The Third Intermediate Period is the most complicated epoch of ancient Egyptian history, and the one with the most relevance to modern politics. That requires some explanation if you’re not familiar with Egyptology.

Egypt is the “anchor” for a lot of ancient Mediterranean chronology. Egyptian artifacts were traded all over the area, and these were often inscribed with the name of a pharaoh, and sometimes a specific date in that pharaoh’s reign. Thus if the chronology of Egyptian pharaohs was established, much of the rest of ancient Mediterranean chronology could be worked out.

The original Near Eastern archaeologists were Biblical scholars. So with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the beginning of the 19th century, people looked at the Egyptian records to tie them in with the Old Testament narratives. It quickly became evident that they didn’t match. In particular, the Old Testament put the United Monarchy of Saul, David and Solomon in the Late Bronze Age, but Egyptian history was pretty clear that the Levant was an Egyptian colony in the Late Bronze Age, and that there was no evidence that there ever was a United Monarchy or any such people as Saul, David, or Solomon. That obviously caused all sorts of problems for Biblical literalists (and Quranic literalists, since David and Solomon are mentioned in the Quran). The only time when there was historical “space” for United Monarchy was the Early Iron Age. That required that a good size chunk of Egyptian history had to be eliminated to make things fit. A number of scholars and pseudoscholars undertook this, and the easiest place to do it was the Third Intermediate Period.

So now we have to get into extremely simplified ancient Egyptian history. This is divided into the Old Kingdom (pyramids); Middle Kingdom (more pyramids); and New Kingdom (king Tut). The “Kingdoms” were times when the Egyptian central government was powerful and exerted influence over surrounding territory. In between (and after) the “Kingdoms” were the First, Second, and Third Intermediate Periods, when the central government weakened and Egypt broke into two or more little “kingdoms” based on geography. The catch was each of these little kingdoms often claimed to rule the whole country – especially during the Third Intermediate Period. A lot of Egyptian chronology was based on “king lists” where some ancient chronicler had listed pharaohs in order of their rule. But these chronicles sometimes listed kings in succession when, in fact, they had reigned wholly or partially simultaneously in different parts of the country during the Intermediate Periods when the country broke up. This provided fertile ground for chronological revisionists, who could now claim that any number of Egyptian pharaohs had overlapping reigns and force the Egyptian record to synchronize with the Old Testament.

So now, after that long and tedious introduction, we finally get to the book under review: Aidan Dodson’s Afterglow of Empire. Dodson starts by noting that some of the chronological revisionists have a point, and that “conventional” Egyptologists have sometimes “circled the wagons” and resisted any suggestions that conventional chronology should be adjusted. (It didn’t help the revisionist’s case that one of the earliest, Immanuel Velikovsky, was completely off the wall, allowing later revisionists to be simply dismissed as “neoVelikovskians” without further review). However, at most the adjustment is a few decades rather than the hundreds of years required by Velikovskians and Biblical literalists.

Dodson has undertaken an immense amount of scholarly labor to try and make sense out of the Third Intermediate period record. This is not an easy read, even if you are pretty well grounded in ancient Egypt; I consider myself a fairly decent amateur in Egyptology – I took courses in hieroglyphics and Egyptian history at the University of Chicago – but I had a hard time with this, having to reread some of Dodson’s arguments several times before I was reasonably confident that I understood them. Dodson’s Appendix III is a huge help here; it lists the reigns of all the pharaohs discussed, including overlapping reigns. I would recommend flipping back and forth between this Appendix and the text – or perhaps copying Appendix III as a separate chart – as a tool to understand what’s going on.

Extensive illustrations, always relevant to the text. The Appendices are extensive and greatly helpful; they’re about a quarter of the book. The endnotes and bibliography are also thorough and extensive. Highly recommended but be forewarned this is not a “coffee table” book with pretty pictures of Egyptian artifacts; it’s a highly detailed scholarly study that assumes a lot of prior knowledge. ( )

This is a pharaoh-centric history of the Third Intermediate Period, with Dodson trying to follow the various kings ruling during period, and determine how long they reigned, how they related to one another, and not least to what extent their various reigns overlapped with one another.

It’s noteworthy that despite the unsettled times, many of the kings seem to have enjoyed long reigns. Civil war was frequent but actually killing rival kings apparently rare.

I found the book an enjoyable and surprisingly quick read.