How many pharaohs were there?

Modern counts start from Manetho

The frame is Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek for one of the first Ptolemies. His book is lost, but later writers copied his lists, which split the kings into 30 dynasties, or 31 in some versions. Egyptologists still use his numbering, and the site's timeline follows it: 31 numbered dynasties, then the Macedonian and Ptolemaic rulers, 33 in all.

The Egyptians themselves left king lists, carved or written about a thousand years before Manetho. None is complete, and each one chose whom to include:

• Palermo Stone: year-by-year annals, probably 5th Dynasty, main fragment in Palermo
• Karnak list: 61 kings for Thutmose III, 39 still legible, now in the Louvre
• Abydos list: 76 cartouches in Seti I's temple, still on the wall
• Saqqara Tablet: 58 kings in a priest's tomb under Ramesses II
• Turin Canon: a papyrus of more than 200 kings, now in Turin

Several kings shared one throne name

Counting kings means telling them apart, and the names do not always help. Take nfr-kꜣ-rꜥ, said Neferkare, the throne name of Pepi II: the sun disc (N5) for Ra, written first out of respect, the heart and windpipe (F35) for nfr, "beautiful", and the raised arms (D28) for kꜣ, the ka or life force. Read in Egyptian order it means "Beautiful is the ka of Ra".

On Seti I's wall at Abydos, Pepi II's Neferkare is cartouche 38. The same three signs come back in cartouches 42, 43, 45, 49 and 51, for kings at the end of the Old Kingdom who used the same name, some with an extra word to set them apart: Neferkare Neby, Neferkare Khendu, Neferkare Tereru, Neferkare Pepiseneb. For several of them the list is almost all that survives. Are they six kings, or do some lists give one king twice under different names? For reigns this short, scholars still argue.

Gaps in the king lists keep the count moving

Gaps are the first reason. The Turin Canon is the only list that tries to name every king, Hyksos included, but about half of the papyrus is lost, and many of its entries are fragments. The Abydos list leaves out whole stretches on purpose: Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and every king between the 12th and 18th Dynasties.

Overlap is the second. In the intermediate periods several lines ruled at once from different cities. The 13th and 14th Dynasties share the same years, and so do the 22nd and 23rd. Manetho gives the 13th Dynasty 60 kings. The Turin Canon had 53 names for it, some of whom reigned for months or days. Whether such a king counts as a pharaoh is a choice each book makes.

Then there are the edges. Before Narmer, kings such as Iry-Hor and Ka ruled at least part of the country, and some scholars group them as a "Dynasty 0". Co-regents, rebels who called themselves king and queens who may have been regents push the total up or down.

The first king, the last and the longest reign are all debated

Later Egyptians named the first king Menes. Most Egyptologists think he is Narmer, whose name is written with a catfish (K8) and a chisel (U23) in a serekh, though some argue for his successor, Hor-Aha.

The last native king is usually said to be Nectanebo II of the 30th Dynasty, who fled when the Persians retook Egypt in 343 BC. Persian kings then ruled as the 31st Dynasty until Alexander the Great arrived in 332 BC. After his death, his half-brother Philip III and his son Alexander IV were kings of Egypt in name, until Ptolemy, one of his generals, crowned himself in 305 or 304 BC. Cleopatra VII, the last of that family, died in 30 BC, and Egypt became a Roman province.

The longest reign belongs to Pepi II, if the ancient figures are right: Manetho gives him 94 years, the Turin Canon more than 90. His latest dated record is from about his 62nd year, so some scholars think he ruled closer to 64. That leaves Ramesses II, with 66 years from 1279 to 1213 BC, as the longest reign anyone can prove.

Several women ruled as king

A handful of the pharaohs were women. Sobekneferu, last ruler of the 12th Dynasty, is the first woman known for certain to have taken the full royal titles. Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty ruled for about twenty years, at first as regent for the young Thutmose III, under the throne name mꜣꜥt-kꜣ-rꜥ, Maatkare: the sun (N5), the seated goddess Maat (C10) for truth and order, and the raised arms of the ka (D28). Twosret closed the 19th Dynasty, and several Ptolemaic queens ruled in their own right, Cleopatra VII the best known.

Earlier names are less sure. Merneith of the 1st Dynasty may have governed as regent for her son, and Nitocris, a queen Greek writers placed at the end of the 6th Dynasty, may be a legend.

Count them on the timeline

On the site's timeline each period opens into its dynasties and each dynasty into its kings, with the famous names drawn in hieroglyphs. Start with Narmer's serekh, look for the gap where the Abydos list skips the Second Intermediate Period, and write Pepi II's Neferkare in a cartouche to see the name the later Neferkares shared.

Open the timeline of the pharaohs

Questions

People in this article

• Narmer c. 3000 BC
• Pepi II c. 2278–2184 BC
• Ramesses II c. 1279–1213 BC
• Cleopatra VII c. 51–30 BC
• Seti I c. 1294–1279 BC
• Thutmose III c. 1479–1425 BC
• Hatshepsut c. 1473–1458 BC
• Akhenaten c. 1352–1336 BC
• Tutankhamun c. 1336–1327 BC
• Alexander the Great c. 332–323 BC

Where to see it

• Temple of Seti I at Abydos monument
• Karnak Temple site
• Louvre, Paris museum
• Museo Egizio, Turin museum
• Saqqara site

More to read

• What does the Rosetta Stone say? The decree in plain words What does the Rosetta Stone say? A priests' decree of 196 BC thanking Ptolemy V for tax cuts and temple gifts, and ordering his statues and festivals.
• The negative confession: the 42 denials of the Book of the Dead The negative confession of Book of the Dead spell 125: the dead deny 42 wrongs before 42 judges. Real denials in translation, one read sign by sign.
• How the Egyptian language died: from hieroglyphs to Coptic to Arabic What happened to the ancient Egyptian language? It outlived Greek and Roman rule as Coptic, then gave way to Arabic over centuries after 642.