t the interpretation of the Sothic
date on which it is founded must be viewed with suspicion until clear
facts are found to corroborate it. Corroboration has been sought by
Mahler, Sethe and Petrie in the dates of new moons, of warlike and other
expeditions, and of high Nile, but their evidence so far is too vague
and uncertain to affect the question seriously. It is remarkable that no
records of eclipses are known from Egyptian documents. The interesting
date of the harvest at El Bersha, quoted by Meyer in Breasted,
_Records_, i. p. 48, confirms the Sothic date for the XIIth Dynasty in
some measure, but it belongs to the same age, and therefore its evidence
would be equally vitiated with the other by any subsequent alteration in
the Egyptian calendar. Before the discovery of the Kahun Sothic date,
Professor Petrie put the end of the XIIth Dynasty at 2565 B.C.; in 1884
even Meyer had suggested 1930 B.C. as its _minimum_ date, thus allowing
400 years at the least for the period from the XIIIth Dynasty to the
XVIIth.

+----------+-----------+-------+------------+----------+---------+
| Dynasty. | Wiedemann | Meyer | Petrie | Breasted | Maspero |
| | 1884. | 1884. | 1905-1906. | 1906. | 1904. |
+----------+-----------+-------+------------+----------+---------+
| XIX. | 1490 | 1320 |(1328), 1322| 1350 | |
| XX. | 1280 | 1180 | 1202 | 1200 | |
| XXI. | 1100 | 1060 | 1102 | 1090 | |
| XXII. | 975 | 930 | 952 | 945 | |
| XXIII. | 810 | | 755 | 745 | |
| XXIV. | 720 | | 721 | 718 | |
| XXV. | 715 | 728 | 715 | 712 | |
| XXVI. | 664 | 663 | 664 | 663 | |
| XXVII. | 525 | 525 | 525 | 525 | 425 |
| XXVIII. | 415 | | 405 | | c. 405 |
| XXIX. | 408 | | 399 | | 399 |
| XXX. | 387 | | 378 | | 380 |
| Ochus | 350 | | 342 | | 342 |
+----------+-----------+-------+------------+----------+---------+

Beyond the XIIth Dynasty estimates must again be vague. The spacing of
the years on the Palermo stone has given rise to some calculations for
the early dynasties. Others are grounded on t