There appear to have been in the first five dynasties a certain number of kings whose exact order and filiation were supposed to be well known to the compilers; but, at the same time, there were others whose names were found on the monuments, but whose position with regard to their predecessors was indicated neither by historical documents nor by popular romance. We find, therefore, in these two traditional lists a series of sovereigns always occupying the same position, and others hovering around them, who have no decided place. The hieroglyphic lists and the Royal Canon appear to have been chiefly concerned with the former; but the authorities followed by Manetho have studiously collected the names of the latter, and have intercalated them in different places, sometimes in the middle, but mostly at the end of the dynasty, where they form a kind of caput mortuum. The most striking example of this arrangement is afforded us in the IVth dynasty. The contemporary monuments show that its kings formed a compact group, to which are appended the first three sovereigns of the Vth dynasty, always in the same order: Menkaûrî succeeded Khâfrî, Shopsiskaf followed Menkaûrî, Usirkaf followed Shopsiskaf, and so on to the end. The lists of Manetho suppress Shopsiskaf, and substitute four other individuals in his place, namely, Katôises, Bikheris, Seberkheres, Thamphthis, whose reigns must have occupied more than half a century; these four were doubtless aspirants to the throne, or local kings belonging to the time between the IVth and Vth dynasties, whom Manetho’s authorities inserted between the compact groups made up of Kheops and his sons on the one hand, and of Usirkaf and his two real of supposed brothers on the other, omitting Shopsiskaf, and having no idea that Usirkaf was his immediate successor, with or without rivals to the throne.
In a course of lectures given at the Collège de France (1893-95), I have examined at length the questions raised by a study of the various lists, and I may be able, perhaps, some day to publish the result of my researches: for the present I must confine myself merely to what is necessary to the elucidation of the present work, namely, the Manethonian tradition on the one hand, and the tradition of the monumental tables on the other. The text which I propose to follow for the latter, during the first five dynasties, is that of the second table of Abydos; the names placed between brackets [ ] are taken either from the table of Saqqâra or from the Royal Canon of Turin. The numbers of the years, months, and days are those furnished by the last-mentioned document.
From the VIth to the XIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho are at fault: they give the origin and duration of the dynasties, without furnishing us with the names of the kings.
This blank is partially filled by the table of Abydos, by the fragments of the Turin Papyrus, and by information supplied by the monuments. No such definitely established sequence appears to have existed for this period, as for the preceding ones. The Heracleopolitan dynasties figure, perhaps, in the Canon of Turin only; as for the later Memphite dynasties, the table of Abydos gives one series of Pharaohs, while the Canon adopts a different one. After the close of the VIth dynasty, and before the accession of the IXth, there was, doubtless, a period when several branches of the royal family claimed the supremacy and ruled in different parts of Egypt: this is what we know to have taken place later between the XXIInd and the XXIVth dynasties. The tradition of Abydos had, perhaps, adopted one of these contemporaneous dynasties, while the Turin Papyrus had chosen another: Manetho, on the other hand, had selected from among them, as representatives of the legitimate succession, the line reigning at Memphis which immediately followed the sovereigns of the VIth dynasty. The following table gives both the series known, as far as it is possible for the present to re-establish the order:—