"... The only direct evidence for the existence of a 7th and 8th Dynasty in Egyptian history appears in two inconsistent, badly garbled, and heavily redacted copies of Manetho's history of Egypt. One copy was prepared by Africanus in the 3rd century and the other by Eusebius in the 4th century. ... These two dynasties fall into Egypt's First Intermediate Period, and because of the great chaos in this time and the scarcity of records, Egyptologists generally assume that the differences among the two Manetho copies and the various king-lists simply reflect the confusion among the various scribes who attempted to recreate the political records of this earlier era. In this paper, I am going to argue for a different interpretation of the evidence. The original authors of the king-lists, I maintain, had a very clear picture of the First Intermediate Period, and the differences among the king-lists reflect not confusion but political / theological alternatives. More specifically, the political / theological problem involved the determination of when Horus stopped ruling in Memphis and started ruling in Thebes. Different cult centres, as reflected in the king-lists, had different answers. In addition, I am going to argue that the original Manetho king-list never had a 7th and 8th Dynasty, and that what appear in the Africanus and Eusebius copies are garbled transmissions of lines of summation. The 7th Dynasty was originally a line of summation for the entire Memphite line of kings, beginning with the 1st Dynasty and ending with the 6th Dynasty; the 8th Dynasty was a line of summation for just the 6th Dynasty. ..." |