[Illustration: 354.jpg MAGIC NAIL OF TERRA COTTA]
[Illustration: 355.jpg EGYPTIAN CORNICE BEARING THE CARTOUCHES OF RAMSES I.]
APPENDIX--THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT AND MIDDLE EMPIRES
The lists of the Pharaohs of the Memphite period appear to have been drawn up in much the same order as we now possess them, as early as the XIIth dynasty: it is certain that the sequence was definitely fixed about the time of the XXth dynasty, since it was under this that the Canon of Turin was copied. The lists which have come down to us appear to follow two traditions, which differ completely in certain cases: one has been preserved for us by the abbreviators of Manetho, while the other was the authority followed by the compilers of the tables of Abydos and Saqqâra, as well as by the author of the Turin Papyrus.
There appear to have been in the first five dynasties a certain number of kings whose exact order and filiation were supposed to be well known to the compilers; but, at the same time, there were others whose names were found on the monuments, but whose position with regard to their predecessors was indicated neither by historical documents nor by popular romance. We find, therefore, in these two traditional lists a series of sovereigns always occupying the same position, and others hovering around them, who have no decided place. The hieroglyphic lists and the Royal Canon appear to have been chiefly concerned with the former; but the authorities followed by Manetho have studiously collected the names of the latter, and have intercalated them in different places, sometimes in the middle, but mostly at the end of the dynasty, where they form a kind of _caput mortuum_. The most striking example of this arrangement is afforded us in the IVth dynasty. The contemporary monuments show that its kings formed a compact group, to which are appended the first three sovereigns of the Vth dynasty, always in the same order: Menkaûrî succeeded Khâfrî, Shopsiskaf followed Menkaûrî, Usirkaf followed Shopsiskaf, and so on to the end. The lists of Manetho suppress Shopsiskaf, and substitute four other individuals in his place, namely, Katôises, Bikheris, Seberkheres, Thamphthis, whose reigns must have occupied more than half a century; these four were doubtless aspirants to the throne, or local kings belonging to the time between the IVth and Vth dynasties, whom Manetho's authorities inserted between the compact groups made up of Kheops and his sons on the one hand, and of Usirkaf and his two real of supposed brothers on the other, omitting Shopsiskaf, and having no idea that Usirkaf was his immediate successor, with or without rivals to the throne.