The widely accepted timeline for Ancient Egypt shows the start of the Old Kingdom around 2700 BC, the start of the Middle Kingdom around 2100 BC, and the start of the New Kingdom around 1600 BC.

Most experts agree on these dates, but some differences exist. For example, timelines for the Early Dynastic Period may differ by about 300 years, while dates for the New Kingdom may vary by up to 30 years, and dates for the Late Period may differ by only a few years.

There are also other timelines not widely accepted by scholars. One example is the "New Chronology" from the 1990s, which moves the dates of the New Kingdom back by up to 350 years. Another example is the "Glasgow Chronology," proposed between 1978 and 1982, which moves the dates of the New Kingdom back by up to 500 years.

Overview

Experts generally agree on the main timeline of ancient Egypt's history, and this agreement has not changed much in the past 100 years. For the Old Kingdom period, dates may differ by several centuries, but for the Middle and New Kingdoms, dates are more precise, differing by only a few decades.

All dates in the table are given in BC and should be considered approximate. Differences in these dates come from new discoveries and improved understanding of limited historical evidence. For example, Breasted included a ruler in the Twentieth Dynasty, but later research showed this ruler did not exist. Breasted also believed, following Manetho, that all dynasties followed one another in order, but it is now known that some dynasties existed at the same time. These changes have caused the standard timeline to be adjusted earlier by up to 400 years at the start of Dynasty I.

Regnal years

The main way to understand the timeline of ancient Egypt is through records of how long each king ruled, called regnal years. These records are found in king lists, which are lists of Egyptian rulers. Some lists, like the Turin King List, are long but have missing parts. Others, like the Abydos King List and the Palermo Stone, include all the text but may leave out some rulers. This makes it hard to create a complete timeline. Sometimes, different parts of the same text give different dates for the same ruler, which adds to the confusion. For example, the writings of the ancient historian Manetho are only known through summaries written by later people, like Eusebius and Sextus Julius Africanus. These summaries often disagree about how long certain kings ruled.

To figure out the length of a ruler’s time in power, Egyptologists use information from inscriptions, which often mention the year of a pharaoh’s rule. However, this only shows the minimum time a ruler was in power. It may not include times when a ruler shared power with a previous or future king. Also, some dynasties might have had different kings ruling in different parts of Egypt at the same time, not one after another. This uncertainty makes it hard to agree on exact dates for events in Egypt’s history.

When the total number of years a ruler was in power is unknown, Egyptologists use two clues. For the Old Kingdom, they look at records of cattle censuses, which were regular counts of animals. Early experts thought these censuses happened every two years, so 24 censuses meant a ruler ruled for 48 years. Later research showed censuses sometimes happened in back-to-back years or with longer gaps. For later periods, Egyptologists use the Sed festival, which was usually held on a ruler’s 30th year in power. If a ruler celebrated this festival, they likely ruled for at least 30 years. However, this was not always the rule.

In the early days of Egyptology, some scholars had a strong belief that the timeline of Egypt should match the Bible. This was especially true before the 19th century, when Manetho’s records were found to disagree with the Bible’s timeline. By the 20th century, this belief was no longer widely accepted by most Egyptologists, though some alternative timelines based on biblical ideas still exist.

Synchronisms

A helpful way to overcome gaps in knowledge is to find matching events in time, which can help determine exact dates. In recent decades, many of these have been discovered, though they differ in how useful and reliable they are.

Alternative chronologies

During the 20th century, many different ideas that suggest alternative timelines to the widely accepted one were presented.