Did the Ptolemaic Egyptians know how old the Pyramids were?
Upvote:8
Just for completeness:
Peter Diehr is correct, Manetho, who lived during the Ptolemeic era (which has several kings named Ptolemy) wrote a book about the royal dynasties of Egypt. His sources must have been royal annals, which would record the name of the pharaohs and how long they reigned.
The original book is lost, and only shortened and inaccurate transcripts of transcripts have survived, but those are the source of the division of the pharaohs into dynasties which are used in Egyptology today.
Manetho assigns the Great Pyramid to the 2nd king of the 4th dynasty, who he names Suphis. The overwhelming majority of the available evidence today seem to confirm that and point to Khufu.
So yes, one of the Ptolemaic kings could have known who built the pyramid. And since the Egyptians, including Manetho, counted the length of the reign of each pharaoh, he could have added those together and would have had an idea when they were built.
There where many possible sources of errors of course: Some pharaohs have been excluded from the royal annals for political reasons ("damnation of memory"), the way the reigning years have been counted could have changed ("cattle counts"), scribes made copying errors, having completely accurate lists was not the primary purpose of the annals and there were two long periods of unrest and chaos, during which several pharaohs appeared and vanished in a short time and the royal annals had trouble counting those.
In summary, a learned one could have told a Ptolemy (after studying the archives) a number like "2337 years" as an answer, but that number would likely be not 100% correct, although it might have been close.
Upvote:11
In Greek times the authority on the pyramids was Herodotus who visited Egypt about 100 years before Ptolemaic rule began. Even at that time the pyramids were a tourist attraction surrounded by a lot of mythology. According to Herodotus the Great Pyramid was built by "Cheops" about 600 years previously (circa 1000 BC).
Modern scholars presume that by Cheops, Herodotus is referring to "Khufu", but there is no proof of this.
I think that if there had been a desire by a Ptolemaic king to know the history of the pyramids, it is possible they would have received a more accurate answer than what information is available to us now, however, in that time the Macedonians occupying Egypt were not interested in such things.
(If I were you, I would not assume, as you apparently have, that the dates and builders of the pyramids are so well established as you apparently think.)
More post
- 📝 When did European building interiors partitioned into rooms become commonplace?
- 📝 Is there a precedent for a large amount of refugees granted asylumn by a distant foreign nation
- 📝 Were there any attempts at a federation or commonwealth to save Austria-Hungary from breaking up after ww1?
- 📝 What are the social preconditions for division of labour, when compared in different emerging civilizations?
- 📝 Has there ever been a civilization that had no human enemies?
- 📝 What was Nazi Germany's end goal?
- 📝 Why didn't Hannibal attack Rome after the Battle of Cannae?
- 📝 How old was Bagoas when he met Alexander the Great?
- 📝 Did indebted families commonly sell daughters into prostitution in Japan?
- 📝 What was British spy Greville Wynne supposed to be selling?
- 📝 "America is the richest country in the history of the world" -- Would a historian consider this true?
- 📝 What was Libya's form of direct democracy (Jamahiria) like in practice?
- 📝 Were there any German submarines sunk after 25th of April 1945?
- 📝 Is there any record of the Ebionites outside of the antiheretical polemics of the church fathers?
- 📝 What was the official currency used in North Carolina in 1814?
- 📝 How and why did Charles XII get to Poltava?
- 📝 Why did the East India Company accept the Government of India Act 1858?
- 📝 Were there religious wars between two sects in Hinduism?
- 📝 Are submarine launched ballistic missiles still inaccurate?
- 📝 In Alta California, who worked at the Ranchos del Rey?
- 📝 Trying to understand the idea of a totalitarian administration from the pages of history
- 📝 Raising children in Europe in the Middle Ages
- 📝 Understanding my 96 year old father's US Army discharge papers
- 📝 How was King Henry VIII able to get syphilis?
- 📝 What is the year of Ethelred the Unready's Laws of London?
- 📝 Why did Canada not join the American Revolution?
- 📝 What was the significance of the term "Lollard" in describing religious dissenters?
- 📝 Are automatic assault rifle useless in current conflict?
- 📝 Why was the Titles of Nobility Amendment proposed?
- 📝 How far did climate affect civilisation development in the Americas?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did the Ptolemaic Egyptians know how old the Pyramids were?
- 📝 How many digits of Pi did the old Egyptians know?
- 📝 Did people from the cities of Uruk, Ur and Sumer have knowledge/recollection of how old their cities were (say, recollection after 2000 BCE)?
- 📝 Were bookshops 'common' in the late 19th century, and how did they differ from modern ones?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 How did the Catholic Pope manage to become more powerful than Kings in old Europe?
- 📝 How did the Egyptian engineers of the Third and Fourth Dynasty construct the Pyramids and Sphinx without modern science and mathematics?
- 📝 How quickly did the knowledge of the existence of the new world spread into the old world?
- 📝 How did the king give land to new barons without taking it from the old ones?
- 📝 How did the helmsman know what he was sailing towards with a big mast in his face?
- 📝 How did Lincoln know to stick with Grant before the completion of the Vicksburg campaign?
- 📝 How did the news of the reality Nazi concentration camps reach the United State's mainstream? What were the waves of awareness and when?
- 📝 How did Diego Gutiérrez know the boundaries (shape of the Americas) when he drew the 1562 Map of America
- 📝 How did Vasco da Gama know about the Southern Cross?
- 📝 How much did the western world know about the Soviet Union pre-WWII?
- 📝 How did Farragut know he could get his fleet through the Confederate line of "torpedos" at Mobile Bay?
- 📝 How long did men have to serve in the US army until they were promoted to sergeants during WW2?
- 📝 How did knights in full suits of armor eventually die in combat? What were the most common causes of death for soldiers in full-body plate armor?
- 📝 Were there commercials in the original broadcast of the moon landings, and how much did they go for?
- 📝 How were old wooden warships with structural damage to the hull repaired at dock?
- 📝 How did the HMAS Sydney know the real Straat Malakka's secret callsign, "IIKP", but not HSK Kormoran?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 How did Israel win the Six-Day War?
- 📝 How did the general population of England convert so smoothly to Protestantism?
- 📝 How did the USSR manage to innovate in an environment characterized by government censorship and high bureaucracy?
- 📝 How did the Romans do division?
- 📝 How did 300,000 people survive the 3 1/2 year siege of Sarajevo?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 How did pilots know when to release bombs on airplanes during World War2?