New Chronology of Egyptian Dynasties 1 through 5

With massive amounts of evidence pegging the 18th Dynasty to the 9th Century BC, our first attempt at a revised chronology for the ancient Dynasties of Egypt focused on the historical dates of the 12th Dynasty of Egypt to the 25th Dynasty of Egypt. This research puts the drought and famine after the 1159 BC climate catastrophe towards the end of the 14th Dynasty, and was the major factor that led to the disunity and the establishment of the concurrent 15th and 16th Dynasties.

Next we worked backward from there, pegging the famines after the 1628 BC climate cataclysm to the breakdown of the 6th Dynasty and the end of the Old Kingdom. According to this preliminary research, the historical dates of the 6th to 11th Dynasties of Egypt would then be from about 1740 BC to around 1386 BC.

Now we will try to ascertain the dates encompassing the era from the First Dynasty of Egypt to the Fifth Egyptian Dynasty, and this is the most difficult as these are the dynasties responsible for building the major pyramids, and most observers believe the pyramids are much older than this. As Mesopotamian society is said to have broken down circa 2200 BC, a time of global famine, we must search the first few dynasties to find a period of severe drought and famine, and tie that to around 2150 BC or thereabouts.

As little evidence remains of the first two dynasties, and human sacrifice and cannibalism appears to have ended then, the 3rd Dynasty of Egypt may have been the one who rebuilt the nation and the empire after the collapse of the earlier societies. Here is a very rough first draft:

Pre-Mesopotamian influence:

1st Dynasty - Circa 2550 BC to 2300 BC

2nd Dynasty - Circa 2300 BC to 2100 BC

Post-Mesopotamian influence:

3rd Dynasty - Circa 2100 BC to 2020 BC

4th Dynasty - Circa 2020 BC to 1900 BC

5th Dynasty - Circa 1900 BC to 1740 BC

I realize that much work needs to be done to refine these dates and eras, but I am quite comfortable doing this in the months ahead. One thing to be determined is the dates of the pre-dynastic ruling elites in Egypt, and these may actually be in the 2600-2400 BC era, pushing the 1st dynasty forward in history, closer to the cataclysmic events of the 2nd Dynasty.

Another project remaining is defining the dates of the 26th to 31st Egyptian Dynasties, but that's low-hanging fruit as those regimes are well documented and corroborated.

For those new to exploring relative dates of the revised chronology of Egyptian dynasties, pioneering work was done by people like David Rohl and Ahmed Osman, and carried forth by modern researchers such as Charles Pope of www.DomainOfMan.com . The main factor that contributed to the false chronologies and the impression that Egyptian history took place earlier than it actually did was chronology stacking. Most early attempts at dating dynasties stacked the length of each dynasty end-to-end, unaware that many of these dynasties were concurrent, with one ruling Upper Egypt including Thebes (the original Jerusalem - "To Teach Peace") and the other ruling Lower Egypt including the Nile Delta. The early teens dynasties and the early twenties dynasties were overlapping or concurrent, and when you take this into account, you have to remove about 500 to 600 years from the conventional chronology.

Peace 2 All,

Yuya Joe