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Conventional Egyptian chronology

This is a conventional chronology of the rulers of ancient Egypt, taking into account well accepted developments during the 20th century but not including any of the major revision proposals that have also been made in that time. See also Revised Chronology, Egyptian chronology, Pharaoh.

Even within a single work, often archeologists will offer several possible dates or even several whole chronologies as possibilities. Consequently, there may be discrepancies between dates shown here and in articles on particular rulers. Often there are also several possible spellings of the names.

Predynastic Egypt is from Late Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt.

The dates of Dynasties 1 to 10 are from Baines and Malek, Atlas of Ancient Egypt (Oxford, 1980).

The dates of Dynasties 11 to 20 are from Kitchen, "The Basics of Egyptian Chronology in Relation to the Bronze Age", in Astrom (ed) High, Middle or Low (Gothengurg, 1987), taking his low chronology.

The dates of Dynasties 21 to 26 are from Kitchen, Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1973, Warminster).

(This information has been supplemented from The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw (Oxford, 2000), and Digital Egypt for Universities, which was developed by The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.)

It should be noted that there is a 60 year discrepancy between the dates proposed by these two authors. There is no attempt to remove this in the combined chronology presented below, which is the “Conventional Chronology” that is quoted by David Rohl in A Test of Time (1995, Century).

All dates are BC

Table of contents
1 Early Dynastic Period

Early Dynastic Period

Dynasty 0

1st Dynasty 2920-2770

2nd Dynasty 2770-2650

Position uncertain

= Old Kingdom =

3rd Dynasty

4th Dynasty

5th Dynasty

6th Dynasty

=First Intermediate Period=

7th Dynasty

In the kinglist summaries from the third century BC historian Manetho, this is a group of 70 kings ruling 70 days: there is no evidence for this - it may be a later literary metaphor for chaos at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, chaos for which there is also no direct contemporary evidence.

8th Dynasty

Kings with Unknown Position

9th and 10th Dynasties 2135-1986

11th Dynasty

=Middle Kingdom=

11th Dynasty (continued)

Unknown Position

12th Dynasty

=Second Intermediate Period=

13th Dynasty

21 kings for about 63 years then Then 6 more kings for about 20 years

14th Dynasty

About 76 minor kings of the Delta, contemporary with the second half of the 13th dynasty.

15th Dynasty 1633-1525

16th Dynasty

32 minor kings contemporary with the 15th and 17th dynasties.

17th Dynasty 1606-1539

About 15 kings in all, contemporary with the 15th dynasty, the last three being =New Kingdom=

18th Dynasty

19th Dynasty

20th Dynasty

=Third Intermediate Period=

Tanite 21st Dynasty

Theban 21st Dynasty

22nd Dynasty

23rd Dynasty

24th Dynasty

25th Dynasty

26th Dynasty

=Late Period=

26th Dynasty (continued)