Sothic Chronology and the Old Kingdom

Abstract

Chronology is the backbone of any serious engagement with the past. The rest is history. In 1899, on the eve of the twentieth century C.E., Middle Kingdom chronology was re-established on a Sothic base (Borchardt 1899: 99-103). By 1999, a century later, on the eve of the third millennium c.e., evidence had become available that made principles of Sothic chronology also relevant to dating the Old Kingdom and therefore the third millennium b.c.e. in general. This paper describes how.1 This paper is an exercise in chronological thinking of the Sothic kind. Section 7 discusses how Sothic chronology affects the Old Kingdom. Sections 1 to 6 introduce all the concepts used in Section 7. Section 1 defines what makes Egyptian chronology in part Sothic. Section 2 evokes the role that Sothic chronology has played in dating the Middle and New Kingdoms. Section 3 describes the evidence that makes Old Kingdom chronology also partly Sothic. The evidence is a date of the wjg feast in a papyrus from Neferefre's mortuary temple at Abusir. The date is Day 28 of Month 3 of a season of which the name is lost, in short: III [ ? ] 28. This information is diminutive. Just a feast name and two numbers. But several con-