The Tepi Shemu Feast: A Tool for Testing Chronologies of Dynasty 21 to 25?

Abstract

Due to the lack of a reliable king list and secure reign lengths, some freedom still exists to rearrange and re-date Egyptian kings of Dynasties 21 to 25. In recent articles, Ad Thijs as well as Michael Bányai have elaborated alternative chronologies for large parts of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period. Various suggested chronologies will be discussed in this article, taking into account the Karnak Priestly Annals, the Nile Level Records, the Chronicle of Prince Osorkon, Assyrian and Biblical texts referring to Egypt or Nubia, and astronomical data. The main focus rests on the astronomical data and the basic idea that it seems unlikely that priestly inductions during the Tepi Shemu feast took place on miscellaneous lunar days in different years. A tentative reconstruction of the course of events of the Tepi Shemu feast is proposed.