TURIN KINGLIST: 3,000-Year-Old Additional Fragments Found In Basement!

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Ancient find may solve century-old puzzle, shed light on Egyptian history
 
For 100 years, archaeologists have been trying to piece together fragments to this 3,000-year-old document, written on a papyrus stem. The Egyptian document enumerates all the Egyptian kings and when they ruled.

Newly found fragments to the document should help in piecing together the puzzle.
 
Museo Egizio,
Torino 









                      3,000-year-old papyrus fragments found in basement between two sheets of glass







  Discovery.com
By Rossella Lorenzi
Fri., Feb. 27, 2009

Some newly recovered papyrus fragments may finally help solve a century-old puzzle, shedding new light on ancient Egyptian history.

Found stored between two sheets of glass in the basement of the Museo Egizio in Turin, the fragments belong to a 3,000-year-old unique document, known as the Turin Kinglist.

Like many ancient Egyptian documents, the Turin Kinglist is written on the stem of a papyrus plant.



Believed to date from the long reign of Ramesses II, the papyrus contains an ancient list of Egyptian kings.

Scholars from the British Museum were tipped off to the existence of the additional fragments after reviewing a 1959 analysis of the papyrus by a British archaeologist. In his work, the archaeologist, Alan Gardiner, mentions fragments that were not included in the final reconstruction on display at the museum. After an extensive search, museum researchers found the pieces.

The finding could help more accurately piece together what is considered to be a key item for understanding ancient Egyptian history.

"This is one of the most important documents to reconstruct the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty," Federico Bottigliengo, Egyptologist at the Turin museum, told Discovery News.

"Unlike other lists of kings, it enumerates all rulers, including the minor ones and those considered usurpers. Moreover, it records the length of reigns in years, and in some cases even in months and days."

Written in an ancient Egyptian cursive writing system called hieratic, the papyrus was purchased in Thebes by the Italian diplomat and explorer Bernardino Drovetti in 1822. Placed in a box along with other papyri, the parchment disintegrated into small fragments by the time it arrived in Italy.

Some 48 pieces of the puzzle were first assembled by French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832). Later, some other hundred fragments were pieced together by German and American archaeologist Gustavus Seyffarth (1796-1885).
 
One of the most important restorations was made in 1938 by Giulio Farina, the museum's director. But in 1959, Gardiner, the British Egyptologist, proposed another placement of the fragments, including the newly recovered pieces.

Now made of 160 fragments, the Turin Kinglist basically lacks two important parts: the introduction of the list and the ending.

"Some of the finest scholars have worked on the papyrus last century, but disagreement about its reconstruction has remained," Bottigliengo said. "It has been a never-ending puzzle."

"The enumeration of the kings does not continue after the 17th Dynasty. We are confident that the recovered fragments will help reconstruct some of the missing parts as well as add new knowledge to Egyptian history and chronology."

"It is possible that some dates will have to be changed and names of pharaohs will have to be added," Bottigliengo said.

The newly recovered fragments have been examined by the experts of the British Museum, following a collaboration begun by the museum director Eleni Vassilika. She drew on the experience of Gardiner, in conserving and mounting papyri.

"A preliminary visit revealed that there is huge potential to conserve and reconstruct the papyrus, including many small fragments that were left unplaced in Farina's arrangement of the 1930s."

"We are confident that a new examination with modern scientific techniques will enable a much improved reconstruction to be achieved," Richard Parkinson, curator in the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum, told Discovery News.



© 2009 Discovery Channel

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The Turin Kinglist, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is a unique papyrus, written in hieratic, currently in the Egyptian Museum at Turin, to which it owes its modern name.

It is broken into over 160 often very small fragments, many of which have been lost. When it was discovered in the Theban necropolis by the Italian traveller Bernardino Drovetti in 1822, it seems to have been largely intact, but by the time it became part of the collection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, its condition had severely deteriorated.

The importance of this papyrus was first recognised by the French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, who, later followed by Gustavus Seyffarth took up its reconstruction and restoration. Although they succeeded in placing most of the fragments in the correct order, the diligent intervention of these two men came too late and many lacunae to thus important papyrus still remain.

Written during the long reign of Ramesses II, the papyrus, now estimated at 1.7m long and 0.41m high, comprises on the recto an unknown number of pages that hold a list of names of persons and institutions, along with what appears to be the tax-assessment of each.

It is, however, the verso of the papyrus that has attracted the most attention, as it contains a list of gods, demi-gods, spirits, mythical and human kings who ruled Egypt from the beginning of time presumably until the composition of this valuable document.

The beginning and ending of the list are now lost, which means that we are missing both the introduction of the list -if ever there was such an introduction- and the enumeration of the kings following the 17th Dynasty. We therefore do not know for certain when after the composition of the tax-list on the recto an unknown scribe used the verso to write down this list of kings. This may have occurred  during the reign of Ramesses II, but a date as late as the 20th Dynasty can not be excluded. The fact that the list was scribbled on the back of an older papyrus has been seen by some as an indication that it was of no great importance to the writer. Perhaps it was a text that needed to be copied in a scribes' school by way of exercise?

We are also left in the dark as to what source or sources our laborious scribe used to write down the list. Did he simply copy an already existing papyrus? And if so, for what reason? And what has happened to the original? How was that compiled? Or did the scribe, probably having access to the archives of the temples, compile the list himself, using ancient tax-notes, decrees and documents? The latter possibility seems the less likely and would infer that the Turin Kinglist is indeed a unique document.

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There are several other lists that enumerate the predecessors of a king, such as the lists in the temples of Seti I and Ramesses II at Abydos -to name but two-, so what makes the Turin Kinglist so exceptional? The other lists, although very valuable for the study of Ancient Egyptian chronology as well, are nothing more than an enumeration of some of the "ancestors" of the current king.

Often the current king, or one of his contemporaries, is seen in adoration before the cartouches or representations of the king’s "ancestors". The current king is in fact represented as the good heir who pays respect to his long line of "ancestors". The word "ancestor" can not be taken literally, as the current king was in no way a descendant of most of his predecessors.

Such lists had a more cultic and political reason for being, for indeed they confirmed that the current king was the rightful heir of the kings that had ruled Egypt for many centuries. These cultic lists are more a subjective choice of predecessors than an actual enumeration of all kings: they will in most cases include kings such as Menes and Mentuhotep II, for they have played a pivotal role in the history of Ancient Egypt. Other, less important kings, usurpers or kings that were considered to be illegitimate, such as the kings connected to the Amarna-revolution, were omitted from the lists.

The Turin Kinglist, on the other hand, does a lot more than simply list some kings: it groups them together and it mentions the duration of their reigns. What’s more, it even takes note of some kings that are omitted from the cultic lists, such as the otherwise quite unpopular Hyksos! Despite the fact that it begins with an enumeration of gods, demi-gods, spirits and mythical that were supposed to have ruled Egypt before the reign of Menes, it was not a cultic list and it does not serve the purpose of showing the current king as the good heir to his "ancestors".

The king list of the Turin Kinglist was originally divided over an unknown number of columns or sheets, of which only 11 remain. Columns I to V comprised 25 or 26 lines of text, column VI at least 27 and columns IX and X at least 30. The increasing number of lines as the Canon reaches its end seems to indicate that the scribe realised that he would not have sufficient space on his papyrus to write down all the royal names known to him in 25- or 26-line columns.

Most lines give the name of a particular king, written in a cartouche, followed by the number of years he ruled, and in some cases even by the number of months and days. The number of years credited to some kings of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty is so high, that, in those particular cases, they are most likely not correct. It has sometimes been postulated that this high number of years does not reflect the length of a reign but the age at which the king died.

Although this possibility can not entirely be overruled, it is strange that the writer should choose to note the age of a king in one case and the length of his reign in another. I would rather suspect that the scribe mistook the year-labels of early kings as representations of different years, whereas it is likely that several labels actually referred to the same year..

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The king list of the Turin Kinglist was originally divided over an unknown number of columns or sheets, of which only 11 remain. Columns I to V comprised 25 or 26 lines of text, column VI at least 27 and columns IX and X at least 30. The increasing number of lines as the Canon reaches its end seems to indicate that the scribe realised that he would not have sufficient space on his papyrus to write down all the royal names known to him in 25- or 26-line columns.

Most lines give the name of a particular king, written in a cartouche, followed by the number of years he ruled, and in some cases even by the number of months and days. The number of years credited to some kings of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty is so high, that, in those particular cases, they are most likely not correct. It has sometimes been postulated that this high number of years does not reflect the length of a reign but the age at which the king died. Although this possibility can not entirely be overruled, it is strange that the writer should choose to note the age of a king in one case and the length of his reign in another. I would rather suspect that the scribe mistook the year-labels of early kings as representations of different years, whereas it is likely that several labels actually referred to the same year..

For the kings of the first three dynasties, a name is written in a cartouche as well, despite the fact that cartouche-names were not used prior to the rule of the last king of the 3rd Dynasty, Huni. The cartouche-name used for these kings is often similar to the names used for the same kings in the cultic king-lists, but they are quite different from the Horus-name by which they were known officially during their reign. The relationship between the Horus-names of these early kins and the names use din the Turin Kinglist is not certain: for the later 1st Dynasty kings, the name in the kinglists seems to be based on their Nebti-name, but how the earlier kings of the 1st Dynasty and all kings of the 2nd and 3rd Dynasties got their names is not known.

The kings are grouped together logically based on the city where they took up residence. These groups do not (entirely) correspond to the dynasties into which the kings were placed by Manetho. This indicates that the notion of dynasties was not present or fully developed before the 19th or 20th Dynasty.

Most groups comprise a line of summation that totals the number of years that this particular group has ruled. These summations are sometimes written on 1 line, sometimes divided over 2 lines and sometimes written in 1 line that is so long that it encroaches the next column. In some cases a group is introduced by a heading. The fact that there are far less headings than summations may rather be the result of the fragmentary state of the Canon than an inconsistency on the part of the scribe who wrote or copied the list.

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Despite its incomplete and fragmentary nature, and despite the fact that the placing of the fragments has been contested from time to time, the Turin Kinglist is one of our most important sources of knowledge about the chronology of Egypt between the 1st and 17th Dynasty.

The following pages contain a hieroglyphic transcription of that part of the Turin Kinglist that lists actual kings. The transcription has been based on the publication of the Turin Kinglist by Alan H. Gardiner. Although a rather old publication (the first edition is dated to the late 50's), the placement of the different fragments as proposed by Gardiner is still largely accepted by most Egyptologists. Since his publication, other fragments seem to have been placed as well. This will not yet be reflected in my current transcription of the Canon.

When making this hieroglyphic transcription, I have tried to respect the disposition of the signs as much as possible, except that I have oriented the signs from left to right for practical reasons, instead of from right to left as they were written in the original hieratic text.

The translations are written in italics and are my own. Words in the translation that are written in red were written in red ink in the original text as well. Translations between [ ] are restorations of smaller lacunae. Where a restoration of a lacuna was not possible or uncertain, the signs /// will appear.

If the need arises to make some additional remarks about a particular line of text, this will be done using a smaller font.


A total of 16 "groups" can be distinguished (clicking on the links below will take you to a hieroglyphic transcription and a translation of that particular group): 

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I,x - I,21: Ptah and the Great Ennead

I,22 - II,3 : Horus and the Lesser Ennead (?)

II,4 - II,8 : the spirits

II,9 : a mythical group of kings

II,10 : another group of mythical kings (?)

II,11 - III,26/27 : 1st to 5th Dynasty 

IV,1 - IV,14/15 : 6th to 8th (?)  Dynasty 

IV,15/17 : 1st to 6th (or 8th ?) Dynasty 

IV,18 - V,10 : 9th and 10th Dynasty 

V,11 - V,18 : 11th Dynasty 

V,19 - VI,3 : 12th Dynasty 

VI,4 - X,12/13 : 13th and 14th Dynasty 

X,14 - X,21 : 15th Dynasty (Hyksos) 

X,22, X,30 (?) : a group of non-identified kings
 
XI,1 (?) - XI,15 : a group of probably Theban kings contemporary with the Hyksos (17th Dynasty ?) 

unplaced fragments



http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html