Image Details

LUIS DAFOS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

KING LISTS can be used by historians and archaeologists in conjunction with other sources, such as astronomical data, to form chronologies with which to date events mentioned in inscriptions and individual artifacts. This Egyptian king list is from the Temple of Seti I (c. 1300 B.C.E.) in Abydos, Egypt, and can still be viewed there today. It depicts Seti and a young Rameses II bringing offerings to a list of kings from the first through 19th Dynasties. Some names, such as that of Egyptian Pharaoh Merykara of the 10th Dynasty, have been purposefully omitted from the list, as the priests at Abydos viewed them as illegitimate since they did not rule the entire country.