Ancient Egypt was ruled for millennia by a series of pharaohs. Historians have broken up this period into dynasties, in which the rulers had been either associated to a single a further or derived energy from a predecessor.
But which dynasty lasted the longest?
The 18th dynasty of Egypt, which lasted about 250 years, is the longest ancient Egyptian dynasty. Scientists estimate the length of the 18th dynasty by analyzing written records and radiocarbon dates.
The 18th dynasty began about 1550 B.C., when the pharaoh Ahmose kicked out the Hyksos, a group originating from Asia that had ruled component of ancient Egypt for extra than a century. The rulers who followed Ahmose would develop the territory that Egypt controlled, ultimately expanding it to an empire stretching from contemporary-day Sudan to what is now Syria. Amongst the 18th dynasty rulers is Tutankhamun, or King Tut, a pharaoh whose intact tomb was rediscovered by a British-led archaeological group in 1922.
Connected: Who ruled ancient Egypt soon after King Tut died?
Historians normally divide Egypt’s history into 30 dynasties.
But in truth, “the ‘dynasties’ of Egypt are truly just retrospective constructs,” Michael Dee (opens in new tab), an associate professor of isotope chronology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, told Reside Science in an e-mail. It wasn’t till about 300 B.C. that writers began to divide Egypt into dynasties, Dee stated. Even though lots of pharaohs inside a dynasty have a direct household partnership, not all do.
“Dynasties are successive members of the exact same household with some additions,” Marc Van De Mieroop (opens in new tab), a history professor at Columbia University, told Reside Science in an e-mail. “They had been created up by Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek in the [third] century B.C. The 18th dynasty [pharaohs] are associated to every other by descent except for the final two who had pretty short reigns.”
Statue of the royal household King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti holding hands, side by side (1345 B.C.). (Image credit: Peter Horree by way of Alamy)
And while the 18th dynasty was the longest of the dynasties delineated by Manetho, the periods of Greek and Roman rule had been longer, Van De Mieroop stated.
Greek rule in Egypt began in 332 B.C., when Alexander the Terrific conquered Egypt. Prior to his conquest, the area was controlled by the ancient Persians.
Right after Alexander died in 323 B.C., his empire fell apart and Ptolemy, a single of Alexander’s generals, became ruler of Egypt. His descendants ruled Egypt for practically 300 years, till the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 B.C.
Right after Cleopatra’s death, the Roman emperor Augustus incorporated Egypt into the Roman Empire as a province. Even though Roman emperors seldom visited Egypt, surviving artwork shows that they had been nonetheless regarded as pharaohs. Even though the Western Roman Empire fell in A.D. 476, the Eastern Roman Empire (normally referred to as the Byzantine Empire), primarily based at Constantinople, continued on and controlled Egypt till A.D. 646, when the Rashidun Caliphate captured it. The Rashidun Caliphate was primarily based in Arabia and formed soon after the death of Muhammed.