In
ancient Egyptian history
The history of ancient Egypt spans the period from the early prehistoric settlements of the northern Nile valley to the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The pharaonic period, the period in which Egypt was ruled by a pharaoh, is dated from the ...
,
dynasties
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A d ...
are series of rulers sharing a common origin. They are usually, but not always, traditionally divided into 32 pharaonic dynasties; these dynasties are commonly grouped by modern scholars into
"kingdoms" and "intermediate periods".
The first 30 divisions come from the 3rd century BC Egyptian priest
Manetho
Manetho (; grc-koi, Μανέθων ''Manéthōn'', ''gen''.: Μανέθωνος) is believed to have been an Egyptian priest from Sebennytos ( cop, Ϫⲉⲙⲛⲟⲩϯ, translit=Čemnouti) who lived in the Ptolemaic Kingdom in the early third ...
, whose ''Aegyptaiaca'', was probably written for a Greek-speaking
Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt but survives only in fragments and summaries. The names of the last two, the short-lived
31st Dynasty and the longer-lasting
Ptolemaic Dynasty
The Ptolemaic dynasty (; grc, Πτολεμαῖοι, ''Ptolemaioi''), sometimes referred to as the Lagid dynasty (Λαγίδαι, ''Lagidae;'' after Ptolemy I's father, Lagus), was a Macedonian Greek royal dynasty which ruled the Ptolemaic ...
, are later coinings.
While widely used and useful, the system does have its shortcomings. Some dynasties only ruled part of Egypt and existed concurrently with other dynasties based in other cities. The
7th might not have existed at all, the
10th seems to be a continuation of the
9th, and there might have been
one or several Upper Egyptian Dynasties before what is termed the
1st Dynasty.
List of dynasties in ancient Egyptian history
See also
*
List of pharaohs
The title "Pharaoh" is used for those rulers of Ancient Egypt who ruled after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Narmer during the Early Dynastic Period, approximately 3100 BC. However, the specific title "Pharaoh" was not used to ad ...
*
Egyptian chronology
The majority of Egyptologists agree on the outline and many details of the chronology of Ancient Egypt. This scholarly consensus is the so-called Conventional Egyptian chronology, which places the beginning of the Old Kingdom in the 27th centur ...
*
Muhammad Ali dynasty
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Ancient Egyptian Dynasties
Dynasties, List of Egyptian
Egypt, Ancient