The Sixteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty XVI) was a dynasty of pharaohs that ruled the Theban region in Upper Egypt as "shepherd [hyksos] kings", but by Eusebius as Theban. For this reason other scholars do not follow Ryholt and see only insufficient evidence for the interpretation of the Sixteenth Dynasty as Theban.
History
The continuing war against 15th Dynasty dominated the short-lived 16th Dynasty. The armies of the 15th Dynasty, winning town after town from their southern enemies, continually encroached on the 16th Dynasty territory, eventually threatening and then conquering Thebes itself. In his study of the Second Intermediate Period, the Egyptologist Kim Ryholt has suggested that Dedumose I sued for a truce in the latter years of the dynasty, Wolfgang Helck, who also believes that the 16th Dynasty was an Hyksos vassal state, proposed a slightly different list of kings. Many of the rulers listed here in the 16th Dynasty under the hypothesis that they were vassals of the Hyksos are put in the 14th Dynasty in the hypothesis that the 16th Dynasty was an independent Theban kingdom. The chronological ordering is largely uncertain.
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|+Dynasty XV/XVI as vassals of the Hyksos While most likely rulers based in Thebes itself, some may have been local rulers from other important Upper Egyptian towns, including Abydos, El Kab and Edfu. Not listed in the Turin canon (after Ryholt) is Wepwawetemsaf, who left a stele at Abydos and was likely a local kinglet of the Abydos Dynasty. Others, such as Helck, Vandersleyen, Bennett combine some of these rulers with the Seventeenth Dynasty of Egypt. The list of rulers is given here as per Kim Ryholt and is supposedly in chronological order:
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|+Dynasty XVI as an independent Theban kingdom
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| || ||Five kings lost in a lacuna of the Turin canon
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Additional kings are classified as belonging to this dynasty per Kim Ryholt but their chronological position is uncertain. They may correspond to the last five lost kings on the Turin canon:
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|+Dynasty XVI as an independent Theban kingdom (uncertain order)
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! style="width:270px" |Name of king
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|frameless|154x154px|| ||May have tried to sue the Hyksos for peace
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|frameless|337x337px|| ||Left a colossal statue of himself in Karnak
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Comparison of regnal lists
The sixteenth dynasty is rarely recorded on surviving king lists due to the period between the end of the Middle Kingdom and the beginning of the New Kingdom being skipped over on most lists. The Turin King List originally included a list of fifteen kings with individual reign lengths, however the papyrus is now in a fragmentary state and much of the information is now lost. Manetho's Aegyptiaca would have originally contained information on this dynasty but the work as a whole is now lost, and portions of the king list only exist in quotations. According to the version of Aegyptiaca quoted by Sextus Julius Africanus, the sixteenth dynasty was made up of "32 shepherd kings for 518 years" while the version quoted by Eusebius stated the dynasty had "5 kings of Thebes for 190 years".
The Karnak King List included some names of kings from this dynasty, but the list itself is in a fragmentary condition, and the names on the original list were not placed in regnal order.
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!Historical Pharaoh
!Karnak King List
!Turin King List
!Turin List Reign Length