This Monday we kick off the New Year with a lecture from Chris Naunton! Everyone welcome. Free to MAES members – you’ll receive an email link. Guests welcome – £5 via Eventbrite

13 January Chris Naunton

Kinglists and the Writing of Egyptian History

‘Dynasties’ form the backbone of ancient Egyptian history. We’re all familiar with dating people, events and objects to this or that Dynasty, and we know that the 18th was ‘great’ era, or, say, the 29th rather more obscure. Each Dynasty seems to have represented a coherent group of pharaohs – perhaps they were all related, or came from the same part of Egypt. And the end of one Dynasty and start of the next marked a clear change. Or did it? The archaeological evidence does not always support the idea. And would the ancient Egyptians have recognised the idea of these Dynasties? Maybe, or maybe not… It was the historian Manetho, writing in the early Ptolemaic Period who arranged Egyptian history this way; his system was adopted in modern times and now we’re stuck with it – warts and all. This lecture looks at Manetho’s history, the Aegyptiaca, how it sometimes seems remarkably close to the archaeological evidence, and at other times miles off. And we look at the Egyptians’ earlier records of their own history in the form of kinglists in particular.

Chris Naunton is an Egyptologist and author of several books including ‘Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt’ (2018) and ‘Egyptologists’ Notebooks’ (2020), and is currently making a meal of writing another one on ‘Dynasties’. He regularly appears in television documentaries on ancient Egypt, and lectures around the UK, overseas and online. He was Director (CEO) of the Egypt Exploration Society from 2012 to 2016, and President of the International Association of Egyptologists from 2015 to 2019, and is now Director of the Robert Anderson Trust.