The Palermo Stone
Originally, this large stone contained a record of the activities of the kings of Egypt from the First Dynasty to the beginning of the Fifth. The height of the Nile's annual inundation, festivals, gifts from the king to the gods, and wars were recorded. Compiled during the reign of King Neferirkare in the Fifth Dynasty, it was probably an attempt to make a permanent copy of the Annals of previous Egyptian kings, documents which may have been kept on papyrus. Unfortunately, only parts of the original record remain. The biggest piece is now in Palermo, Sicily; some fragments are in Cairo.
The Turin Canon
The Turin Canon was a papyrus scroll listing Egyptian kings from the First to the Nineteenth Dynasty. Thus it is a secondary written sources for the history of the Old Kingdom, but much closer to the Age of the Pyramids than we are. It may have been a private list, a scribe's notes. It contained two of the kings' five names, and the length of their reigns. It would have been invaluable, if it had not been very badly damaged by rough handling when it was found.
Karnak, Abydos and Sakkara Lists
These three lists are from the New Kingdom, the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, and so at least six hundred years removed from the days of the pyramid builders. The first two are from temples, and the last from a private tomb. These lists are chronological (with some exceptions) but they do not name all the kings. Each list seems to single out kings who were considered especially worthy.
Historians
Manetho
Egyptian priest, wrote c. 305-285 BCE. Manetho was literate in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in Greek. He wrote a history of Egypt in Greek for the Macedonian kings who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great. His original work no longer exists, but summaries of it were made by other authors, and inserted into their own histories. These summaries are called epitomes. Unfortunately, the three epitomes do not agree completely. Manetho's history, as we have it, is not always reliable about the length of a king's reign or the order of succession, but some information found only in this source has been confirmed by archaeology.
Heroditus
Greek traveller and historian, 484-430 BCE. Heroditus visited Egypt about 450 BCE, at a time when Egypt was ruled by Persia. Heroditus wrote an account of the history of Egypt in Greek. Some of Heroditus' information came from first hand exploration, and some from conversations. As he could not speak Egyptian nor read hieroglyphs, he always had to work through a translator. Though not all of his information has stood the test of archaeology, he remains a major source for Egyptian history, particularly for the period closer to his own time.
Strabo
Geographer, 64 BCE to 21 CE. Strabo was from Pontus, on the Black Sea. He lived for six years in Egypt while researching his great work, the Geographia. He could not read hieroglyphs. The Egypt he saw had been under Ptolemaic rule for three hundred years. He often relied on secondary sources which he could not check.
Diodorus Siculus
Geographer, 60 BCE to 21 CE. Diodorus wrote a History of the World. He seems to have accepted his secondary sources uncritically. He is useful in that he often reports what was commonly believed to be true.
What Don't We Know?
Dates
Though historians work very hard to determine how long each king ruled, we are not entirely certain that we know all the names of all the kings. We do not know exactly how long each ruled. Sometimes in later Egyptian history, a father would invite his son to share the rule with him in a Co-regency. It's possible that Pepy I ruled with his son Merenre for a few years. There are still many uncertainties about dates, and various books will offer different 'best guesses' about exactly what years Khufu ruled, or Imhotep lived. Notice, though, that the estimates all fall within about seventy years. No Egyptologist thinks that the Great Pyramid was built ten thousand years ago, or only one thousand years ago. All Egyptologists agree that the Great Pyramid is about four thousand, five hundred years old.
Spelling and Pronunciation
Hieroglyphic texts usually agree on the spelling of a king's name. Why then are there so many variant spellings in English? There were sounds in Ancient Egyptian which are not used in English, and sounds in English not used in Ancient Egyptian. Whenever we write a name, we are trying to approximate the way the Ancient Egyptians would have said the name, but we are not always very close. Various modern languages also use different letters to represent the sounds of Ancient Egyptian. This is why different books will have different spelling of the kings' names.
How and Why
Though the Ancient Egyptians have left us a great deal of information about their beliefs and way of life, there is much we do not know.
For example:
- How was the king different from ordinary people? Did people really think the king was a god? If so, what kind of god?
- How did a king decide which of his sons would succeed him? Why did Djoser and Imhotep decide to enlarge the king's original mastaba into a step pyramid?
- Why did Sneferu build three huge pyramids?B Why were some ancient texts defaced soon after they were carved? Was this the work of personal enemies, random violence, or some state-sponsored censorship?
- What happened after the death of Khufu? Was there really a struggle between two parts of the royal family?
- Did Khentkaues I really rule as king? Did her granddaughter rule as king? Was King Teti assassinated?
- Did the Dancer from the Land of the Horizon Dwellers enjoy his life at the court of Pepy II?
Some questions, like the one about the Dancer, can never be answered, but others are being answered by archaeology. In the last twenty years, a tremendous amount has been learned about life in the Age of the Pyramids from the Giza excavations of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities.