You may have occasionally found yourself wondering who the longest-reigning monarch in all of recorded history was, but, chances are, you have probably never had the time to look it up.
Queen Elizabeth II of Britain is the longest-reigning monarch who is currently still alive. She ascended to the throne on February 6, 1952 and has remained queen ever since. In spite of this, however, she is not the longest-reigning monarch of all time or even the longest-reigning monarch in modern history.
The longest reigning monarch in modern history is King Sobhuza II of Swaziland, who ascended to the throne on December 10, 1899 and continued to reign until his death on August 21, 1982. He reigned for nearly eighty-three years, which is truly an astonishingly long period of time. Nonetheless, although King Sobhuza II is the longest-reigning monarch in modern times, he is not even close to being the longest-reigning monarch of all time.
The longest reigning monarch of all time is Pharaoh Pepi II Neferkare of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, who ascended to the throne in 2278 B.C. when he was only six years old. He continued to reign until his death in 2184 B.C. at the age of one hundred years old. He reigned for a whopping timespan of ninety-four years, which is over a decade longer than King Sobhuza II. To put that into perspective, ninety-four years is roughly the same amount of time between the country of Egypt gaining nominal independence from the British Empire and the present day.
In fact, Pharaoh Pepi II Neferkare lived for so long that his death caused widespread chaos and instability throughout all of Egypt. At the time of his death, he had already outlived all of his brothers and sisters as well as all of his sons. His only living descendant was his daughter, who was already old and senile. His daughter ascended to the throne and became Pharaoh Nitokeri, the first female pharaoh in all of Egyptian history. She died sometime around 2181 B.C., having only reigned for three or four years. After her death, the kingdom, which was already falling apart, collapsed into pieces. This marked the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the beginning of the First Intermediate Period. It would not be for approximately another 125 years until Egypt would once again be reunited under the rule of a single leader.
CORRECTION
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that ninety-four years was roughly the time period between the sinking of the Titanic and the present day. That was a math error on my part. The Titanic sank in 1912, meaning that the time between the sinking of the Titanic and the present day is actually 104 years, not ninety-four years. I have now updated the article to correct the error.
SOURCES
Brier, Bob and Hoyt Hobbs. Ancient Egypt: Everyday Life in the Land of the Nile. Sterling, 2009, New York.
IMAGE CREDITS
The image at the beginning of this article is a photograph of an ancient Egyptian statue depicting a young Pharaoh Pepi II sitting on his mother, Ankhesenmeryre II’s lap. This image was retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. The usage of this image is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.5. Attribution: Keith Schengili-Roberts.
That’s interesting. It’s easy to have the impression that the life span of ancient people was much shorter than our own. I guess that wasn’t always the case.
Also I liked the example you gave; comparing his reign to the passage of time since the sinking of the titanic. It really puts it in perspective.
Thank you so much for giving me feedback! I am glad you enjoyed the article.
It is true that the average lifespan in ancient times was significantly shorter than the average lifespan today. The average person usually only lived to be somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five (estimates often vary drastically), but these numbers are radically skewed by the fact that there were many infants who died at birth. There were many people in ancient times who managed to live to be very old. Sokrates was around seventy-two years old when he was executed. Emperor Augustus died when he was seventy-six years old. Diogenes of Sinope died when he was eighty-nine. Pythagoras is said to have lived to be one hundred years old (although modern historians suspect he probably only lived to be around seventy-five).