Periodization of ancient Egypt

[1] The system of 30 dynasties recorded by third-century BC Greek-speaking Egyptian priest Manetho is still in use today;[2] however, the system of "periods" and "kingdoms" used to group the dynasties is of modern origin (19th and 20th centuries CE).

[3] In his 1844–1857 Ägyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen became the first Egyptologist to propose what became the modern tripartite division for Egypt's history:[3] Bunsen explained, in the English translation of his 1844 work, how he came to derive the three Kingdoms:[4] In 1834 I discovered in the list of Eratosthenes the key to the restoration of the first 12 Dynasties of Manetho, and was thereby enabled to fix the length of the Old Empire.

These two points being settled, the next step obviously was, to fill up the chasm between the Old and New Empires, which is commonly called the Hyksos Period ...

[3] Bunsen's student Karl Richard Lepsius primarily used a bipartite system in his 1849–1858 Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien:[5] Auguste Mariette's 1867 Aperçu de l'histoire ancienne d'Égypte:[5] Alfred Wiedemann's Ägyptische Geschichte:[5] Henri Gauthier's 1907–1917 Le Livre des Rois d'Egypte:[5] 19th-century Egyptology did not use the concept of "intermediate periods"; these were included as part of the preceding periods "as times of interval or transition".

[6] In 1942, during the Second World War, German Egyptologist Hanns Stock's Studien zur Geschichte und Archäologie der 13. bis 17.