Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

The era of the 25^th Dynasty during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE witnessed the annexation of Egypt by kings from the neighboring land of Kush. The phrase “Twenty-fifth Dynasty” may therefore refer to either this family of royals, the state they commanded, or the historical period of their rule, but in each case research has consistently focused on the regime’s foreign aspect and its possible effects. The sequence of discovery has also proven especially consequential: not only have sources known first to scholarship shaped the interpretation of evidence found later, but the modern political contexts of those earliest discoveries have left a lasting and often misleading impression upon subsequent understanding of the period. As a result, fundamental assumptions made by scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been drawn into question during the twenty-first century through a reevaluation of that evidence, particularly in debates related to the dynasty’s origins, chronology, and statecraft.