Some current historians tend to believe Herodotus ' account, primarily because he stated with disbelief that the Phoenicians " as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya ( Africa ), they had the sun on their right-to northward of them " ( The Histories 4. 42 ) -- in Herodotus ' time it was not known that Africa extended south past the equator ; however, Egyptologists also point out that it would have been extremely unusual for an Egyptian Pharaoh to carry out such an expedition.

Some Egyptologists hold to this view though the majority believe Smenkhkare to have been a separate person.

Egyptologists believe that these buildings were related to the important double coronation of the king during the Heb-sed.

While Manetho names Necherophes and the Turin King List names Nebka as the first ruler of the Third dynasty, many Egyptologists now believe Djoser was first king of this dynasty, pointing out that the order in which some predecessors of Khufu are mentioned in the Papyrus Westcar suggests Nebka should be placed between Djoser and Huni, not before Djoser.

Many of the stones used to build the various temples at Tanis came from the old Ramesside town of Qantir ( ancient Pi-Ramesses / Per-Ramesses ), which caused many former generations of Egyptologists to believe that Tanis was, in fact, Per-Ramesses.

Mainstream Egyptologists believe Sneferu was Khufu's father, but only because it was the common tradition that the eldest son or a selected descendant inherited the throne.

Most Egyptologists believe the statuette is contemporary, but some scholars, such as Zahi Hawass, think that it was an artistic reproduction of the 26th dynasty.

Therefore, today, many Egyptologists believe that Pepi II was likely Merenre's own son.

To organize and feed the manpower needed to create these pyramids required a centralized government with extensive powers, and Egyptologists believe the Old Kingdom at this time demonstrated this level of sophistication.

In ancient Canaanite culture, high places were frequently considered to be sacred, and Mount Carmel appears to have been no exception ; Thutmose III lists a holy headland among his Canaanite territories, and if this equates to Carmel, as Egyptologists such as Maspero believe, then it would indicate that the mountain headland was considered sacred from at least the 15th century BC.

Egyptologists who believe Amenemhat I may have waited until his twentieth year to make the move to his new city base their evidence on an inscription found on the foundation blocks of the pyramid's mortuary temple.

Egyptologists such as Flinders Petrie, Alessandre Barsanti and Toby Wilkinson believe it could be the giant underground Gallery Tomb B beneath the funeral passage of the Unas-necropolis at Sakkara.

Setnakhte's origins are unknown, and he may have been a commoner, although many Egyptologists believe he was related to the previous dynasty, the Nineteenth, through his mother and may thus have been a grandson of Ramesses II.

The second historically documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser.

This would not be unexpected since most Egyptologists believe that a generation in Egyptian society lasted a minimum of 25 years and a maximum of 30 years.

However, many Egyptologists today believe that the succession in the Amun priesthood actually ran from Piankh to Herihor to Pinedjem I.

Egyptologists such as Wolfgang Helck, Nicolas Grimal, Hermann Alexander Schlögl and Francesco Tiradritti believe that Nynetjer left a realm that was suffering from an overly complex state administration and that Ninetjer decided to split Egypt to leave it to his two sons ( or, at least, to two successors ) who would rule two separate kingdoms, in the hope that the two rulers could better administer the states.

In contrast, Egyptologists such as Barbara Bell believe that an economic catastrophe such as a famine or a long lasting drought affected Egypt around this time.

He is assigned a reign of twenty-eight years by the Turin Canon although some Egyptologists believe this is an error and should rather be thirty-eight years.

Egyptologists today believe that either he or more likely Piye was the Year 12 Nubian king mentioned in a well-known inscription at Wadi Gasus which associates the Adopted God's Adoratice of Amun, Amenirdis, Kashta's daughter together with Year 19 of the serving God's Wife of Amun, Shepenupet.

It has an almost pyramidal shape when viewed from the entrance to the Valley of the Kings, and therefore some Egyptologists believe it may have been the reason for choosing the location as a Royal Necropolis.

However these remains have now been lost, and Egyptologists believe that this was not the grave of Khaemweset but were the remains of an Apis Bull made into a human form to resemble the Prince.

Egyptologists such as Wolfgang Helck and Peter Munro believe that Nebra was buried in the gallery tomb B beneath the cortege passage of the Unas necropolis at Saqqara.

Other Egyptologists, such as Wolfgang Helck and Dietrich Wildung, are not so sure and believe that Senedj and Peribsen were different rulers.

Some Egyptologists suggest this Lower Chamber was intended to be the original burial chamber, but Pharaoh Khufu later changed his mind and wanted it to be higher up in the pyramid.

Some of the early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex believed the Great Sphinx and other structures in the Sphinx enclosure predated the traditional date of construction ( the reign of Khafra or Khephren, 2520 – 2492 BC ).

" However, he is the most ephemeral ruler of this dynasty and some Egyptologists such as Miroslav Verner have strongly argued that Shepseskare's reign lasted only a few months at the most based upon the evidence of an unfinished fifth dynasty royal pyramid at Abusir, whose base was barely completed before it was abandoned as well as the very small number of objects identifying this king.

Because of theological statements like this, many past Egyptologists, such as Siegfried Morenz, believed that beneath the polytheistic traditions of Egyptian religion there was an increasing belief in a unity of the divine, moving toward monotheism.

Egyptologists have long debated the degree to which the pharaoh was considered a god.

Murray was the first in a line of female Egyptologists employed at The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester.

Based on the association of her name with the throne, some early Egyptologists believed that Isis's original function was that of throne-mother.

Some early Egyptologists have proposed that it was a stylised representation of the giraffe, due to the large flat-topped ' horns ' which correspond to a giraffe's ossicones.

Today Egyptologists generally agree that Hatshepsut assumed the position of pharaoh and the length of her reign usually is given as twenty-two years, since she was assigned a reign of twenty-one years and nine months by the third-century BCE historian, Manetho, who had access to many historical records that now are lost.

Although many Egyptologists have claimed that her foreign policy was mainly peaceful, there is evidence that Hatshepsut led successful military campaigns in Nubia, the Levant, and Syria early in her career.

The possible reasons for her breasts not being emphasized in the most formal statues were debated among some early Egyptologists, who failed to understand the ritual religious symbolism, to take into account the fact that many women and goddesses portrayed in ancient Egyptian art often lack delineation of breasts, and that the physical aspect of the gender of pharaohs was never stressed in the art.

For many years, presuming that it was Thutmose III acting out of resentment once he became pharaoh, early modern Egyptologists presumed that the erasures were similar to the Roman damnatio memoriae.

Most Egyptologists today side with Sir Flinders Petrie that Egyptian religion was strictly polytheistic, in which Thoth would be a separate god.

and his predecessor from their agents in Palestine, leads some Egyptologists to conclude that in the century before the Exodus an active literary intercourse was carried on between these nations, and that the medium of the correspondence was the Babylonian language and script.

Modern historians rely on a comparison of inscriptions and chronological considerations to reconstruct the chronology of Thutmose III, and there is unanimity among Egyptologists that he counted as his own years the 21 years that Hatshepsut was on the throne, even though no inscription has ever been found explicitly stating this fact.

Nicholas Reeves and other Egyptologists contend that Smenkhkare was the same person as Neferneferuaten, who ruled together with Akhenaten as co-regent for the final one or two years of Akhenaten's reign.

His name is reconstructed by Egyptologists as *, as it was written and survived in later Coptic as Aphōph.

Some Egyptologists have suggested that Maahes was of foreign origin ; indeed there is some evidence that he may have been identical with the lion-god Apedemak worshipped in Nubia and Egypt's Western Desert.

Anuket was depicted as a woman with a headdress of feathers ( thought by most Egyptologists to be a detail deriving from Nubia ).

In Egyptian mythology, Sopdet was the deification of Sothis, a star considered by almost all Egyptologists to be Sirius.

Since Khasekhemwy, a pharaoh from the 2nd dynasty, was the last pharaoh to be buried at Abydos, some Egyptologists infer that the shift to a more northerly capital was completed during Djoser's time.

While the Old Kingdom was a period of internal security and prosperity, it was followed by a period of disunity and relative cultural decline referred to by Egyptologists as the First Intermediate Period.