Egypt before the Ptolemies

Egypt

The Rulers

Three thousand years, ten periods, thirty-one dynasties. The scheme is Manetho’s — an Egyptian priest writing in Greek for Ptolemy I or II, whose book is lost and survives only in quotation by his opponents. Every museum label and textbook still counts in his dynasties.

The periods of Egyptian history to the Roman conquest. Dynastic divisions follow Manetho, the Egyptian priest who wrote Egypt’s history in Greek for the Ptolemies in the third century BC — his scheme is lost as a book and survives only in quotation, and it is still the one in use. Dates before the New Kingdom vary between chronologies by up to a century.

Period	Dynasties	Dates	Capital	What marks it	Rulers
Early Dynastic	1st–2nd	c. 3100–2686 BC	Memphis	The two lands united. Writing, the royal titulary and the administrative state take form.	Narmer · Djer · Merneith · Den
The Old Kingdom	3rd–6th	2686–2181 BC	Memphis	The pyramid age. Absolute royal authority, the largest stone building programme in history, and the Pyramid Texts.	Djoser · Sneferu · Khufu · Khafre · Menkaure · Pepi II
First Intermediate	7th–11th	2181–2055 BC	divided	Central authority collapses; the nomarchs rule locally. Low Nile floods are attested.	—
The Middle Kingdom	11th–12th	2055–1650 BC	Thebes, then Itjtawy	Reunification from Thebes. The classical literature, and the language later scribes were trained on. Nubia annexed.	Mentuhotep II · Senusret III · Amenemhat III · Sobekneferu
Second Intermediate	13th–17th	1650–1550 BC	divided	The Hyksos hold the Delta. The horse, the chariot and the composite bow enter Egypt.	Apepi · Seqenenre Tao · Kamose
The New Kingdom	18th–20th	1550–1069 BC	Thebes, then Pi-Ramesses	Egypt as an empire, holding the Levant to the Euphrates. The Valley of the Kings. The richest and best-documented period.	Ahmose · Hatshepsut · Thutmose III · Akhenaten · Tutankhamun · Ramesses II · Tausret · Ramesses III
Third Intermediate	21st–25th	1069–664 BC	Tanis, then Napata	The long decline begins. Kings at Tanis and high priests at Thebes; Libyan dynasties; then Nubia conquers Egypt and rules it as the 25th.	Psusennes I · Shoshenq I · Piye · Taharqa
The Late Period	26th–31st	664–332 BC	Sais	A native revival under the Saites, then Persian conquest in 525, a brief independence, and Persia again in 343.	Psamtik I · Necho II · Amasis · Nectanebo II
The Ptolemies	Macedonian	332–30 BC	Alexandria	Greek rule. The Library, the translations, the trilingual decrees. Set out on its own page.	Ptolemy I · Ptolemy II · Cleopatra VII · Ptolemy XV
Roman Egypt	—	30 BC – AD 641	Alexandria	The emperor's personal property, governed by a prefect. Emperors continue to be shown as pharaohs on temple walls for two centuries.	Augustus · Tiberius · Trajan · Hadrian

The pattern the table shows is a long one. Three great kingdoms, each ended by a period of division, and after the third the recoveries stop: Libyan rulers, then Nubian, then Assyrian, then Persian, then Macedonian, then Roman. From 1069 BC no native Egyptian dynasty holds the whole country again.

The women who ruled

Six across three thousand years, from the first dynasty to the last. The office was male by definition — the titulary, the regalia and the theology all assume a king — so a woman who took it was shown wearing the false beard and given the male forms. What the record preserves is not their rule but the difficulty of describing it.

Women who ruled Egypt, from the first dynasty to the last. Others held great power as consorts or regents; these are the ones attested as ruling.

Ruler	Dynasty	Reigned	What is recorded
Merneith	1st	c. 2950 BC	Buried with the full honours of a king and listed on a seal impression among the kings of the first dynasty. Probably regent for her son Den. The earliest woman known to have ruled Egypt.
Sobekneferu	12th	1806–1802 BC	The first woman certainly attested as pharaoh, with a full royal titulary. She took the throne when the male line failed and reigned under four years; the dynasty ended with her.
Hatshepsut	18th	1479–1458 BC	Regent for her stepson Thutmose III, then pharaoh in her own right for two decades. Depicted in male regalia with the false beard. Her expedition to Punt is carved at Deir el-Bahri. Her images were erased some twenty years after her death, not at once — which argues against personal spite as the motive.
Nefertiti	18th	c. 1353–1336 BC	Akhenaten’s queen, shown at equal scale with him and in poses reserved for kings. Some scholars identify her with the successor Neferneferuaten, which would make her a reigning pharaoh; the identification is disputed.
Tausret	19th	1191–1189 BC	Regent then pharaoh, and the last ruler of the nineteenth dynasty. She built a tomb in the Valley of the Kings that was later usurped.
Cleopatra VII	Ptolemaic	51–30 BC	The last of the line. Twenty-one years, nominally joint and effectively sole. The Ptolemies carries the reign.

The works

The building record is the reason this period is knowable at all. Egypt cut its history into the fabric of what it built, and stone in a dry climate survives what papyrus does not. Two entries here are absences, and both were described by writers who saw them.

The principal works, and two that are gone. Attributions follow the inscriptions on the buildings where they carry them; where they do not, the attribution is inferred and is marked as presumed.

Work	Where	Date	Built by	What it is	State
The Step Pyramid	Saqqara	c. 2670 BC	Djoser	Six stepped mastabas, 60 m. The first large stone building anywhere, in a complex of dummy shrines and a walled enclosure. Its architect Imhotep is named on the base of Djoser’s statue — the earliest architect known by name.	Stands
The Bent Pyramid	Dahshur	c. 2600 BC	Sneferu	Begun at 54 degrees and changed to 43 partway up. A structural correction recorded in the building itself. Much of the outer casing survives, which is rare.	Stands
The Red Pyramid	Dahshur	c. 2590 BC	Sneferu	The first successful true pyramid, at the shallower angle the Bent Pyramid was corrected to.	Stands
The Great Pyramid	Giza	c. 2560 BC	Khufu	2.3 million blocks, 146 m, aligned to true north within a twentieth of a degree. Tallest structure on earth for 3,800 years. The Merer papyrus, found 2013, is the work diary of the crew that hauled its casing stone from Tura.	Stands, casing gone
The Sphinx	Giza	c. 2500 BC	Khafre, presumed	Cut from the bedrock of the quarry, 73 m long. Nothing contemporary records who ordered it, or why. The Dream Stele between its paws was set up a thousand years later by Thutmose IV.	Stands
Karnak	Thebes	c. 2000 BC – AD 100	many	Added to for two thousand years by successive dynasties. The hypostyle hall has 134 columns, the tallest 21 m. The largest religious building ever constructed.	Stands
Deir el-Bahri	Thebes	c. 1470 BC	Hatshepsut	A terraced mortuary temple set against the cliff, colonnaded on three levels. Its reliefs record the expedition to Punt. Her figures were later chiselled out.	Stands
The Valley of the Kings	Thebes	c. 1539–1075 BC	New Kingdom	Sixty-five rock-cut tombs, hidden rather than marked. The change from the pyramid to the concealed tomb is a change of policy about robbery — and it failed: only Tutankhamun’s was found near-intact.	Excavated
Akhetaten	Amarna	c. 1346 BC	Akhenaten	A capital built on virgin ground for a new god, occupied about fifteen years and abandoned. Because it was built once and left, it is the best-preserved plan of an Egyptian city.	Foundations
Abu Simbel	Nubia	c. 1264 BC	Ramesses II	Two temples cut into the cliff, with four seated colossi 20 m high. Moved 65 m up and 200 m back in 1964–68 to escape the Aswan flooding — cut into 1,036 blocks and reassembled.	Relocated
The Ramesseum	Thebes	c. 1250 BC	Ramesses II	His mortuary temple. The fallen colossus here is the one that prompted Shelley’s Ozymandias.	Ruined
Medinet Habu	Thebes	c. 1175 BC	Ramesses III	Its walls carry the record of the Sea Peoples’ invasion — the fullest account of the Late Bronze Age collapse from any side.	Stands
Absent: the Labyrinth	Hawara	c. 1850 BC	Amenemhat III	Herodotus said it surpassed the pyramids and described three thousand chambers. Strabo and Pliny also describe it. Almost nothing remains above ground.	Lost
Absent: the Pharos	Alexandria	c. 280 BC	Ptolemy I–II	One of the seven wonders. Brought down by earthquakes; Fort Qaitbay was built from its rubble and its blocks lie on the sea floor.	Lost

One thing the state column shows. The pyramids stand and the tombs that replaced them were robbed. The New Kingdom abandoned the pyramid for the concealed rock-cut tomb precisely to stop the plundering — and of sixty-five tombs in the Valley of the Kings, one survived near-intact. The visible monument outlasted the hidden one.