TheTurin King List, also known as theTurin Royal Canon, is anancient Egyptianhieraticpapyrus thought to date from the reign of PharaohRamesses II (r. 1279–1213 BC), now in theMuseo Egizio (Egyptian Museum)[1] inTurin. The papyrus is the most extensive list available of kings compiled by the ancient Egyptians, and is the basis for mostEgyptian chronology before the reign of Ramesses II. The list includes the names of 138 kings.[2] Other sources say that there were originally 223 names of kings in the document, of which 126 have survived (sometimes only partially). 97 names have been lost.[3]
1904 version of attempt to assemble parts of the Turin King list
The papyrus is believed to date from the reign ofRamesses II, during the middle of theNew Kingdom, or the19th Dynasty. The beginning and ending of the list are now lost; there is no introduction, and the list does not continue after the 19th Dynasty. The composition may thus have occurred at any subsequent time, from the reign of Ramesses II to as late as the20th Dynasty.
The papyrus lists the names of rulers, the lengths of reigns in years, with months and days for some kings. In some cases they are grouped together by family, which corresponds approximately to the dynasties ofManetho's book. The list includes the names of ephemeral rulers or those ruling small territories that may be unmentioned in other sources.
The list also is believed to contain kings from the15th Dynasty, theHyksos who ruledLower Egypt and theRiver Nile delta. The Hyksos rulers do not havecartouches (enclosing borders which indicate the name of a king), and ahieroglyphic sign is added to indicate that they were foreigners, although typically on King Lists foreign rulers are not listed.
The papyrus was originally a tax roll, but on its back is written a list of rulers ofEgypt – including mythical kings such asgods, demi-gods, and spirits, as well as human kings. That the back of an older papyrus was used may indicate that the list was not of great formal importance to the writer, although the primary function of the list is thought to have been as an administrative aid. As such, the papyrus is less likely to be biased against certain rulers and is believed to include all the kings of Egypt known to its writers up to the 19th or 20th Dynasty.
The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the papyrus are no longer known, and there are many unclear points surrounding them; the archaeological context is lost. All we know is that the Italian travelerBernardino Drovetti bought itc. 1818 inThebes, Egypt. Purchased in Livorno in 1820, it was shipped to Genoa by sea and then overland to Turin in 1824. The 19th-century Egyptologist Gaston Maspero believed that Drovetti had unintentionally mutilated the papyrus during his journey.[4]
It was acquired in 1824 by theEgyptian Museum in Turin, Italy and was designated Papyrus Number 1874. When the box in which it had been transported to Italy was unpacked, the list had disintegrated into small fragments.Jean-Francois Champollion, examining it, could recognize only some of the larger fragments containing royal names, and produced a drawing of what he could decipher. A reconstruction of the list was created to better understand it and to aid in research.
The Saxon researcherGustav Seyffarth re-examined the fragments, some only one square centimeter in size, and made a more complete reconstruction of the papyrus based only on the papyrus fibers, as he could not yet determine the meaning of the hieratic characters. Subsequent work on the fragments was done by the Munich Egyptologist Jens Peter Lauth, which largely confirmed the Seyffarth reconstruction.Giulio Farina, the director of theMuseo Egizio from 1928 to 1946 published his analysis and examination of this document in 1938 in a book calledThe Restored Papyrus of the Kings orTurin Canon; here, he proposed a new placement of some fragments, gave the hieroglyphic transcription of the hieratic text, the translation and an extensive historical-chronological commentary.[5]
In 1997, prominent EgyptologistKim Ryholt published a new and better interpretation of the list in his book, "The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period c. 1800–1550 B.C." EgyptologistDonald Redford has also studied the papyrus and has noted that although many of the list's names correspond to monuments and other documents, there are some discrepancies and not all of the names correspond, questioning the absolute reliability of the document for pre-Ramesses II chronology.
Despite attempts at reconstruction, approximately 50% of the papyrus remains missing. This papyrus as presently constituted is 1.7 m long and 0.41 m wide, broken into over 160 fragments. In 2009, previously unpublished fragments were discovered in the storage room of the Egyptian Museum of Turin, in good condition.[6] A new edition of the papyrus is expected.[when?] The fragments were found after studying a 1959 study by archaeologist Alan Gardiner. In his writing, Gardiner suggested that there were fragments in the museum that had not been used by scholars in reconstructing the document.[7]
The nameHudjefa, found twice in the papyrus, is now known to have been used by the royal scribes of theRamesside era during the19th Dynasty, when the scribes compiled king lists such as theSaqqara King List and the royal canon of Turin and the name of a deceasedpharaoh was unreadable, damaged, or completely erased.
The papyrus is divided into eleven columns, distributed as follows. The names and positions of several kings are still being disputed, since the list is so badly damaged.
Column 1 – Gods of Ancient Egypt
Column 2 – Gods of Ancient Egypt, spirits and mythical kings
It's possible that a twelfth column once existed that contained Dynasties 18–19/20, but that section has since been lost.
Turin King List with 2013 corrections of positions for some fragments – table representation of rows from the original papyrus, translated into hieroglyphs
The following are the names written on the papyrus, omitting the years, summations and headings.
von Beckerath, J. (1995). "Some Remarks on Helck's 'Anmerkungen zum Turiner Königspapyrus'".The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology.81:225–227.doi:10.2307/3821822.JSTOR3821822.
Bennett, Chris (2002). "A Genealogical Chronology of the Seventeenth Dynasty".Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt.39:123–155.doi:10.2307/40001152.JSTOR40001152.
Kitchen, Kenneth A. (2001)."King Lists". In Redford, Donald B. (ed.).The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol. 2. American University in Cairo Press. pp. 234–238.ISBN978-977-424-581-7.
Ryholt, Kim (1997).The Political Situation in Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.Carsten Niebuhr Institute Publications, vol. 20. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.ISBN87-7289-421-0.
Ryholt, Kim (2004). "The Turin King-List",Ägypten und Levante 14, 2004, pp. 135–155. —This is a detailed description of the king-list, the information it provides, and its sources.