FragmentaryKingsListFromAbydosTempleOfRamessesII-BritishMuseum-August19-08

A regnal list or king list is, at its simplest, a list of successive

monarch A monarch () is a head of stateWebster's II New College Dictionary. "Monarch". Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. Life tenure, for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest ...

s. Some regnal lists may give the relationship between successive monarchs (e.g., son, brother), the length of reign of each monarch or annotations on important reigns. The list may be divided into dynasties marked off by headings. As a distinct

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

, the regnal list originates in the

ancient Near East The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...

. Its purpose was not originally chronological. It originally served to demonstrate the antiquity and legitimacy of the monarchy, but it became an important device for structuring historical narratives (as in

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

) and thus a chronological aid. In antiquity, regnal lists were kept in

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

and

Babylonia Babylonia (; , ) was an Ancient history, ancient Akkadian language, Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Kuwait, Syria and Iran). It emerged as a ...

. King lists have made it into sacred religious texts, such as the ''

Puranas Puranas (Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
(1995 Editio ...

'' and the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Edomite Edom (; Edomite: ; , lit.: "red"; Akkadian: , ; Ancient Egyptian: ) was an ancient kingdom that stretched across areas in the south of present-day Jordan and Israel. Edom and the Edomites appear in several written sources relating to the ...

king list. Regnal lists were kept in

early medieval Ireland Early may refer to: Places in the United States * Early, Iowa, a city * Early, Texas, a city * Early Branch, a stream in Missouri * Early County, Georgia * Fort Early, Georgia, an early 19th century fort Music * Early B, stage name of Jamaican d ...

Pictland The Picts were a group of peoples in what is now Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, in the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and details of their culture can be gleaned from early medieval texts and Pictish stones. The name appears in ...

and

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or early medieval England covers the period from the end of Roman Empire, Roman imperial rule in Roman Britain, Britain in the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Compared to modern England, the territory of the ...

. The historian David Dumville regarded them as more reliable than

genealogies Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kins ...

because they can be manipulated "in a smaller variety of ways than a genealogy". For example, some genealogies may have been fabricated from pre-existing regnal lists. In early medieval Wales, the regnal list was unknown and one copyist, confronted with a mere

list of Roman emperors The Roman emperors were the rulers of the Roman Empire from the granting of the name and title ''Augustus'' to Octavian by the Roman Senate in 27 BC onward. Augustus maintained a facade of Republican rule, rejecting monarchical titles but ...

, converted it into a pedigree.David N. Dumville, "Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists", in Peter H. Sawyer and Ian N. Wood (eds.), ''Early Medieval Kingship'' (Leeds: School of History, University of Leeds, 1977), pp. 72–104. In

African historiography African historiography is a branch of historiography involving the study of the theories, methods, sources, and interpretations used by scholars to construct histories History of Africa, of Africa. Most African societies recorded their history via ...

, king lists passed down orally have been used to provide dates and chronologies. This is done via generational averaging, with the most common length chosen for a generation being 27 years.

Historical examples

Abydos King List The Abydos King List, also known as the Abydos Table or the Abydos Tablet, is a list of the names of 76 kings of ancient Egypt, found on a wall of the Temple of Seti I at Abydos, Egypt. It consists of three rows of 38 cartouches (borders enclos ...

** Abydos King List (Ramesses II) *

Canon of Kings The Canon of Kings was a dated list of kings used by ancient astronomers as a convenient means to date astronomical phenomena, such as eclipses. For a period, the Canon was preserved by the astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, and is thus known sometimes ...

Den seal impressions In 1985, the German Archaeological Institute discovered seal impressions of a cylinder seal in the tomb of First Dynasty king Den. They were published by Günter Dreyer the following year. The impressions are the earliest confirmed king list fo ...

Regnal lists of Ethiopia Regnal lists of Ethiopia are recorded lists of monarchs who are claimed by tradition to have ruled Ethiopian Empire, Ethiopia. These lists are often recorded on manuscripts or Oral tradition, orally by Monastery, monasteries and have been passed dow ...

1922 regnal list of Ethiopia The 1922 regnal list of Ethiopia is an official regnal list used by the Emperor of Ethiopia, Ethiopian monarchy which names over 300 monarchs across six Millennium, millennia. The list is partially inspired by older regnal lists of Ethiopia, Et ...

* Karnak King List * Medinet Habu king list * ''

Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans The ''Nominalia of the Bulgarian Khans'' () is a short text which is presumed to contain the names of some early Bulgar rulers, their clans, the year of their ascending to the throne according to the cyclic Bulgar calendar and the length of the ...

'' *

Palermo Stone The Palermo Stone is one of seven surviving fragments of a stele known as the Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. The stele contained a list of the kings of Egypt from the First Dynasty (c.3150–2890 BCE) through to the early par ...

* Ramesseum king list *

Saqqara King List The Saqqara Tablet, also known as the Saqqara King List or the Saqqara Table, now in the Egyptian Museum, is an ancient stone engraving surviving from the Ramesside Period of Egypt which features a list of pharaohs. It was found in 1861 in Saqqara ...

* *

Sumerian King List The ''Sumerian King List'' (abbreviated ''SKL'') or ''Chronicle of the One Monarchy'' is an ancient Composition (language), literary composition written in Sumerian language, Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims ...

Turin King List The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is an ancient Egyptian hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC), now in the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin. The papyrus is the m ...

References

{{reflist

External links

Regnal Chronologies
website devoted to listing rulers