AMONG the most important objects on show in Turin is the Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon. This unique papyrus is written in heretic, and owes its modern name to its being exhibited in the Egyptian Museum at Turin. The papyrus has broken into more than 160 very small fragments, many of which have been lost. When it was discovered in the Theban necropolis by the Italian traveller Bernardino Drovetti in 1822 it was largely intact, but by the time it had been added to the collection in the Turin museum, its condition had severely deteriorated. The importance of this papyrus was first recognised by the French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion. The papyrus, now estimated at 1.7m long and 0.41m high, was written during the long reign of Ramses II and comprises on the recto an unknown number of pages that carry a list of names of persons and institutions, along with what appears to be the tax-assessment of each. It is, however, the verso of the papyrus that has attracted the most attention, as it contains a list of gods, demi-gods, spirits, mythical and human kings who ruled Egypt from the beginning of time presumably until the composition of this valuable document. The beginning and end of the list are now lost, which means that the introduction -- if one ever existed -- and the enumeration of kings following the 17th Dynasty are missing. The list was scribbled on the back of an older papyrus, which some believe indicate that it was of no great importance to the writer. Perhaps it was a text that needed to be copied in a scribes' school by way of exercise. There are several other lists in existence that enumerate the predecessors of a king, such as the lists in the temples of Seti I and Ramses II at Abydos. Although these lists are very valuable for the study of ancient Egyptian chronology, they are nothing more than an enumeration of some of the "ancestors" of the current king, represented as the good heir who pays respect to his long line of ancestors. The word "ancestor" cannot be taken literally, as the current king was in no way a descendant of most of his predecessors. Such lists had a more cultic and political purpose, confirming that the current king was the rightful heir of the kings that had ruled Egypt for many centuries. These cultic lists are more a subjective choice of predecessors than an actual enumeration of all kings: they will in most cases include kings such as Menes and Mentuhotep II, for these played a pivotal role in the history of ancient Egypt. Other, less important kings, usurpers or kings that were considered to be illegitimate were omitted from the lists. The Turin King List is not simply a list of some kings. It groups them together, and gives each reign duration. It even takes note of some kings that are omitted from the cultic lists, such as the Hyksos. The King List was originally divided into an unknown number of columns or sheets, of which only 11 remain. Columns I to V comprise 25 or 26 lines of text, column VI at least 27 and columns IX and X at least 30. Most lines give the name of a particular king written in a cartouche, followed by the number of years he ruled, and in some cases even by the number of months and days. The number of years credited to some kings of the first and second dynasties is so high that, in those particular cases, they are most likely not correct. It has sometimes been postulated that this high number of years does not reflect the length of a reign but the age at which the king died. Although this possibility can not entirely be overruled, it is strange that the writer should choose to note the age of a king in one case and the length of his reign in another. For the kings of the first three dynasties a name is also written in a cartouche, despite the fact that cartouche-names were not used prior to the rule of the last king of the Third Dynasty, Huni. The kings are grouped together logically, based on the city where they took up residence. These groups do not always entirely correspond to the dynasties into which the kings were placed by Manetho. This indicates that the notion of dynasties was not present or fully developed before the 19th or 20th dynasties. Most groups comprise a line of summation that totals the number of years that this particular group ruled. Despite its incomplete and fragmentary nature, and despite the fact that the placing of the fragments has been contested from time to time, the Turin King List is one of our most important sources of knowledge about the chronology of Egypt between the first and 17th dynasties.
