Author Description

The period of Egypt’s Ramesside empire is best known for its foreign wars and monumental buildings but the chronological history of many of its rulers and pre-eminent priests and their genealogies was poorly understood. While it was not possible to fi x the chronology exactly, a combination of known dates or date ranges, such as for the accession of Ramesses II, and the determination of family trees that extended over a large period, enabled Bierbrier to present a much closer definition of the span of individual dynasties and their key figures than had been possible previously. That volume is reissued here in facsimile. An important source of information is the genealogical references on funerary statues and tomb paintings, though vocabulary used is limited and often ambiguous. There are also several types of statuary, set up by individuals for different purposes, most frequently by sons or descendants to cause the name of the deceased to live on, many of which may have been created before the death of the individual commemorated. Taking into account these, and other difficulties, Bierbrier’s painstaking research proved groundbreaking in elucidating the chronology, sequences of events and family connections of the period from the official families of the XIXth Dynasty through those of the XXVth.