Turin Royal Canon
Papyrus dating to the reign of Ramesses II (1279-1213) inscribed in
Hieratic with a list of the names of Egyptian rulers (originally
numbering about three hundred), evidently copied from a more complete
original.
When it was first acquired by
Bernardino Drovetti in the early
nineteenth century, it seems to have been largely intact, but by the
time it had become part of the collection of the Museo Egizio di Turin,
its condition had deteriorated. The diligent work of egyptologists
Jean-Francois Champollion and Gustavus Seyffarth ensured that the many
fragments were placed in the correct order, but many parts are missing.
The list included the Hykos rulers (often left out of other King Lists),
although they were not given Cartouches and a hieroglyphic sign was
added to indicate that they were foreigners. Apart from the names of
each of the rulers, the list also cited the precise duration of each
reign, and occasionally provided a summary of the numbers of years that
had elapsed since the time of the semi-mythical ruler Memes. There was
also an attempt to go back beyond the reigns of known kings and to
assign regnal lengths to the series of unnamed spirits and gods who had
ruled before the appearance of the human pharaohs. It was presumably
this type of document that provided Manetho to with the basis for the
history that he compiled in the early third century bc, which has
supplied the sequence of dynasties still used by Egyptologists.
Jean-Francois Champollion
Champollion arrived in Turin, at the
invitation of Count Costa Secretary of State for Sardinia-Piedmont, on
7th June 1824 after a journey through the Alps that was perilous.
Champollion was then the only person to have mastered the translation of hieroglyphs and was able to read much of the huge collection in Turin
(purchased from Drovetti by Charles Felix King of Sardinia in 1824).
Champollion was sent to a room
that held pieces of papyri that were considered unusable because they were
fragmented. Writing to his brother, Jacques-Joseph, he reported "on
entering the room which I will henceforth call the Mausoleum of History I was
seized by a mortal chill in seeing a table 10 feet in length covered in its
entire expanse with a bed of debris of papyri at least half a foot deep". The
papyri had fragmented during their journey from Egypt to Italy and had been
largely complete when Drovetti purchased it. Over the coming months he
wrote "I have seen roll in my hand the names of years whose history was a
totally forgotten; names of gods who have not had alters for fifteen
centuries... the last refuge of a memory of a king who in his lifetime perhaps
found himself cramped in the immense palace of Karnak".
Among the remains he found 50 pieces of a
manuscript he dubbed the 'royal canon'. The Turin Royal Canon, as it is
now known, lists over 300 Egyptian rulers. The list includes foreign
rulers, excludes others and has the length of reigns. Even more staggering
is that he recognized the importance of this document, to establish a
chronology, with his unique ability to translate - without which these scraps of
history would have been lost forever. No other pieces of the papyri could be
found, and this has caused gaps in the list, he wrote "I confess that the
greatest disappointment of my literary life is to have discovered this
manuscript in such a desperate state. I will never console myself - it is
a wound which bleed for a long time".
Presentation at the Museo Egizio di Turin
The museum has the Canon displayed in a
small room off of the main area. Because the papyrus has
hieratic script on both the Recto and Verso the is presented in a
glass case with a mirror at it's rear. This allows a view
of both the King-List and the Tax-List.
Manetho
Modern chronology of ancient Egypt rests partially on the writings of
Manetho in his Aegyptiaca
(History of Egypt). He would have had access to a number of sources
for his work and we can speculate that the Turin Canon was one of those.
Sources
Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson
Champollion was sent to a room
that held pieces of papyri that were considered unusable because they were
fragmented. Writing to his brother, Jacques-Joseph, he reported "on
entering the room which I will henceforth call the Mausoleum of History I was
seized by a mortal chill in seeing a table 10 feet in length covered in its
entire expanse with a bed of debris of papyri at least half a foot deep". The
papyri had fragmented during their journey from Egypt to Italy and had been
largely complete when Drovetti purchased it. Over the coming months he
wrote "I have seen roll in my hand the names of years whose history was a
totally forgotten; names of gods who have not had alters for fifteen
centuries... the last refuge of a memory of a king who in his lifetime perhaps
found himself cramped in the immense palace of Karnak".
