Alex: “Why is there still no convincing model for the Old Kingdom? For me, the answer is obvious - the OK samples still gravitate to the older radiocarbon age and the issue has not gone since the beginning of the millennium (Haas et al., Bonani et al.)”



Dr Ramsey had this to say about traditional radiocarbon dates:

“Taken in isolation, radiocarbon dates rarely allow for high-resolution chronological analysis, because of statistical scatter and the imprecision resulting from the calibration process. Typically, individual dates extend over 200–300 calendar years at 95% probability.”

Dr Ramsey combined radiocarbon and archaeological evidence within a Bayesian paradigm to produce an absolute chronology for early Egypt. I thought to bracket the OK between two of his dates that would provide us with a time frame into which Dynasties 4 - 8 (about 450 years) needed to fit:

Dyn. 3 Netjerikhet c.2658 BC and Dyn. 11 Ipi-ha-ishutef c.2070 BC, about 588 years.

588 - 450 = 138 years into which Netjerikhet to Snefru (about 78 years) and beginning of FIP to Dyn. 11 (about 35 years) needs to fit.

78 + 35 = 113 years which is close enough to 138 years.

It seems Ian Shaw’s OK dates are reasonably accurate to within +-50 years, a useful benchmark for comparing astronomically derived dates.

Chris