by
Damien F. Mackey
“In view of the notoriety of Piankhi [Piye], as evidenced by the events
narrated on the stela, we should expect that he was an important figure
in Egyptian history. If so, we would be disappointed. As we shall see,
his life and times are shrouded in mystery”.
Displaced Dynasties
Better not blink or you might miss it.
Thus we have, to name a few, those:
Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples
(6) Missing old Egyptian tombs and temples | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
and the:
Great King Omri missing from Chronicles
https://www.academia.edu/42235075/Great_King_Omri_missing_from_Chronicles
and, again:
Nero’s missing architecture
(6) Nero's missing architecture | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Even:
Henry VIIIs palaces [are] missing
(6) Henry VIII's palaces missing | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
And, of course, there is the Missing Link, still missing and he won’t be missed either (G.K. Chesterton).
Or as someone less sensibly put it, “found missing”.
The above are just a few of the examples of important, presumably historical, characters, who are either poorly attested (statues, relief depictions, etc.), or not at all.
“No monument within Egypt bears [Piankhi’s] name.
No building was constructed by him.
No artifacts belonging to him have been recovered;
no mention of his name occurs in secondary sources”.
Displaced Dynasties
Reading about the impressive, yet most obscure, pharaoh Piankhi (or Piye), took my mind back to when we used to be intrigued, as children in Tasmania, by the famous Disappearing House. Pauline Conolly tells about it: THE DISAPPEARING HOUSE IN TASMANIA - Pauline Conolly
The Disappearing House at “The Corners” Conara
Standing at the turnoff to St Marys at Conara, the so-called “Disappearing House” earned its name by the illusion of its sinking into the ground as travellers approached along the main road from Hobart to Launceston, due to the peculiar conformation of the landscape. On the old road the house would “vanish” as you descended one hill, the other seemed to rise up in front of you and the house would “disappear” behind it. Then as you ascended the next small hill, it would miraculously reappear. ….
That pharaoh Piankhi qualifies for the first part of this trick, the disappearing bit, comes through most clearly in the Displaced Dynasties article, Volume 2- Piankhi the Chameleon (pp. 12-14):
Piankhi: The Traditional View
In view of the notoriety of Piankhi, as evidenced by the events narrated on the stela, we should expect that he was an important figure in Egyptian history. If so, we would be disappointed. As we shall see, his life and times are shrouded in mystery.
When the Piankhi stela was first read by scholars it was immediately recognized that the dignitaries named therein belonged to the late 22nd and 23rd dynasties, and that the rebel Tefnakht must be the father of Bocchoris, the sole occupant of Manetho’s 24th dynasty. With confidence early Egyptologists dated the insurrection of Tefnakht and the response by Piankhi to the last quarter of the 8th century B.C. Flinders Petrie, the eminent and influential British Egyptologist, writing at the turn of the 20th century, dated the “invasion” to the year 720 B.C., with the reigns of the 25th dynasty kings Shabaka and Shabataka following closely on its heels. The whole of the 25th dynasty, including most of the reign of Taharka, is of necessity placed between the time of the Tefnakht rebellion and the conquest and occupation of Egypt by the Assyrians, the later event securely dated to the years 671-664 B.C.
A century of scholarship has refined Petrie’s dates only slightly.
K.A. Kitchen, the foremost living authority on the 3rd Intermediate Period, Piankhi – 618 B.C. … dates the Piankhi incident to 727 B.C. and the most recent analysis by the Egyptologist D.A. Aston … has placed Piankhi’s 21st year only a decade earlier, in the time span 740-735 B.C. If Aston is correct, the median year 738 B.C. cannot be far wrong.
The slight difference of opinion on the date of the Piankhi invasion is related to a secondary question of fundamental concern to this revision. How long did Piankhi continue to rule after the rebellion was suppressed late in his 20th year? ….
On this issue as well, there is some divergence of opinion. The question takes on added significance if it be admitted that he ruled over Egypt for much of this time.
Who is Piankhi, this Nubian king who had, some years before the Tefnakht rebellion, conquered the southern and central portions of Egypt, if not the entire country, and who now scoffed at any challenge to his authority? If we correctly interpret the stela inscription he was a sovereign of long standing in Egypt, not a recent intruder. The stela is dated, as mentioned earlier, to the first month of his 21st year. Based on normal standards of interpretation we should glean from this fact that he had been king of Egypt, or a king within Egypt, for twenty years. That is, however, not the typical interpretation of his great stela. With few exceptions scholars believe that Piankhi had ruled central and southern Egypt for at most a few years before the rebellion, and that his control of the country was lost soon after. When they discuss his dates they are debating only his tenure as king in Nubia, not the length of his sovereignty over Egypt.
The explanation for this opinion is related to considerations apart from the stela inscription itself. There is no evidence within Egypt that Piankhi ruled the country for a single year, much less for twenty years, prior to his 21st year. No monument within Egypt bears his name. No building was constructed by him. No artifacts belonging to him have been recovered; no mention of his name occurs in secondary sources.
In view of his renown, as evidenced in the narrative of the great stela, this is … D.A. Aston, “Takeloth II - A King of the ‘Theban Twenty-Third Dynasty’?” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 75 (1989) 139-153. ….The Great Stele dateline cites the first month of the first season of the civil calendar in Piankhi’s 21st year. The rebellion is over. We assume it ended several months earlier, time for Piankhi to return to Napate and have the monument inscribed (see figure 4 on page 27). ….
Piankhi 618 B.C. a particularly troublesome silence. If he lived in Thebes, wherein he based an army, he has left no evidence of the fact. If he became king in Thebes two decades before the Tefnakht rebellion the lack of inscriptional evidence is difficult, if not impossible to explain. The conclusion follows that his involvement in Egyptian affairs was brief. He came; he conquered; and for reasons unknown, he quickly departed the country. Or so we are told.
When Piankhi withdrew from the delta, laden with treasure, he was the uncontested sovereign of all of Egypt. Where did he go and for how long did he continue to rule? According to scholars, if he moved south to Thebes he did not long remain there. His home was Napata and there he lived out his years. But for how long? On this issue academia is divided. The majority believe that he continued to rule for either ten or twenty additional years, a conclusion based on the most fragile of evidence. Were it not for an obscured year date on a bandage, it might be argued that his name vanishes from Egypt entirely within a few years of the rebellion. Kitchen, who believes his reign in total lasted only 30 years, provides a summary of the evidence:
The one generally accepted year-date of Piankhy is Year 21 on his great stela. However, a minimum of 31 years is assignable to him on the external evidence which is outlined above (sect. 114). To these factors, a little more can be added. First, there are three documents dated by the reign of ‘Pharaoh Py, Si-Ese Meryamun’ - two papyri of his Years 21 and 22, most probably Theban, and the lesser Dakhla stela of Year 24. There is good reason to view Py as the real reading of Piankhy and to attribute all three documents to Piankhy’s reign. Second, a fragmentary bandage from Western Thebes bears an obscure date of Sneferre Piankhy. The visible traces indicate ‘Regnal Year 20', a patch and trace (the latter compatible with a ‘10'), and a shallow sign perhaps an otiose t. In other words, we here have a date higher than Year 20 of Piankhy, and very possibly Year 30 - which would fit very well with the 31 years’ minimum reign which has been already inferred on independent grounds. ….
[End of quotes]
This bears out what I wrote about pharaoh Piankhi in my article, quoting Sir Alan Gardiner:
The Complete Ramses II
(7) The Complete Ramses II | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Gardiner has written:
It is strange … that Manetho makes no mention of the great Sudanese or Cushite warrior Pi‘ankhy who about 730 B.C. suddenly altered the entire complexion of Egyptian affairs. He was the son of a … Kashta … and apparently a brother of the Shabako [Shabaka] whom Manetho presents under the name Sabacōn.
No mention of Piankhi by Manetho?
Obviously, then, this great pharaoh is in crying need of his being united with a major alter ego, so that he can, like the Disappearing House, re-emerge again (including in Manetho).
And this is the way that Displaced Dynasties will choose to go - though with quite the wrong alter ego connection as far as I am concerned.
It is also the way that I chose to go in my Ramses II article (above) in which the reader will find how I was able to fill out the Disappearing Pharaoh, Piankhi.
