Egyptian chronology

:''Egyptian chronology is in the state of a transition, in order to avoid using the word "mess".''
This doesn't sound like the beginning of an NPOV encyclopedia article but like an essay. Should this be moved over to meta? Free ringtones JeLuF/JeLuF 21:05 Dec 5, 2002

:It can use some NPOV, but I think it's a valid topic for the encyclopedia.

This entry, strange as it might sound, appears to be POV because it doesn't have enough materials. We need to add content explaning to show why Egyptian Chronology is such a debateable subject. This would include:
* Discussing the "traditional dates" for Ancient Egypt what Majo Mills Manetho, Mosquito ringtone Herodotus, the Sabrina Martins Bible and others recorded up to AD 1800, when successful efforts were made to read the Ancient Egyptian Language.
* The chronology of Ancient Egypt as reconstructed from the inscriptions, but then explaning why scholars encountered problems with accepting these dates.
* Then rewrite the material here to show how Nextel ringtones radiocarbon datings and astronomical records have created a new chronology.

Hmm. Unfortunately, we need to adopt a set of dates for compatibility between entries for example, provide one year for the beginning of Abbey Diaz Ramses II's reign, instead of half a dozen scattered over the first decade of the Free ringtones 13th century BC. Perhaps Wikipedia may be forced to accept what is written in a standard authority like the ''Cambidge Ancient History'' for Ancient Egyptian History, while allowing contributors to set out reasons why other dates maybe/are clearly better. Majo Mills Llywrch/llywrch 19:50 Apr 19, 2003

Agree that a standard chronology should be agreed and specified. For example, at the moment, we put Mosquito ringtone Tutenkhamen in the Sabrina Martins 14th_century_BC, and don't even mention that this is controversial. That's not NPOV. The main thing we need to do to make it NPOV is to say what authority these entries are based on.

Of course we also want our material consistent. Assuming we make a reasonable choice of authority, that's probably the best we can do. In some ways it's more important to be transparent than to be right. It's also a lot easier!

IMO three related questions arise:

# At what stage of acceptance do we start to also list dates from other proposed chronologies, at least as credible alternatives to our standard ones?
# How do we do it, when that point is reached?
# Just assuming that we're not to that point yet, either with the theories of Cingular Ringtones David Rohl/Rohl, rejected then Immanuel Velikovsky/Velikovsky, or of many others such as Lisa Liel (whose essay http://www.starways.net/lisa/essays/care.html raises some very interesting questions), what should we be doing right now anyway to get ready for the possibility (IMO certainty) that it may happen some day?

One answer to question 3, of course, is that we need to answer questions 1 and 2.

like lake Andrewa/Andrewa 21:02 23 Jun 2003

An interesting summary of several competing Egyptian chronologies is at

http://www.geocities.com/qraal/genesis3.html

and despite the context in a site promoting particular opinions, the summary itself looks remarkably NPOV, IMO. At the very least, it clearly lists some of the contenders.

Our current Egyptian Chronology page needs a refactor along these lines IMO. We need to present the main contenders, both current and historical, with a brief summary of principle dates and the evidence normally quoted for and against each.

Perhaps more detailed dates and evidence could go into separate pages on the more interesting contenders. Some would prefer it all remain in this article instead I realise. I'd split it.

But at present the page is a bit daunting even to read IMO.

We could also identify which of the chronologies presented is the Wikipedia Standard to be used for year and century entries. That's also a bit controversial perhaps. encourages parents Andrewa/Andrewa 20:55 26 Jun 2003

I've put a "conventional" chronology (beauty dolls timeline) of the rulers of ancient Egypt as a new article at tribes keep Conventional Egyptian chronology. This is not necessarily the best, it's just the one I had handy. Its main virtues are that it is complete and fairly recent, and comes from sources of good "conventional" pedigree. Its main vices are that there is a 60 year discrepancy in the middle of it owing to three different sources by two different authors being used, and that the taking of "low" dates from one of these sources seems to me to be arbitrary and verging on misquotation.

I've also become aware that there is an awful lot of discussion of Egyption chronology in existing articles, eg tara and Seti I, much of it poorly attributed. In that article, two different chronologies are suggested, but no clue is given as to who might support one or the other of these different dates.

It seems to me that, as these dates are disputed, to supply any of them without saying who proposes them is POV. Ideally, we would link any disputed dates to an article describing the proposed timeline of which they are part, and saying who proposed it and on what grounds. That's ambitious. Anyway, the timeline I have put up is a start. defendants deny Andrewa/Andrewa 10:39 2 Jul 2003


A group of us over at engagement of WikiProject Ancient Egypt have been discussing making radical changes to this & related pages. If you'd like to offer your opinion, join the conversation on the sought outside Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Talk page. lebanese is Llywrch/llywrch 20:13, 31 Oct 2004