The ''Demotic Chronicle'' is an
ancient Egyptian
prophetic
In religion, a prophecy is a message that has been communicated to a person (typically called a ''prophet'') by a supernatural entity. Prophecies are a feature of many cultures and belief systems and usually contain divine will or law, or prete ...
text.
The work is intended to provide a
chronicle
A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...
of the
28th,
29th and
30th dynasties
[Bresciani, op. cit., p. 551] – thus the independence interval between the
two Persian dominations. Rather than providing historical events occurred during the reigns of the
pharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...
s of the aforementioned period, the ''Demotic Chronicle'' judges these rulers on the basis of their behaviour, explaining the length and prosperity of their reigns as an expression of
divine will
The will of God or divine will is a concept found in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and the Quran, according to which God's will is the first cause of everything that exists.
See also
* Destiny
* ''Deus vult'', a Latin expression meaning ...
.
[ The ''Chronicle'' also emphasizes the misrule of the "Medes" (i.e. the ]Achaemenids
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...
) and of the Ptolemies
The Ptolemaic dynasty (; grc, Πτολεμαῖοι, ''Ptolemaioi''), sometimes referred to as the Lagid dynasty (Λαγίδαι, ''Lagidae;'' after Ptolemy I's father, Lagus), was a Macedonian Greek royal dynasty which ruled the Ptolemaic K ...
, and prophesies the coming of a native hero who will ascend to the throne and restore an era of order and justice
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
* Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...
upon Egypt.Toby Wilkinson
Toby Alexander Howard Wilkinson, (born 1969) is an English Egyptologist and academic. After studying Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, he was Lady Wallis Budge Research Fellow in Egyptology at Christ's College, Cambridge (1993 to 199 ...
, ''The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt'', Bloomsbury, London, 2010, p. 481
The anti-Achaemenid themes within the Demotic Chronicle especially focus on Cambyses II
Cambyses II ( peo, 𐎣𐎲𐎢𐎪𐎡𐎹 ''Kabūjiya'') was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 530 to 522 BC. He was the son and successor of Cyrus the Great () and his mother was Cassandane.
Before his accession, Cambyses ...
, Xerxes I
Xerxes I ( peo, 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 ; grc-gre, Ξέρξης ; – August 465 BC), commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. He was the son and successor of ...
and Artaxerxes III
Ochus ( grc-gre, Ὦχος ), known by his dynastic name Artaxerxes III ( peo, 𐎠𐎼𐎫𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎠 ; grc-gre, Ἀρταξέρξης), was King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 359/58 to 338 BC. He was the son and successor of A ...
.
The manuscript consists in a papyrus written in demotic
Demotic may refer to:
* Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language
* Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language
* Chữ Nôm, the demotic script for writing Vietnamese
See also
*
* Demos (disa ...
; hence, its name. It was found during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt
The French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria, proclaimed to defend French trade interests, to establish scientific enterprise in the region. It was the pr ...
and now stored at the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...
(Pap. 215). The work claims to date back to the time of pharaoh Teos
Teos ( grc, Τέως) or Teo was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, on a peninsula between Chytrium and Myonnesus. It was founded by Minyans from Orchomenus, Ionians and Boeotians, but the date of its foundation is unknown. Teos was ...
of the 30th Dynasty, although in fact it is a later work datable to the 3rd century BCE, likely composed under the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes
, predecessor = Ptolemy II
, successor = Ptolemy IV
, nebty = ''ḳn nḏtj-nṯrw jnb-mnḫ-n-tꜢmrj'Qen nedjtinetjeru inebmenekhentamery''The brave one who has protected the gods, a potent wall for The Beloved Land
, nebty_hiero ...
.
Despite its cryptic text, analysis of the ''Demotic Chronicle'' have allowed, among other things, to integrate the order of succession of the treated pharaohs with the informations provided by Manetho
Manetho (; grc-koi, Μανέθων ''Manéthōn'', ''gen''.: Μανέθωνος) is believed to have been an Egyptian priest from Sebennytos ( cop, Ϫⲉⲙⲛⲟⲩϯ, translit=Čemnouti) who lived in the Ptolemaic Kingdom in the early third ...
's epitomes.
See also
* Darius the Great's Suez Inscriptions
Darius the Great's Suez Inscriptions were texts written in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian and Egyptian on five monuments erected in Wadi Tumilat, commemorating the opening of the "Canal of the Pharaohs", between the Nile and the Bitter Lakes.
...
* Oracle of the Lamb
The Oracle of the Lamb is an ancient Egyptian prophetic text written on a papyrus in Demotic Egyptian and dated to the thirty-third year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC – 14 AD).Gozzoli (2006), pp. 293–294. In it, a lamb ...
* Oracle of the Potter The Oracle of the Potter is a Hellenistic Egyptian prophetic text, originally written in Demotic Egyptian in the 3rd century BC. However, there are only five remaining Greek manuscript copies of the document on papyrus (parts of two manuscripts we ...
References
* Edda Bresciani
Edda Bresciani (23 September 1930 – 29 November 2020) was an Italian Egyptology, Egyptologist.
Life
Bresciani was born in Lucca, and graduated in 1955 from the University of Pisa. She excavated at several places in Egypt and is mainly known fo ...
, ''Letteratura e poesia dell'antico Egitto'', Einaudi, Torino, 1969, pp. 551–60.
Further reading
* Joachim Friedrich Quack: ''“As he Disregarded the Law, he was Replaced During his Own Lifetime”. On Criticism of Egyptian Rulers in the So-Called Demotic Chronicle.'' In: Henning Börm (ed.): ''Antimonarchic Discourse in Antiquity''. Steiner, Stuttgart 2015, 25–43.
External links
''The Demotic Chronicle''
(annotated translation)
Prophecy
3rd-century BC history books
Egyptian papyri
Xerxes I
Anti-Iranian sentiments
African chronicles
History books about Egypt
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