There was a time in ancient Egypt before the kingdom of the Pharaohs was ruled by mortals when beings from the skies reigned over the land, according to ancient writings. These enigmatic beings, known as Gods or Demigods, lived and controlled ancient Egypt for thousands of years.
The Turin King List is a mystery.
The Turin King List is a Ramesside medieval scriptural canon. A “canon” is a collection or set of general laws or texts. The phrase is derived from a Greek word that means “rule” or “measuring stick.”
The Turin King List is possibly the most important of ancient Egypt’s so-called king lists. Despite extensive damage, it contains valuable material for Egyptologists and matches somewhat with Manetho’s historical collection on ancient Egypt.
The Turin King List was discovered.
The Turin Royal Canon Papyrus, written in an ancient Egyptian cursive writing form known as hieratic, was purchased at Thebes in 1822 by the Italian diplomat and explorer Bernardino Drovetti on his trip to Luxor.
Although it arrived in Italy partly intact and in a box with other papyri, the parchment had broken into many bits and had to be reassembled and interpreted with much difficulty.
Jean-Francois Champollion, a French Egyptologist, assembled the first 48 pieces of the puzzle (1790-1832). Gustavus Seyffarth, a German and American archaeologist, later joined together another hundred fragments (1796-1885). Historians are continuously searching for and piecing together the Turin King List’s missing components.
The museum’s director, Giulio Farina, conducted one of the crucial restorations in 1938. However, Gardiner, a British Egyptologist, offered a different placement of the fragments in 1959, including the newly found parts in 2009.
The Turin King List, now made up of 160 fragments, is missing two crucial parts: the list’s preface and conclusion. The name of the Turin King List’s scribe is thought to be in the introduction section.
What exactly are king lists?
Ancient Egyptian King Lists are lists of royal names preserved in some order by the ancient Egyptians. Pharaohs frequently commissioned these lists to demonstrate the age of their royal blood by listing all the pharaohs in an unbroken succession (a dynasty).
Though this may appear to be the most useful method of documenting the reigning of different pharaohs at first, it was not very accurate because the ancient Egyptians were notorious for concealing facts they didn’t like or inflating information they felt made them look good.
According to legend, these lists were created as a type of “ancestor worship” rather than historical knowledge. Remember that the ancient Egyptians thought that the pharaoh was a reincarnation of Horus on earth and that he would be linked with Osiris after death.
Egyptologists used the lists to rebuild the most logical historical record by comparing them to each other and to data gathered through other sources. So far, we know about the following King Lists:
Thutmosis III’s Royal List from Karnak
Sety I’s Royal List at Abydos
The Palermo Stone, the Abydos King List of Ramses II, and the Saqqara Tablet from Troy’s tomb
The Royal Canon of Turin (Turin King List)
Wadi Hammamat inscriptions on rocks
What distinguishes the Turin King List (Turin Royal Canon) in Egyptology?
All of the other lists were written on long-lasting surfaces, such as a tomb, temple walls, or rocks. However, one king list stood out: the Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, which was inscribed on papyri in hieratic script. It measures about 1.7 meters in length.
In contrast to other lists of kings, the Turin King List includes all rulers, including minors and usurpers. Furthermore, it precisely tracks the length of reigns.
This list of pharaohs appears to have been compiled during the reign of Ramesses II, the renowned 19th dynasty pharaoh. It is the most comprehensive and up-to-date list, dating back to King Menes. It not only provides the names of the kings, like most other lists do, but it also includes other useful information, such as:
– The length of each king’s rule in years, months, and days in some circumstances.
– It includes names of kings who were left off previous king lists.
– It arranges kings geographically rather than chronologically.
– It even mentions the names of Egypt’s Hyksos monarchs.
– It dates back to a weird time when Egypt was controlled by gods and legendary monarchs.
The final point is a fascinating unresolved aspect of Egypt’s history. The most fascinating and contentious section of the Turin Royal Canon describes the story of Gods, Demigods, and Spirits of the Dead who governed for thousands of years.
Gods, Demigods, and Spirits of the Dead ruled for thousands of years, according to the Turin King List.
Mena or Menes was the first “human monarch” of Egypt, according to Manetho, about 4,400 BC (naturally, “moderns” have changed that date for far more recent dates). This king founded Memphis after deviating from the Nile’s path and establishing a temple service there.
Egypt had previously been ruled by Gods and Demigods, according to R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz in “Sacred Science: The King of Pharaonic Theocracy,” where the following remark is made:
…the Turin Papyrus, in the register documenting the Reign of the Gods, the last two lines of the column summarize: “Venerables Shemsu-Hor, 13,420 years; Reigns before the Shemsu-Hor, 23,200 years; Total 36,620 years.”
The last two lines of the column, which appear to be a resume of the entire record, are quite intriguing and remind us of the Sumerian King List.
Because modern materialistic science cannot acknowledge the physical presence of Gods and Demigods as kings, those timelines are dismissed. However, the “Long List of Kings” timeline is (partially) documented in various reputable historical sources, including other Egyptian King Lists.
Manetho’s description of the enigmatic Egyptian kingdom.
If we allow Manetho, chief priest of Egypt’s accursed temples, to speak for himself, we are forced to look to the manuscripts that contain pieces of his work. The Armenian version of Eusebius’ Chronica is one of the most important of these. It opens by telling us that it is taken “from Manetho’s Egyptian History, which he wrote in three books.” These are concerned with the Gods, Demigods, Spirits of the Dead, and the mortal monarchs who ruled Egypt.”
Eusebius begins with reciting Manetho’s Ennead of Heliopolis, which mainly consists of the familiar Ennead of Heliopolis gods – Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus Set, and so on. These were the first to rule Egypt.
“After that, the throne passed from one to another in unbroken succession… for 13,900 years…” Following the Gods, Demigods reigned for 1255 years; then another line of kings reigned for 1817 years; thirty more kings reigned for 1790 years; and 10 kings reigned for 350 years. For 5813 years, the dominion of the Spirits of the Dead reigned…”
The sum of all of these times is 24,925 years. Manetho, in instance, is supposed to have supplied the massive figure of 36,525 years for the entire span of Egyptian civilisation from the time of the Gods down to the end of the 30th (and final) dynasty of mortal monarchs.
What did the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus discover about Egypt’s enigmatic past?
Many classical writers concur with Manetho’s description. Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, visited Egypt in the first century BC. C.H. Oldfather, his most recent translator, correctly describes him as an uncritical compiler who selected good materials and faithfully duplicated them.
In other words, Diodorus did not attempt to force his opinions and beliefs on the material he collected. As a result, he is valuable to us since among his sources were Egyptian priests who he questioned about their country’s enigmatic past. Diodorus was told the following:
“At first, gods and heroes controlled Egypt for a little less than 18,000 years, with Horus, the son of Isis, being the last of the gods to reign…” They claim that mortals have ruled their kingdom for less than 5000 years.”
What did Herodotus discover about Egypt’s mysterious past?
Long before Diodorus, another great Greek historian, Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century BC, paid a visit to Egypt. He appears to have interacted with priests, and he, too, was able to tune in to tales that told of the presence of highly advanced civilisation in the Nile Valley at some undefined moment in distant antiquity.
In Book II of his History, Herodotus explains these legends of an enormous prehistoric period of Egyptian culture. In the same document, he also passes on to us, without remark, a specific piece of information passed down from the priests of Heliopolis:
“During this time, they said, the sun rose out of his usual place four times – twice rising where he now sets and twice setting where he now rises.”
Zep Tepi – the ‘First Time’ in Egyptian History
The ancient Egyptians claimed of the First Time, Zep Tepi, when the gods governed their land:
– They say it was a glorious age when the waters of the abyss receded. The primeval darkness had been extinguished.
– As humanity came into its own, it was given the gifts of civilization.
They also mentioned the Urshu, a category of lesser divinities whose name meant ‘the Watchers’. And they kept particularly clear memories of the gods themselves, powerful and gorgeous beings known as the Neteru. The latter coexisted with humans and exercised their authority from Heliopolis and other sanctuaries along the Nile.
Some of these Neteru were male, some female, but all possessed a variety of magical abilities, including the capacity to appear as men or women, animals, birds, reptiles, trees, or plants at will. Their words and actions, paradoxically, appear to have echoed human feelings and preoccupations. Similarly, although being portrayed as more powerful and intellectual than humans, it was believed that they could become ill, die, or be killed under specific conditions.
What would we have learned about the “First Time” if the Turin Canon Papyrus had been preserved?
The fragments that have survived are enticing. In one register, for example, we read the names of ten Neteru, each name written in a cartouche (oblong enclosure) in much the same form used subsequently for Egypt’s historical kings. The number of years each Neter was said to have reigned was also mentioned, although the majority of these figures are gone from the damaged text.
A list of the mortal monarchs who ruled in upper and lower Egypt after the Gods but before the claimed unification of the state under Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, in 3100 BC, can be found in another column.
According to the remaining fragments, nine ‘dynasties’ of these pre-dynastic pharaohs were recorded, including ‘the Venerables of Memphis,’ ‘the Venerables of the North,’ and, finally, the Shemsu Hor (the Companions, or Followers, of Horus), who ruled until the time of Menes.
The Palermo Stone is another king list that deals with prehistoric ages and fabled Egyptian kings. Although it does not go as far back in time as the Turin Canon Papyrus, it contains information that call our traditional history into doubt.
