A Canon Carved in Stone
Inside the limestone walls of the Temple of Seti I, built during the 19th Dynasty around 1290–1279 BCE, is a unique royal inscription. Known as the Abydos King List, it presents the names of 76 of Seti's predecessors in a series of oval cartouches. The list is not a historical record but a carefully curated piece of political and religious propaganda. Its primary function was to establish Seti I's legitimacy by creating a direct, unbroken line of succession from his own reign back to Menes, the traditional first king of Egypt.
The list is inscribed on the west wall of a passage and is arranged in two horizontal rows, each containing 38 cartouches. A third row below endlessly repeats the throne name and personal name of Seti I. The scene depicts Seti I, along with his young son, the future Ramesses II, making an offering to the spirits of these venerated ancestors. Ramesses is shown as a prince, wearing the sidelock of youth and reciting a prayer from a papyrus scroll. This presentation frames the succession as a pious act, reinforcing the family's right to rule. For early Egyptologists, this list, when compared with other sources like the Turin Canon and the writings of the historian Manetho, was a foundational tool for reconstructing the timeline of ancient Egyptian dynasties.
The Politics of Omission
The scientific interest in the Abydos King List comes from who is absent. The omissions are deliberate and systematic, reflecting a state-sanctioned effort to erase rulers considered illegitimate or problematic from the official record. Entire historical periods are ignored. The foreign Hyksos rulers of the Second Intermediate Period are completely absent, as are the kings of the chaotic First Intermediate Period. This selective history shows a fantasy of uninterrupted native Egyptian rule.
Several famous and powerful pharaohs are also missing. Hatshepsut, the successful female pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, is excluded. Her reign challenged the traditional patriarchal order of Egyptian kingship, and her memory was suppressed by her successors. The most significant omission is the group of rulers associated with the Amarna Period. The "heretic king" Akhenaten, who replaced the traditional pantheon with the worship of a single sun-disk, the Aten, is gone. So are his immediate successors, Smenkhkare, Neferneferuaten, Tutankhamun, and Ay. The list instead jumps directly from Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, to Horemheb, the ruler who restored the old religion and dismantled the Atenist heresy. This act of damnatio memoriae effectively erased a complex period from Seti I's official history.