründbarkeit historischer Einteilungen. Denn der Historiker trägt in die Abläufe des Geschehens Kontinuitäten und Diskontinuitäten ein – aber ist die Zuweisung von Be-deutung an die Fakten nicht ein nachträgliches Unternehmen, dessen Aus-gang von dem vorausgesetzten Maßstab der Beurteilung vorgezeichnet ist? Sind die vorgewiesenen Kausalitäten und Finalitäten nicht Konstrukte, die sich die Tatsachen zugegebenermaßen post festum gefügig machen?”29

Since, however, the relics of the past become a history imbued with significance only through the order and interpretation of the historian, since history does not exist as a fact but merely as problems and con-structions,30 this criticism misses the point. Similar was the judgment the Italian historian Benedetto Croce put forward when he stressed, in a famous vote from 1919, that periods are fabrications that have no e-xistence apart from the minds of historians, and that periodization is basically „an affair of imagination, of vocabulary, and of rhetoric, which in no way changes the substance of things“31 – much too subjec-tive an affair for enabling an understanding of history. It must, though, be emphasized that no substance of things of the past exhibits itself without the intermediary of a modern interpreter, a bias acknowledged universally in historiography. Periods consist of both an objective and a

28 Topolski, Periodyzacja (as n. 27), 133ff. 29 H.-B. Gerl, Einführung in die Philosophie der Renaissance, Darmstadt 1989, 7. 30 Vgl. Goertz, Umgang (as n. 27), 95; D. Carr, Die Realität der Geschichte, in: Müller /

Rüsen, Historische Sinnbildung (as n. 27), 309-327, particularly p. 309; S. J. Schmidt, Geschichte beobachten. Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft aus konstruktivisti-scher Sicht, in: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 8 (1997), 19-44 (particularly p. 42f.).

31 Quoted after Ritter, Periodization (as n. 21), 313-319: p. 315.




subjective constituent; periodization is the subjective shaping of objective-ly existent materials (J.H.J. van der Pot, resuming a succinct formula coined earlier by H.P.H. Teesing32). It can be maintained that there is, nowadays, agreement among historians that we cannot do without periodization altogether. But they have to live with the dilemma (as Arnold Esch put it) that periodisations at the same time are the necessa-ry form of our comprehension and inevitably exert a certain compul-sion.33

Given the vast evidence from the past and the diversity of histo-riographic approaches to it, it is not surprising to see that modern peri-odizations can exhibit a great variability in terms of the divisions they perform and the justification they provide for them.34 It is important here to realize that a historian’s perspective on a time of the past and that of past individuals having lived in it are different. In considering the past, the historian must not judge in retrospect only, from that par-ticular path of history that became reality. If he did so, he would en-counter the danger of not reconstructing history, but merely prolegom-ena of a later epoch – construing the past teleogically. Every era in history had its own weight, its own self-understanding, and more than one possibility of future development. The historian should struggle to grant every time its internal historical validity,35 a point often disre-garded. The Weimar Republic is mostly judged in retrospect of Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933; the time of the late Thutmosid kings is mostly seen in retrospect of the Amarna age – and labelled accordingly „pre-Amarna period“. For Egypt at ca. 1400 BC, however, Amarna was only one perspective among many, and possibly the least probable one. John Baines has emphasized with regard to a different topic – the late Egyp-tian temple: „To do so would be wrongly to use hindsight from the perspective of the middle and late Roman Empire and the rise of Chris-tianity in Egypt; too often studies of the period have been initiated by this teleological vision.“36 A historiographic possibility to counter teleo-

32 Van der Pot, Sinndeutung und Periodisierung (as n. 27). 33 A. Esch, Zeitalter und Menschenalter. Die Perspektiven historischer Periodisierung,

in: HZ 239 (1984), 309-351: p. 319 („Wir sollten nicht verkennen, daß von unseren Pe-riodisierungs-Konstruktionen — die nicht nur notwendig sind, sondern geradezu die Form unserer Erkenntnis — zwangsläufig eine gewisse Nötigung ausgeht.“).

34 See the example of the end of the ancient and the beginning of the modern world given in Schneider, Periodisierung (as n. 1).

35 Esch, Zeitalter (as n. 33), p. 348f. and 315f., respectively. 36 J. Baines, Temples as Symbols, Guarantors, and Participants in Egyptian Civilization,

in: S. Quirke (Hg.), The Temple in Ancient Egypt. New Discoveries and Recent Re-search, London 1997, 216-241: 232; cf. Schneider, Ausländer in Ägypten (as n. 23), 147.




logical judgments is to ponder potential strands of development that were inherent in a given epoch but did not become reality, the unhap-pened history in the words of A. Demandt’s seminal essay.37 The study of this virtual, alternative, or contrafactual history has encouragingly increased in the past two decades and led to new insights into the proc-ess and significance of the past.38 It is noteworthy that Egyptologists as to them have reflected on contrafactual Egyptian history, if rarely and unsystematically. A more recent example – no Amarna Age, had Ak-henaten’s elder brother not died prematurely but ascended the throne of Egypt as Thutmosis V – was given by A. Dodson and D. Wildung.39Eberhard Otto sketched and justified this kind of reasoning as early as 1953 when he wrote about the late 18th dynasty as follows:

„Haremhab, in erster Linie Militär, erkennt die Notwendigkeit, das König-tum aus der alten unfruchtbaren Bindung zu lösen und, um politischer Tatsachen willen, das Übergewicht nach der Landeshälfte zu verlegen, wo die Entscheidung über die Existenz Ägyptens fallen mußte: nach Unter-ägypten. Er hatte die Entscheidung in der Hand, ob Ägypten aus dem Kreise der Mittelmeerländer ausscheiden und in engem Zusammenhang mit dem nubischen Kolonialland ein afrikanischer Binnenstaat werden soll-te oder ob es seinen Platz im Kreise der vorderasiatischen Großmächte be-haupten sollte. Im ersteren Falle wäre die ägyptische Kultur zweifellos ein abseitiges Kulturkuriosum afrikanisch-ägyptischer Mischung geworden, vergleichbar etwa der des späteren Äthiopenreiches im Süden. Nur im zweiten Fall konnte, wenn auch auf einem mühsamen und kampfreichen Wege, der Zusammenhang mit der Mittelmeerwelt und das heißt auf län-

37 A. Demandt, Ungeschehene Geschichte. Ein Traktat über die Frage: Was wäre ge-schehen, wenn ...? 3., erw. Aufl., Göttingen 2001.

38 U. Heimann-Störmer, Kontrafaktische Urteile in der Geschichtsschreibung. Eine Fallstudie zur Historiographie des Bismarck-Reiches (Europäische Hochschulschrif-ten. Reihe 3, Geschichte und ihre Hilfswissenschaften; Bd. 463), Frankfurt a.M. etc. 1991; P. Burg, Kontrafaktische Urteile in der Geschichtswissenschaft, AfK 79 (1997), 211-227; W. Suerbaum, Am Scheideweg zur Zukunft. Alternative Geschehensverläu-fe bei römischen Historikern, in: Gymnasium 104 (1997), 36-54; N. Ferguson (Hg.), Virtual History. Alternatives and Counterfactuals, London 21998 (German edition: Virtuelle Geschichte. Historische Alternativen im 20. Jahrhundert, Darmstadt 1999); K. Macksey (Hg.), The Hitler Options. Alternate Decisions of World War II, London 1998; M. Salewski (Hg.), Was Wäre Wenn. Alternativ- und Parallelgeschichte: Brü-cken zwischen Phantasie und Wirklichkeit (Historische Mitteilungen, Beiheft 36), Stuttgart 1999; K. Brodersen, Virtuelle Antike. Wendepunkte der Alten Geschichte, Darmstadt 2000; J. C. Exum (Hg.), Virtual History and the Bible, Leiden 2000; J. North (Hg.), The Napoleon Options. Alternate Decisions of the Napoleonic Wars, London 2000.

39 A. Dodson, Two Who Might Have Been King: Crown-Prince Thutmose (V) and Generalissimo Nakhtmin, Amarna Letters. Essays on Ancient Egypt, I, San Francisco 1991, 26-30; D. Wildung, Le frère aîné d'Ekhnaton. Réflexions sur un décès prématu-ré, in: BSFE 143 (1998), 10-18.




gere Sicht auch mit der jungen abendländischen Kultur gewahrt werden. Selbstverständlich kann weder Haremhab noch einem seiner Zeitgenossen eine sol-che Alternative als bewußte Überlegung unterstellt werden. Aber dem Historiker muß es erlaubt sein, an geschichtlichen Wendepunkten mit seiner Bewußtheit deutlich zu machen, wie eine Entscheidung, aus was für Gründen immer sie ge-troffen sein mag, den Gang der Geschichte für Jahrhunderte in eine bestimmte Richtung weisen kann [text highlighted by TS].“ 40

Otto’s assignment of a turning point in Egyptian history to the reign of Haremhab and to a (retrospectively positive) decision of political stra-tegy (rather than to the Amarna Age and the hiatus it meant) is note-worthy in itself. It brings us back to the initial query about how to treat the so-called Ramesside Age in historiographic terms. Two of three most mentioned thresholds of Egyptian history (Epochenschwellen) lie at either side of the 19th and 20th dynasties.41 The first demarcation has been advocated – among others – by Jan Assmann who stated in 1984:

„Im ganzen gesehen [stellt] der Übergang von der 18. zur 19. Dynastie, der Ramessidenzeit, eine Epochenschwelle, vielleicht die tiefgreifendste der ägyptischen Geschichte überhaupt, dar.“42

This break becomes more momentous by way of two modern histori-ographic strategies. In Assmann’s approach it receives its specific weight through the fact that he perceives Amarna as an age that inflic-ted a traumatic experience onto Egypt, and the 19th dynasty to the con-trary as one of the climaxes of Egyptian religious thought.43 The second strategy was advocated by Wolfgang Helck who thought in evolutio-nist categories whereby mankind would have to progress from magical to rational stages, and from repressive rule to a life in freedom. He con-sidered Amarna’s ideology of rationalism without any reference to mythological explanation patterns a particular achievement but judged that it also discredited the traditional pursuit of Maat. In particular, Helck dismissed Egypt from Ramesses II onward as a whole and saw it as a decaying and – with the 20th dynasty at latest – lifeless body.44 This

40 E. Otto, Ägypten. Der Weg des Pharaonenreiches, Stuttgart 31958, 172. 41 The third – earlier – turning point is the Hyksos period, cf. E. Otto, Ägypten. Der

Weg des Pharaonenreiches, Stuttgart 31958, 137: „Die Bedeutung der Hyksoszeit für Ägypten kann nicht leicht überschätzt werden, wenn man ihre unmittelbaren und mittelbaren Folgen in Betracht zieht. Dann darf sie ohne Übertreibung als der ent-scheidende Wendepunkt der ägyptischen Geschichte bezeichnet werden.“

42 Assmann, Ägypten (as n. 24), 258. 43 E.g. Assmann, Ägypten (as n. 24), 252-258 (for the alleged trauma of Amarna); 267

(the Ramesside Age as the climax of theological discourse). 44 W. Helck, Politische Gegensätze im alten Ägypten. Ein Versuch (HÄB 23), Hildes-

heim 1986, 66: under Ramesses II „wandelt sich Ägypten endgültig zu einer Kultur, die aufgibt, das Rechte zu suchen, ja, die es sogar für Sünde hält, dies zu tun. Dage-




dismissal had a long line of defenders before Helck, from Adolf Erman (decline and decadence of Egypt after Amarna) to Kurt Lange, as had the evolutionist dismissal of the first millennium (J. H. Breasted), or even the New Kingdom as a whole (H. Kees’s view of the Epigonentum des Neuen Reiches). Although this position is now by and large obsole-te,45 the question remains how continuity and discontinuity from the 18th dynasty to the Ramesside Age and within the latter should be weighted, and if the Amarna Age deserves a specific status within tho-se times.

The break at the second side of the Ramesside dynasties is reiter-ated in all recent outlines of Egyptian history which see a clear histori-cal cut under Ramesses XI.:

„Der Übergang von der Spätbronzezeit zur frühen Eisenzeit, anders aus-gedrückt, der Übergang vom Neuen Reich zur Spätzeit, bedeutet für die

gen werfen sich die Menschen in die Arme Gottes, d. h. sie verzichten auf eine eige-ne Führung ihres Lebens.” He perceives the lack of ethical obligations as a result of the abolition of „truth” which had been discredited in the Amarna Age. „Damit aber verschwindet auch jede Rechtssicherheit, was in der Bevölkerung zu Unruhe und letztlich zu Resignation führt. Es entsteht das, was wir beschönigend „Persönliche Frömmigkeit“ nennen; in Wahrheit ist es die Aufgabe des Strebens nach Recht und Gerechtigkeit und die Übergabe der Person und des Lebens an den unerforschlichen Ratschluß eines Gottes. Hiermit kapituliert man vor den übermächtigen chaotischen Kräften innerhalb der ägyptischen Gesellschaft. Wenn aber niemand mehr danach strebt, die Welt aus eigenen Kräften heraus zum Guten zu lenken, ist der Bestand ei-nes Staates nicht mehr zu retten. In der Tat verfault der ägyptische Staat in dieser Zeit“ (p. 71). „Es wird von manchen Ägyptologen energisch bestritten, daß die ägyp-tische Kultur im Grunde seit der Katastrophe von Amarna todkrank und mit der 20. Dynastie gestorben ist, weil wir ja bis tief in die römische Kaiserzeit in den Tempeln von Edfu, Dendara, Kom Ombo und manchem anderen kleinen Ort unendliche Tex-te besitzen, die uns geistiges Leben vorspiegeln. Doch diese Texte sind entweder Überlieferungen der Vergangenheit oder Spekulationen von Priestern, im Elfenbein-turm ihrer Tempelzellen erspielt (...). Wenn man den Kampf des Menschen um ein Leben in Vernunft und eine Befreiung von magischen Vorstellungen und die Besei-tigung von repressiven Machtstrukturen innerhalb der Gesellschaft als Zeichen einer lebendigen Kultur ansieht, so ist das letzte Jahrtausend der altägyptischen Geschich-te zu vernachlässigen; am Todesstoß von Amarna verblutet Ägypten geistig, bis nur noch eine leblose Mumie übrigbleibt, die letztlich auch, ehrfurchtsvoll bestaunt, in Staub zerfällt“ (p. 78f.).

45 Miriam Lichtheim has judged Helck’s statements as follows: „This final paragraph yields the key to Helck’s sweeping dismissal of Egypt’s last millennium. An odd key. For if the criteria of a living culture are rationality and freedom from absolutist power structures, then the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms do not qualify as live cultures either. The facts, it seems to me, are two. One, Helck’s dismissal of the first millennium B.C. was a personal idiosyncrasy. Two, most of the work on Egypt’s cul-tural history in the first millennium B.C. has yet to be done.“ (Moral Values in An-cient Egypt [OBO 155], Fribourg / Göttingen 1997, 60).




ägyptische Geschichte einen tiefen Einschnitt; vermutlich ist es der größte Umbruch in dieser langen Geschichte überhaupt.”46

The automatism of the Ramesside line of kings and Egyptological con-vention that has adhered to it have often impeded asking about the criteria of periodization. Political, social, and religious traits characte-ristic to the 21st dynasty emerged well before the break and might favor a historiographical treatment of the time which would start in the 12th

century BCE. What becomes clear here is the reason why the determinism impo-

sed by Manetho and Egyptological convention must be in conflict with the requirements of a modern approach, both with regard to the exter-nal chronological structures applied and the internal qualities of their narratives. Manetho’s encyclopedic arrangement of the reigns of the past into dynasties drew on earlier tradition and was motivated largely by the geographical location of residences and royal necropoleis.47Although his narrative is lost with the exception of some passages pre-served with Josephus and short glosses in the epitome, it seems to have largely been concerned with a theological view of Egypt’s past political history.48 Both the external structure and the internal preponderance of political and military events continue to be dominant in modern histo-ries of Ancient Egypt. It is true that the history of political events has had its advocats in 19th century historicism and in a recent histori-ographical revival (Ereignisgeschichte, histoire événementielle), as had theological readings of history. Modern historians would nevertheless be likely to generally concur with the view that we need to opt today for a broad conspectus of multiple and diverse perspectives. By defini-tion, the task of periodization requires to account for historical pheno-mena in the most comprehensive way. If we doubt a neat simultaneity between political, economic, social and intellectual histories, this means that periods defined by only one of those categories must be wrong.

46 K. Jansen-Winkeln, Ägyptische Geschichte im Zeitalter der Wanderungen von See-völkern und Libyern, in: E. A. Braun-Holzinger / H. Matthäus (Hgg.), Die nahöstli-chen Kulturen und Griechenland an der Wende vom 2. zum 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. Kontinuität und Wandel von Strukturen und Mechanismen kultureller Interaktion. Kolloquium des Sonderforschungsbereiches 295 „Kulturelle und sprachliche Kon-takte“ der Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 11.–12. Dezember 1998, Möhne-see 2002, 123-142: p. 123. Advocated also by Assmann, Ägypten (as n. 24), 311f. and others.

47 J. Málek, La division de l'histoire d'Egypte et l'égyptologie moderne, in: BSFE 138 (1997), 6-17.

48 J. Dillery, The First Egyptian Narrative History: Manetho and Greek Historiography, in: ZPE 127 (1999), 93-116 goes even farther in insinuating Manetho’s narrative an apocalyptic orientation.




Periodization as a method must not rely on one single (e.g., political) demarcation within the past, or impose preset modern understandings on it.

It should therefore be emphasized that the dynastic grid taken over from Manetho can serve only as an (all but indispensable) framework for chronological orientation, not as an indicator of historical understan-ding. Writing a history of the 18th dynasty is in itself as little founded as writing a history of the 18th century as long as the dynastic demarcation and no historical criteria are observed. This applies equally to the de-marcations established by Egyptological convention. There is a priori no greater legitimacy in writing a history of the 19th and 20th dynasties (which has been done) only because they form a conventional period than to write a history of the 20th and 21st dynasties (which has never been done) or, to leave the dynastic grid aside, a history from 1190 to 1030 BCE if there are internal arguments that favour it.49 But even if its findings do not carry through, periodization is a most desirable chal-lenge to convention. Periodizing needs as a pre-condition a new re-construction of the past and a reevaluation of existing reconstructions. It wishes to enable a contrasting view on a civilization’s past which fosters historical judgment and understanding. It has to question entrenched patterns of thought and established terminologies.

It is only by reassessing the significance of a multiplicity of criteria – such as the evolution of society, the distribution of power, the in-terplay of beliefs, the fate of literary genres, the production of art, the use of oracles, or the development of prices (to name haphazardly some of them) – that the historian can hope to arrive at a more reliable con-ceptualization of the territory of the Egyptian past.

49 Cf. Málek, La division de l'histoire d'Egypte (as n. 47), p. 6: „Ce terme [dynastie] implique souvent de façon incorrecte une période historique bien définie.“




Abstract

Der Beitrag untersucht die Genese und Berechtigung der herkömmli-chen Periodisierung der ägyptischen Geschichte, die nur teilweise auf ägyptische Vorläufer und Ägyptens ersten Chronographen Manetho zurückgeht, sondern auf die moderne Historiographie Altägyptens im ausgehenden 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, die über Manethos kleinteilige Gliederung in Dynastien ein Schema von Perioden stülpte, die in Ana-logie zu den Nationalstaaten des 19. Jh.s als „Reich” („empire”, „king-dom”) bezeichnet wurden. Diese (zu Beginn noch sehr unterschiedlich gehandhabte) Großgliederung wurde in den 1920er Jahren durch die Abgrenzung der „Ersten Zwischenzeit” als Krisenzeit nach dem Alten Reich verfeinert, nachweisbar in Analogie zu dem Zusammenbruch der europäischen Ordnung am Ende des 1. Weltkriegs. In der Folge wur-den in Analogie dazu die Zweite und Dritte Zwischenzeit geschaffen und diese historiographische Formgebung als die tatsächliche Form der Geschichte Altägyptens missverstanden, die ohne Gegenentwürfe in alle Lehrbücher Eingang fand. Diese Periodisierung ist einseitig, da dabei nur das Kriterium territorialer Integrität Ägyptens zählt und evolutionäre Schemata von Blüte und Dekadenz angewandt werden, die der Komplexität der Vergangenheit nicht gerecht werden. Der Bei-trag erörtert die Bedeutung von Periodisierung als historiographisches Instrument und die Wichtigkeit, Epochen Altägyptens nicht nur von ihrer retrospektiven Bedeutung, sondern ihrem zeitgenössischem Po-tential her zu definieren und zu beurteilen. Erstrebenswert ist eine De-batte über den Sinn einer neuen Periodisierung der ägyptischen Ge-schichte, die unserem gewachsen Verständnis gerecht würde und ihm begriffliche Form verliehe. Eine moderne Periodisierung müsste über Manethos politisch-theologische Kriterien und die politisch-nationale Gliederung der frühen Ägyptologie hinaus ein breitestmögliches Spektrum von Ansätzen berücksichtigen. Manetho und die traditionel-le Periodisierung sind lediglich ein Gerüst zur chronologischen Orien-tierung, aber keine Leitlinien für ein historischen Verständnis Altägyp-tens.



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