For regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations, please subscribe.
When Herodotus visited Egypt in the 5th century BCE, the Egyptian priests told him that the
first king of Egypt was a man named Min, and that he had founded Memphis and built a dam
there.
About a century and a half later, the Egyptian priest and historian Manetho wrote that the
first dynasty of Egypt was founded by Mineas or Menes of the city of This and that he met
his end by being eaten by a hippopotamus.
And we do have evidence that this name was part of Egyptian tradition for some time.
In the Turin Canon, the Abydos King list, and the reliefs of the Ramesseum, all coming
from the New Kingdom period, centuries before Herodotus, Menes as referred to as the first
king.
But no archaeological evidence for the existence of Menes has ever been found, and he is not
mentioned in a clearly royal context until the New Kingdom, over a thousand years after
he was said to have lived.
So controversy still exists over who Menes was and whether there really was a real person
by that name.
What evidence do we have for and against and what possible explanations for the story are
there?
Find out as we examine the mystery of King Menes.
I suppose the first question we should answer is: what is our oldest ever reference to Menes
in Egyptian documents?
The earliest mention of Menes is often said to be an 18th Dynasty scarab that shows the
name of “Menes” in a cartouche supported by a winged scarab beetle above a kneeling
god holding in each outstretched hand a papyrus plant on which the juxtaposed cartouches of
Hatshepsut and Thutmose III appear.
Scholars usually interpreted this as an effort by Hatshepsut to legitimize her rule, by associating
herself with the founder king.
Recently, however, the authenticity of the scarab has been questioned.
If confirmed as a forgery, the oldest document that mentions Menes in a clearly royal context
would be the Abydos king list of Seti I. It dates to around 1300 BCE.
Menes, mind you, would have lived somewhere around 3000 BCE.
Because Menes is not mentioned in a clearly royal context until the New Kingdom, several
theories interpret the name “Menes” as being something other than the name of an
actual ruler; and instead, propose that it is an invention of the New Kingdom.
The most prominent of these theories states that the name Menes is based on the use of
the Mn sign to designate “someone” or “so and so,” a person whose name is not
known, which means that if the name of the first king of the 1st Dynasty had been forgotten
when the king lists were compiled, something would have to be put in its place, like Mn.
King So-and-so.
Another proposal is that Menes is indeed a name, but that he is a mythical figure, and
we shouldn’t assume he is historical.
But the fact that the names of four of the eight kings of the 1st Dynasty can be confirmed
by contemporary documents, and a fifth by an Old Kingdom document, make it unlikely
that the compilers of the New Kingdom king lists would be right about five of the eight
kings of the 1st Dynasty, but ignorant about the most important, the founder king, Menes.
Here is a list of the kings of the 1st dynasty as found by archaeologists, and here is the
list of kings of the 1st dynasty as stated in the Abydos King List.
The Abydos King List only has eight main kings instead of nine, but Merneith was a woman,
so they probably left her out.
Here is the list of Manetho.
As you can see they don’t match up very well, but keep four things in mind : 1) the
names are Hellenized (that is in Greek form), 2) they have probably been corrupted by being
passed down from generation to generation over 2,000 years, 3) different versions of
Manetho have survived to today, and they have alternate spellings, and 4) Egyptian kings
had more than one name.
But we need to be careful in assuming automatically that we have one-to-one correspondence with
these names.
Something that makes this issue more complicated is that first king of the first dynasty was
not, as you might think, the first Egyptian monarch.
The evolution of Egyptian kingship was a slow and laborious process, which began before
the 1st Dynasty by at least a few centuries.
And there were a couple of minor kings of the 1st dynasty, which might come into play
too.
But considering that there were earlier kings, why was Menes selected by tradition as the
first king?
The most plausible reason is that Menes’ accomplishments distinguished him from his
predecessors.
He must have done something special.
So one thing we can do is examine the documentary and archaeological evidence associated with
the main achievements attributed to Menes and attempt to determine whether there is
a known king (or kings) that can be linked to those achievements.
In royal Egyptian thinking and imagery, the idea of Egypt's unity was of the utmost importance.
We now know that the ceremony of recreating the union shown on the Palermo Stone was part
of the king's coronation and that it was practiced for more than 1500 years.
Menes’ unification of Egypt is not mentioned by either Herodotus or Manetho.
However, there is evidence that he received credit for this achievement under the New
Kingdom.
We can see a scene of priests bringing sculptures of monarchs with labels bearing their names
in front of them in the mortuary temple of Ramesses II.
The first three kings are Menes, Mentuhotep II, and Ahmose.
Mentuhotep II and Ahmose are, respectively, the unifiers of Egypt after the First and
Second Intermediate Periods, and founders of the Middle and New Kingdoms.
It is interpreted, therefore, that Menes was considered the first unifier of Egypt.
Given that the concept of unification was so important in ancient Egypt, it is likely
that Menes association with unification was the primary reason he was considered the first
king.
According to tradition, the Egyptian state was formed out of two Predynastic kingdoms,
Upper and Lower Egypt.
The concept of the Egyptian state was expressed throughout all periods in countless sources
as a union of two previously separate individual kingdoms.
It’s in this context we need to introduce a recurring character when talking about early
dynastic Egypt: Narmer.
His name came to us via several sources, both historical and archaeological.
He is even cited a lot more than Menes in contemporary sources.
Narmer was, just like Menes, considered the first king of a unified Egypt and is well
known for the renowned Narmer’s Palette, which
contains one the earliest signs of kingship and propaganda in Ancient Egypt.
The verso of the Narmer Palette is dominated by the image of Narmer wearing the white crown
of Upper Egypt in the classic pose of “smiting the enemy.”
The prisoner is about to kneel almost naked in front of him.
To the right of the prisoner’s head are two hieroglyphs, a harpoon, and a lake, which
have been read as the place name of the Harpoon province, the northwest most territory of
the Delta, adjacent to Libya.
Facing the king, above the prisoner, is the falcon god Horus, who holds a rope that passes
through the nose of a human head.
The head is attached to the “land” hieroglyph from which six papyrus plants grow.
The usual interpretation of this scene is that Horus delivers the land of the papyrus
(the Delta) to the king.
On the recto of the Palette, Narmer is shown wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt marching
in a procession to two rows of decapitated prisoners, above which are four symbols: a
door, a bird, a boat with upturned ends, and a falcon on a harpoon.
There are several differing interpretations of these symbols, but they all involve some
combination of the Harpoon province, Lake Mareotis (which is in the Harpoon province)
and/or Buto, which is in the territory next to the Harpoon province.
Regardless, they all refer to the west Delta.
In the Narmer year label, the event represented designates the most significant event of the
year, making it the earliest year label found in Egypt.
On the upper right side is Narmer’s name in a serekh.
The year event is indicated to the left of the serekh by means of a catfish (king Narmer)
with arms, one of which swings a mace while the other clutches a fallen enemy by a clump
of papyrus growing out of his head.
Below the catfish is a chisel, completing the name of Narmer.
The fallen enemy is determined by the pot hieroglyph, like the one on the Narmer Cylinder.
The year event on the label is “the smiting of the papyrus people” which corresponds
to the people of the west Delta referred to on the Palette.
On both sides of the palette, Narmer is shown wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower
Egypt, and the first to do so.
This changes the report of simply a military victory into a claim of completing the unification
and becoming the first king of a united Egypt.
This historical interpretation is strengthened by the importance Narmer put on the event.
We know he considered it an important event because of the impressiveness of the Narmer
Palette, because he named a year after it, and because at least two other important objects
of his reign were devoted to it: An ivory cylinder and the inlaid container of which
fragments were found around Narmer’s tomb at Abydos.
In addition, the Narmer Macehead probably refers to the event’s aftermath.
There is no other example in the Early Dynastic period of an event being given this level
of importance.
The interpretation of the crown in Narmer’s palette has, however, changed in the last
few decades and although Narmer may not necessarily have been the only king responsible for unifying
Egypt, there is strong evidence that he completed the last stage of the unification by conquering
the west Delta and claimed for himself in very prominent ways the symbolic role of unifier
of Egypt.
Curiously, this is the same role attributed to Menes, which suggests, to some extent,
that they were the same person.
A second hypothesis on the question of who exactly Menes was can be traced back to the
discovery of the famous Naqada label in the great mastaba tomb at Naqada in the end of
the XIX century.
The tomb was originally thought to be that of Menes and is often still referred to as
the “Tomb of Menes”, but it has since been attributed to Neith-Hotep, a queen consort
of the early 1st dynasty.
The misunderstanding was caused by a triple enclosure with a triangular roof in the top
register.
Inside are a vulture and a snake, each sitting on a basket, assumed to represent the “Two
Ladies,” the goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet.
To the left of the triple structure is the name of Aha in a serekh.
Two other names for Aha, but not in serekhs, appear on the other side of the enclosure.
Egyptologists then interpreted the symbols in the triple enclosure as being the name
of king Menes and, since it was next to the name Aha, he concluded they were the same
person; hence Aha was Menes.
Further interpretation of the tomb, as well as the increase in our understanding of early
hieroglyphs, have shown that the enclosure was actually a shrine and that the symbols
inside it represent the name of the shrine, not at all related to the heated debate of
the identity of king Menes.
Determining whether Menes was the personal name of Narmer or of Aha has occupied much
of the research in this topic in the last decades.
The establishment of Memphis, the Naqada label, the Narmer Prince’s seal, and the Palermo
Stone, all fail to prove whether Narmer or Aha was Menes.
The Abydos Necropolis sealings, on the other hand, provide direct, near contemporary evidence
in favor of Narmer.
The impressions of two cylinder seals were found during the clearance of the tomb of
Den (the best attested ruler of the Early Dynastic Period).
The reconstructed seal contains the Horus names of five kings in order (Narmer, Aha,
Djer, Djet, and Den).
Assuming Narmer was the first king of the 1st Dynasty, these are the first five kings
of that Dynasty.
The kings’ names are not in serekhs, but each is headed by a Horus falcon, a clear
sign of royalty in ancient Egypt.
What we can definitely say is that by the death of Den, the fifth king of the 1st Dynasty,
Egyptian officials had made the decision to begin the list of kings, included in the royal
mortuary cult at Abydos, with Narmer.
It is important to realize that this was a decision, not an inevitability, as earlier
kings were buried at Umm el Qaab, and it’s unlikely that they were already forgotten.
Over a thousand years later, in the New Kingdom, the name Narmer was forgotten, and instead
we find the name Meni.
In all the king lists of that period he is named as the first king, and over a thousand
years after that, when Manetho composed his history, Menes is again listed as the first
king.
But we still cannot be 100% sure that he is identical with Narmer.
It is entirely possible that Narmer was forgotten early on, and then Meni was added to the list
later as a mythical founder, having nothing to do with Narmer.
It is also possible that Meni is the name of a king immediately before or after Narmer.
It’s still a mystery.
But it is possible that this matter could be cleared up in the future.
We just need another find.
Thank you for watching.
If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up.
If you would like to support the channel and help keep it alive, please consider becoming
a patron at patreon.com/WorldofAntiquity, or if you want to make a one-time contribution,
you can do so with a Super Thanks.
You might like my little e-booklet, “Why Ancient History Matters.”
It's designed to persuade people that the subject is important even in the modern world.
You might also wish to use it to help spread the word.
So feel free to share it with someone you know.
It's free for anyone who wants it.
I've left a link in the description box below the video for you to grab a copy.
Catch you later.