ian chronology; guided by it the historian Ed.
Meyer, and K. Sethe have framed systems of chronology in close agreement
with each other, reaching back to the 1st Dynasty at about 3400 B.C. To
Meyer is further due a calculation that the Egyptian calendar was
introduced in 4241-4238 B.C.[19] Their results in general have been
adopted by the "Berlin school," including Erman, Steindorff (in
Baedeker's _Egypt_) and Breasted in America. Nevertheless many
Egyptologists are unwilling to accept the new chronology, the chief
obstacle being that it allows so short an interval for the six dynasties
between the XIIth and the XVIIIth. If the XIIth Dynasty ended about 1790
B.C. and the XVIIIth began about 1570 B.C., taking what seems to be the
utmost interval that it permits, 220 years have to contain a crowd of
kings of whom nearly 100 are already known by name from monuments and
papyri, while fresh names are being added annually to the long list; the
shattered fragments of the last columns in the Turin Papyrus show space
for 150 or perhaps 180 kings of this period, apparently without reaching
the XVIIth Dynasty. An estimate of 160 to 200 kings would therefore not
be excessive. The dates that have come down to us are very few; the only
ones known from the Hyksos period are of a 12th and a 33rd year. In the
Turin Papyrus two reign-lengths of less than a year, seven others of
less than five years each, one of ten years and one of thirteen seem
attributable to the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties. Probably most of the
reigns were short, as Manetho also decidedly indicates. It is possible
that the compiler of the Turin Papyrus, who excluded contemporary reigns
in the period between the VIth and the XIIth Dynasties, here admitted
such; nor is a correspondingly large number of kings in so short a
period without analogies in history. Professor Petrie, however, thinks
it best, while accepting the evidence of the Sirius date, to suppose
further that a whole Sothic period of 1460 years had passed in the
interval, making a total of 1650 years for the six dynasties in place of
220 years. This, however, seems greatly in excess of probability, and
several Egyptologists familiar with excavation are willing to accept
Meyer's figures on archaeological grounds. To the present writer it
seems that Meyer's chronology provides a convenient working theory, but
involves such an improbability in regard to the interval between the
XIIth and the XVIIIth Dynasties tha