Turin Royal Papyrus

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The Turin King List , also Turin King List called, is a probably from the time of Pharaoh Ramses II. Native Egyptian king list in hieratic writing , the names of the Egyptian kings ( pharaohs called) and their government years. The papyrus fragments represent the most extensive list of the Egyptian pharaohs and form the basis of most of the chronologies for the period before the reign of Ramses II. They are shown in the Museo delle antichità egizie in Turin .

Drawing of the Turin royal list

Emergence

The royal papyrus was created at the time of Ramses II and was already negligently written in hieratic characters on the back of a tax list that was no longer required.

discovery

The papyrus was found in Luxor around 1820 and brought to Europe by Bernardino Drovetti . In 1824 it was acquired by the Egyptian Museum in Turin. When unpacking the box in which it was transported to Italy, it turned out that it had disintegrated into tiny fragments. A reconstruction seemed completely hopeless.

Jean-François Champollion , unpacking the box, noticed that there were some fragments of royal names underneath it , the only one he could decipher at the time. From these large fragments he made a drawing.

Shortly after Champollion's departure from Turin , the Saxon archeologist Gustav Seyffarth visited the museum. He searched the box again and was able to identify all the fragments known today, some of which are only 1 cm by 1 cm in size. He made a complete reconstruction of the papyrus, which can still be seen in this arrangement in the museum today. Seyffarth's only clues when putting it together were the papyrus fibers, as he could not yet decipher the hieratic characters.

Hieroglyphic representation of the Turin royal list

Structure and content

The royal papyrus is divided into several columns and names the names and years of reign of the ancient Egyptian kings.

First column

The first column lists the dynasties of gods who are said to have ruled over Egypt, and at the head of which is the god Ptah . The first part of the column and thus the beginning of the text is almost entirely missing.

Second column

In the second column the text reports first of 30 Thinitic rulers (regents of the Gau "oldest land" ( Ta-wer , Greek Thinites ) with the capital Thinis / Abydos ), then of 10 Memphite rulers (regents of the Gau "White Wall") ( Inbu-hedj ), capital: ancient Men-nefer , possibly Hut-Ka-Ptah ; great Memphis ). All of them are said to have tried for several hundred years, sometimes by force, to gain control of the empire.

Third column

The actual list of kings does not begin until the third part of the column. Even special heroic deeds and foundations of the respective rulers are mentioned. Finally, the duration of the reign and the age of the rulers at the time of their abdication or death are given.

  • Column 3: 1-25 ( Neferkasokar to Unas )
  • Column 4: badly damaged, mostly rulers of the First Intermediate Period
  • Column 5: badly damaged, 12–17 (11th Dynasty), 20–25 (12th Dynasty)
  • Column 6: 1–2 (late 12th Dynasty), 5–27 (13th Dynasty)
  • Column 7: 1–23 (Late 13th Dynasty?)
  • Column 8: 1–27 (14th Dynasty)
  • Column 9: 1-30 (14th Dynasty)
  • Column 10: 1-30 (14th and 15th Dynasties)
  • Column 11: 1–? (16th and 17th dynasties)

Particular importance is attached to the fact that the rulers of the Second Intermediate Period are also mentioned, although the names of the foreign rulers are not preceded by the royal title, but a special symbol for "Foreign Ruler" or "Great Stranger".

Comparisons

Comparisons with other king lists showed a great resemblance to the Greek list of Manetho of Sebennytos . The hieroglyphic lists of Saqqara , Abydos, or Karnak contain a much shorter series of kings.

reconstruction

Later work on the fragments by the Munich Egyptologist Franz Joseph Lauth largely confirmed Seyffarth's reconstruction, reducing the original arrangement from XII to X columns. The problem still remains that around 50% of the reconstructed area remains free. Either these fragments are lost forever, or the existing fragments have to be pushed together further, whereby an alignment with the hieroglyphic lists would be possible. Seyffarth's assertion that Champollion dumped a large part of the fragments into the “ sewer ” cannot be verified and probably comes from the museum director at the time, who did not like Champollion.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Royal Papyrus Turin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A detailed account of the history of the papyrus can be found in Eduard Meyer : Aegyptische Chronologie (= Philosophical and historical treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences. 1904, 1, ZDB -ID 955708-8 ). Publishing house of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Berlin 1904.
  2. ↑ Beckerath: Chronology of Pharaonic Egypt ... Mainz 1997, p. 19.