Descent from antiquity

Descent from antiquity (commonly abbreviated as DFA) is the project of establishing a well-researched, generation-by-generation descent of living persons from people living in. It is an ultimate challenge in and.

The idea is by no means new. Hellenistic dynasties, such as the, claimed descent from gods and legendary heroes. In the Middle Ages, major royal dynasties of Europe sponsored compilations claiming their descent from, , and other illustrious heroes or even gods of antiquity, in particular the rulers of (see also , ). Such claims were intended as propaganda glorifying a royal patron by trumpeting the antiquity and nobility of his ancestry. These descents lines included not only mythical figures but also stretches of outright fiction, much of which is still widely perpetuated today. The distinguishing feature of a DFA compared to such efforts is the intent to establish an ancestry that is historically accurate and verifiable. Nevertheless, DFA research still focuses on the ancestries of royal and noble families, since the historical record is most complete for such families.

The possibility of establishing a DFA as a result of serious genealogical research was raised in a pair of influential essays, by the, , and the late ,. Wagner explored the reasons why it was difficult to do, and suggested several possible routes, based on the work of genealogists such as and. The term ‘Descents from Antiquity’ was coined by T. Stanford Mommaerts in 1984/5. The following years have seen a number of studies of the possibilities. These are highly variable in the quality of their research. Many if not most, of the DFA-related publications widely used by amateur genealogists are essentially worthless. The best-researched and most complete study to date is by.

No DFA has been proven at this time. However, research has established the outlines of several possible or likely ancestries that could become DFAs. Moreover, the project has stimulated detailed inquiry into the of ancient and early medieval societies, an effort which is of great value in illuminating the social transformations which took place in those societies.

Definitions
The terms descent and antiquity both bear some discussion.

Genealogical research usually focuses on biological descent as established by documentary evidence. However, DFA research requires investigating genealogical links in many different societies, which may have had different notions of descent that may, moreover, have changed over time. such as "uncle" or "cousin" may change radically in meaning over time. Adoptions may not be distinguished from biological births in the available documents – a particular feature of societies such as India or China. Hence the project forces the researcher to decide whether to adopt a biological or a cultural notion of descent.

A second issue is the so-called undetected adultery problem. Available documentation typically gives more information about paternity than maternity, and usually reflects the parentage that was accepted in an individual’s lifetime. However, modern research has shown that as many as 10% of the children born in some Western societies have a biological father who is not the officially documented father of the child. An example relevant to DFA is the paternity of the Byzantine Emperor : his mother,, was married to the future , whose ancestry is uncertain, while still mistress of , arguably a descendant, at the time of his birth. While the adultery rate surely fluctuated over time and by social class, it is a simple calculation to show that any very long patrilineal descent is unlikely to be biologically accurate, even if the historical accuracy of the documentation for each link is unimpeachable.

Definitions of "antiquity" may also differ. The usual definition of the end of in Europe is the end of the  in 476. There are Irish (e.g., from ) and Welsh descents which are generally considered reliable to the early, which would formally meet this definition. But these are societies, and such ancestries are not usually considered DFAs for this reason. Instead, an ancestry which reaches the later in the  is often considered early enough for a DFA. However, the term "antiquity" is normally thought of as, or earlier. With this definition, an acceptable DFA should seek to establish descent from an ancestor who lived before the.

These definitions are all clearly Eurocentric. In principle, DFAs could also be established in non-European societies, such as China or India. Such a DFA implies a definition of "antiquity" that is appropriate to such societies. For example, a Chinese DFA might seek to establish descent from the time of the, or before the ; an Indian DFA might seek to establish descent from the time of the or earlier.

Caucasian route
The most complete proposal for a DFA is the Bagratid one. The route starts with, the first of the , flourishing ca. 250 BC. One of his descendants, king , who reigned early in the , is known to have been ancestor of. The latter's son was the father-in-law of, an Armenian ruler from the  dynasty. Then the line can be traced, though not with certainty, to a much later Mamikonian,, whose son-in-law was Bagratuni, Constable of  and forefather of all the living. The advantage of this route is that its crucial links (from Arsacids to s, from Gregorids to Mamikonids, and from Mamikonids to Bagratids) may be corroborated by near-contemporary sources, dating to within a century after the key marriages took place.

Genealogists wishing to trace a DFA to through the Bagratids face the difficulty of establishing a valid line of descent from them to the nobility and royalty of Western Europe. One possibility is the Taronid link. It is known that one of the branches of the Bagratids were rulers of. After they entered Byzantine service, one Maria Taronitissa married Ioanne, Duke of , whose daughters were the wives of the Crusader monarchs of and. Thence a line can be traced easily to the s and hence to the. Another line, researched in a paper by Dr. Rafal T. Prinke, a well-known Polish genealogist, leads through Helene Komnena, wife of, and is based on identyfing her mother Irene as Kata, daughter of.

This DFA is fairly solid back to the, and in principle is traceable to the. However, the genealogy of the Arsacid dynasty itself is poorly known, both in its Armenian branch and its main line. Archaeological discoveries in and  in recent decades have improved our knowledge of the main line genealogy, but it is still incomplete. That of the Armenian branch, and its relationship to the main line, is still very obscure. Nevertheless it is universally agreed that the kings of Parthia and Armenia over several centuries all belonged to the same line of descent.

Pre-Arsacid descents to this line have also been proposed. The Roman historian states that "the royal dynasty of  married into the royal families of, , and most recently ". In conjunction with other information about these marriages, Settipani interpreted Strabo's statement as showing that a blood link very probably existed between the Arsacid rulers of Parthia-Armenia, the kings of, and the kings of. The latter are known to have been descended from the s, and the Seleucids (as was well known to the ancient authors) prided themselves on being female-line descendants of the.

Prospects for tracing ancestries before the are currently slim. Settipani proposed in an Egyptian connection through the marriage of the princess  recorded by, and suggested descent lines from her back to ; connections between the  and the  have been suggested but none are plausible. However, the Nitetis descent seems most improbable and Settipani himself has since repudiated it. Chris Bennett proposed a conjecture that may have had Babylonian ancestry traceable to the, but this path is also highly speculative. The most desirable pre-Achaemenid path would be one that led to an descent. The Assyrian kings claimed descent from one, king in the.

Other postulated routes
Innumerable alternative routes of descent from antiquity have been posited. One of the most interesting proposals is to establish 's descent from one of the senatorial families of the later-day based in southern Gaul. While such a link probably existed, extant sources do not permit to reconstruct it with any degree of certainty. The record of senatorial families in the 5th and 6th centuries is very sparse. The genealogical evidence on the of European history is so desultory that we cannot yet even reconstruct a firm blood link between the s and the preceding  dynasty, although there are some very plausible proposals widely accepted as true. Moreover, while a large amount of data exists with which to construct a prosopography of the leading provincial families of Imperial Rome in southern Gaul, it is not yet possible to establish a Gallic line that traverses the Imperial Age, though a Roman line through a Gallic one had been proposed in by. Therefore, all reconstructions of the DFA through Western European monarchs must remain precarious at best and absolutely speculative at worst. Again, the most authoritative published research on these topics is by Settipani. Though two possible lines are presented for the ancestry of, both are linked to the ancestors who are in turn reputedly linked to the genealogies.

A possible alternative route to Settipani's original scheme goes through the Counts of in. That route starts with a in the. It is argued that this individual was descended from a  of the great  clan. The line is documented in a controversial deed that links the full descent to the historically attested count ; however the genealogical data in that document seems to be sound. If that line holds, due to demographics most of is descended from the Mamikonians, and therefore from their ancestors, as indicated by Settipani. However, it is also said that the mentioned Count Ardabastos was a nephew of Emperor, whose ancestry, though Armenian, was of a lower birth.

The well known claim that the of Ethiopia is descended from  is unverifiable since reliable documentation is lacking before the. However, an interesting possibility raised by David Kelley in Wagner’s original essay was a DFA to the line of king of Israel, through his descendants the  and the s, heads of the exiled Jewish community in Babylon. Kelley noted a study of the Jews of Narbonne by Arthur Zuckerman which proposed that a failed claimant to the exilarchate, Natronai ben Havivai, became head of the Jews of Narbonne under the title of  and was better known to history as Theodoric, Count of Septimania, from whom many descents can be traced. Unfortunately, Nathaniel Taylor has shown that Zuckerman’s theory was based on a misreading of the key document.

Many Muslim families, including such leading families as the kings of, the  kings of  and the s, claim descent from the Prophet  or his close relatives. The traditional genealogy of the Prophet’s clan in the tribe is widely regarded as accurate to the. While many such descents undoubtedly exist, it is difficult to verify them, since the ancestries of even the most exalted of these families include several generations lacking contemporary documentation, or for which the traditions are contradictory.

It has also proved remarkably difficult to establish a Quraish descent into Western Europe in medieval times. One of the more promising conjectures is a proposal by Francisco António Doria (with the help of, and following some suggestions by Nathaniel Taylor), to trace the ancestry of several old noble families in to a family of the late , the Lords of  in. Doria found strong persuasive documentary evidence dating from 10th century Portugal that there were descendants of the amirs of  near Coimbra, and that they might have also have been ancestors of the Lords of Maia. There are several male line descents to the present day that can be traced to the Maia clan in a trustworthy manner; chief example is that of the great da Silva family (da Silva Pessanha (chiefs of lineage in both and ), Teles da Silva, da Silva e Meneses, da Silva de Mello Breyner and da Silva Teles da Gama).

In the, a descent from antiquity may be easier to establish. The claims descent from the, who is generally considered historical, though his time of life is uncertain. However, contemporary Japanese records do not commence till several centuries after Ojin’s time, and the tradition reports a major change to a shortly before the start of the literate period.

The oldest likely DFA is Chinese. is believed to be a 77-generation male-line descendant of, and many other Chinese claim descent from this line. The claim is quite plausible, since it can be proved that the family has been venerated since at least early times, though full documentation has not been studied, and it is likely that some of the descent involves links by adoption. himself is said to have been a distaff relative of the Dukes of, who were themselves descended from the , the earliest ruling family in Chinese tradition which can be documented by contemporary records.

References and resources

 * C. J. Bennett, A Babylonian Ancestry for King Darius, Journal of Ancient and Mediæval Studies XII (1995) 41-56
 * -- Annotations to the Egyptian Descent in the Descents From Antiquity Charts, Journal of Royal and Noble Genealogy 1:2 (1996) 2-10 (much of which is incorporated in the DFA discussion file here: )
 * -- Ptolemaic Descendants is a webpage that summarizes some hypotheses for Ptolemaic descents.
 * I. Moncreiffe of that Ilk & D. Pottinger, Blood Royal, (Nelson, London, 1956).
 * T. S. M. Mommaerts-Browne, 'A Key to Descents from Antiquity', Journal of Ancient and Medieval Studies III, (1984-85) 76-107
 * -- Monomachos, Tornikes and an Uncharted Caucasian Ancestry, in Foundations, 2:2, (2006), 158-162.
 * T. S. M. Mommaerts & D. H. Kelley, The Anicii of Gaul and Rome, in Fifth-century Gaul: a Crisis of identity?, ed. by John Drinkwater and Hugh Elton, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge & New York, 1992) 111-121.
 * Rafał T. Prinke, Krew Bagratydów. Genealogiczne związki Rurykowiczów i Komnenów z Bagratydami w XII wieku, in: Nuntius Vetustatis, sive Opuscula diversa Professori Georgio Wisłocki septuagenario dedicata, Posnaniae, Anno Domini MCMXCVIII..
 * ,  (Editions Christian, Paris, 1989). See also Addenda to Les Ancêtres de Charlemagne
 * --  (Editions Christian, Paris, 1991)
 * -- , 1993
 * -- , Prosopographica et Genealogica vol. 2 (Linacre College, Oxford, 2000). See also Addenda et Corrigenda and Review by Nathaniel Taylor
 * -- , 2000, en collaboration avec
 * -- , 2004
 * -- Continuité des élites à Byzance durant les siècles obscurs. Les princes caucasiens et l'Empire du VIe au IXe siècle, 2006
 * N. L. Taylor, Saint William, King David, and Makhir: A Controversial Medieval Descent, The American Genealogist, 72 (1997) 205-223. Also available at Saint William, King David, and Makhir
 * -- Roman Genealogical Continuity and the "Descents from Antiquity" Question: A Review Article, The American Genealogist, 76 (2001) 129-136. Also available at Roman Genealogical Continuity
 * , Bridges to Antiquity in Pedigree and Progress: Essays in the Genealogical Interpretation of History (Phillimore, London, 1975)

Useful material on this topic can be found in the archives of the UseNet newsgroup soc.genealogy.medieval, (which is also archived at GEN-MEDIEVAL), and at GEN-ANCIENT. The group Ancient Genealogy discusses DFA-related issues.

Much of the published work on this topic is no more reliable than medieval genealogies, and should be used cautiously. A well-known example is:


 * R. W. Stuart, Royalty for Commoners: The Complete Known Lineage of John of Gaunt, Son of Edward III, King of England, and Queen Philippa (4th edn) (Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 2002).

This is also true for most DFA material on the web, see e.g. ego/et_deo/.