These dynasties are usually grouped into periods and kingdoms corresponding to distinct phases in the country's political or cultural evolution. Manetho divided the royal succession into thirty dynasties, and although there are numerous problems with his system, it is retained by Egyptologists to this day as the most straightforward way of delineating the progress of ancient Egyptian civilization.
This work is now lost, but excerpts survive in the works of later antique authors. These dynasties are taken from a history of Egypt, the Aegyptiaka, written in Greek by the Egyptian priest, Manetho, for the Macedonian king of Egypt. The relative chronology of ancient Egypt is centered on a structure of dynasties, or royal houses, akin to the European Windsors, Hohenzollerns.
