Kim Ryholt

Kim Ryholt is a professor of Egyptology at the University of Copenhagen. His 1997 study of Egypt's Second Intermediate Period, roughly 1800 to 1550 BCE, is a standard reference for that fragmented era, though some of his proposals, such as the timing of the 14th Dynasty, are debated.

He has studied the Turin King List papyrus in person and produced an updated reconstruction of its fragments. He also works on Demotic literature and temple libraries, including the Carlsberg papyri from Tebtunis, and co-edited Libraries before Alexandria (2020). In 2011 he argued that the legendary king Nechepsos, named in later Greek astrological writings, can be identified with a real ruler of the 26th Dynasty.

The Turin King List matters to readers of strange history because its opening columns list gods and other divine beings ruling Egypt before the first human king. Ryholt's work is part of the specialist effort to place each surviving fragment and judge which numbers can be read at all.