Home | Category: Old and Middle Kingdom (Age of the Pyramids)
EARLIEST RULERS OF EGYPT
Scorpion King Marcelo P Campagno of the University of Buenos Aires wrote: “The Palermo Stone (Dynasty 5) indicates the existence of earlier kings, who wore the red crown traditionally linked to Lower Egypt. The Canon of Turin (Dynasty 19) indicates the rule of dynasties of divine spirits. In either case, two features would remain in the Egyptians’ “cultural memory” the fact that there were rulers before Dynasty 1; and the fact that they were different from later kings, since they belonged to a different era.” [Source: Marcelo P Campagno, University of Buenos Aires, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2013 escholarship.org ]
According to legend the first Egyptian king was the god Osiris. Seven hundred years after the first dynasty, members of the Middle Kingdom returned to Abydos to look for Osiris’s grave and designated Djoer’s tomb as being it. A large Temple honoring Osiris was built and Abydos became a major pilgrimage center. A large festival was held there.
Abydos, known as Abdju in ancient times, is where the first pharaohs were buried between 2900 and 2700 B.C. Archaeologists have found a stelae at Abydos of 1st dynasty queen dated to 2900 B.C. and court members of the of the first ruler of the 1st dynasty, Aha, and tags made of bones dated to 3200 B.C. with some of the oldest writing. [Source: John Galvin, National Geographic, April 2005]
Scorpion King
Stories about a Scorpion king are found in ancient Egyptian literature. It was long thought that they were just myths but in recent years some evidence has appeared that has raised the possibility that the Scorpion King may have been a real person who played a critical role in establishing the ancient Egyptian civilization.
In 1995, John Coleman Darnell, a Yale Egyptologist, and his students discovered 18-x-20-inch tableau, dated to 3250 B.C., on a limestone cliff at a site called Gebel Tjauti, about 20 miles northwest of Luxor, that contains some line drawings of animals that are believed to be a record of the exploits of an Egyptian ruler. Because an image of a scorpion is present links to the Scorpion king were made. Some have even gone as far as calling the tableau “world’s oldest historical record” and claim the images are early hieroglyphics and are examples of the world’s oldest writing.
The tableau, probably incised with flint tools, has images of a scorpion, a falcon, large antelope, a bird, a serpent, a figure carrying a staff, a sedan chair, a bull’s head, a captor and captive. No one knows what the images mean. The link to the Scorpion King are based on the fact that the scorpion is near the falcon and falcons in ancient Egypt were associated with the god Horus and the pharaohs.
Televison show: “ The Real Scorpion King” , first shown on the History Channel.
King Narmer
King Narmer on the Narmer Pallette The civilization of ancient Pharonic Egypt was created when Lower (northern) Egypt and Upper (southern) Egypt were united in 3200 B.C. by King Narmer, a ruler from Upper Egypt. He is thought to be have been based in Hierakonpolis (60 miles south of Luxor), where Narmer's palette and other artefacts associated with him have been unearthed.
According to National Geographic History: Exact details about Narmer’s life remain difficult to pin down. It is believed that he hailed from Hierakonpolis. He is credited with organizing his new unified kingdom into some 40 regions, called nomes. He married, and his royal wife’s name was Neithhotep, after a creator goddess, Neith. Narmer also built a temple dedicated to the creator god Ptah at Memphis, another important ancient Egyptian city. [Source: National Geographic, National Geographic, June 10, 2022]
Details of Narmer’s death are hazy; classical historians, writing millennia after he died, attributed it to being carried off by a hippopotamus. Some Egyptologists post that it could have been a figure of speech and not a literal hippo, but the cause of death remains an open question. Narmer chose to locate his tomb in the south and would be interred at what would become known as the Abydos Royal Cemetery, where his ancestors and his descendants would also be buried.
Beginning with Narmer, the pharaohs of Egypt’s first two dynasties were buried in the ancestral necropolis of Umm el Qaab, in Abydos. Narmer’s tomb is small, comprising two underground chambers that follow a Predynastic tradition of funerary architecture—a style that would end with him. Both Narmer’s widow and his son (Hor-Aha) would be buried in larger tombs. The pharaohs who followed would be buried in increasingly monumental structures— a tradition that reached its pinnacle in the grandiose pyramids erected by the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom.
Narmer and the Unification of Egypt
King Namer is credited with unifying ancient Egypt by unifying Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt. According to National Geographic History: Prior to unification, depictions of kings showed different regalia. Rulers of Upper Egypt wore a tall white crown called a hedjet, while in Lower Egypt kings donned a short red crown called a deshret. [Source: National Geographic, National Geographic, June 10, 2022]
Around 3100 B.C., Narmer, changed all that. By incorporating the lands west of the fertile, triangular Nile Delta region into his own kingdom—which spanned the lush Nile Valley area in the south (roughly from what is Cairo today to Lake Nasser)—he created a united Egypt, the world’s first great territorial state. On the Narmer Palette described below Narmer’s name is written on the palette on both sides: a combination of the symbols for a catfish (nar) and a chisel (mer) appear at the top.
When the two lands united, it marked not only the beginnings of a political state, but also the origins of a great cultural one. Beginning with Narmer, Egypt began developing its own distinctive visual style, one that would echo through the ages as the iconography and symbols embraced by Narmer and his successors took hold. These symbols became tools used by pharaohs—from Khufu to Hatshepsut to Ptolemy XII—to convey power, strength, and unity for millennia.
Narmer Palette
Narmer Palette 3100 B.C. The Narmer Palette (now in the Egyptian Museum) is one of the most famous early Egyptian pieces. Dating to around 3200 B.C., it is a classic example of a ceremonial palette, which existed only in early Dynasty Egypt, when such stone palettes
were used to crush materials for paint and for preparing cosmetics. It illustrates events from reign of Narmer, the first pharaoh of Egypt. The hawk is the symbol of the sky god Horus, who is holding a tether attached to six papyrus plants, the symbol of Lower Egypt. The central figure is wearing the crown of Upper Egypt. [Source: Then Again]
Narmer is believed to have commissioned the votive siltstone palette. British archaeologists James Quibell and Frederick Green discovered it in the ruins of a temple in Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), south of Luxor, in 1897-98. According to National Geographic History: it appears the ruler consecrated the palette to the temple of the falcon-headed god Horus, symbol of cosmic and political power. Unlike the mask of Tutankhamun, which has traveled the world, the Narmer Palette has never left Egypt. Today the 25-inch-tall artifact (which features some of the world’s earliest hieroglyphics) can be seen in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. [Source: National Geographic, National Geographic, June 10, 2022]
The Narmer Palette was made from a single piece of siltstone and carved on both sides. Both the front and back feature depictions of the king. It is the earliest monumental representation of a pharaoh found to date. On one side, Narmer wears a hedjet of Upper Egypt, grasps an enemy by the hair, and raises a mace to strike. On the other side, the ruler sports a deshret from Lower Egypt as he surveys his fallen foes. It is the first time that an Egyptian king is depicted wearing each crown on the same work of art. Egyptologists see the appearance of both crowns as evidence of Narmer’s creation of a unified Egypt under his rule and as active promotion of the feat. The pharaohs who followed would build on Narmer’s use of royal iconography and change it. The crowns of the two lands would eventually be combined into one, called a pschent (also referred to as a sekhmety).
See Palettes Under Separate Article: OLDEST FORMS OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN ART africame.factsanddetails.com
Images on the Two Sides of Narmer Palette
On one side of the of Narmer Palette, Narmer wears the white crown of Upper Egypt and is shown seizing a foe by the hair and clubbing him on the head to commemorate a victory while the falcon god Horus looks on and presents the king with captives from the land of the papyrus plant (Lower Egypt). Two horned female heads at the top represent the cow goddess Bat, later associated with the great goddess Hathor. She appears beside Narmer's name, providing her personal protection.
The other side of Narmer palette shows a larger Namer figure wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt, leading a victory parade to view decapitated prisoners. The king is accompanied by his sandal bearer and a man wearing an animal skin thought to be a vizier or his son. Before them, raised from tall poles are standards that represent aspects of the kingship. The identity of the prisoners is a matter of debate. Their hands are trussed and their genitals have placed on their severed head, an act though to represent humiliation and strike fear. Below the enemies are two lions with snake-like necks. These are thought to symbolize the unity created under the king’s power. Featured are two Mesopotamian-style serpopards with intertwined necks. Beneath them, a bull, perhaps Narmer in animal form, charges the walls of a city.
Narmer’s smiting of enemies endured for the next 3,500 years as a symbol of pharaonic power. Almost 2,000 years after Narmer, Ramses II is shown on the walls of Abu Simbel humiliating an enemy: holding the hair of submissive victim and looking as if he is about to scalp him like a North American Indian. [Source: “History of Warfare” by John Keegan, Vintage Books]
According to National Geographic History The positioning of Narmer’s body— with one upraised hand holding a mace while the other clutches a helpless enemy—can be found in almost every era of pharaonic Egypt. More than a thousand years after Ramses II, Ptolemy XII is depicted on the Temple of Horus at Edfu in the same exact pose. [Source: National Geographic, National Geographic, June 10, 2022]
Menes and His Successors
Menes Menes, according to some sources, was the first pharaoh. Like Narmer, it is said he was crowned in 3,100 B.C. and unified Upper and Lower Egypt. He is credited with creating the first nation-state and centralized government . Before the establishment of a unified Egyptian state, Egypt was made up of confederations of agricultural villages of various sizes along the Nile.
Menes, who was originally from the City of Thinis which is an obscure place near the area of Abydos, united the Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. According to the accounts which Herodotus recorded, Menes was accredited with founding "White Walls" as a residence city. This city later began to be called Memphis and stood on ground reclaimed by diverting the course of the Nile at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt. He also undertook larger irrigation and drainage schemes in the vicinity. [Source: Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com +]
Little is known about Menes successors, except that they sat at the top of a highly stratified society, they built many temples, completed public works projects and they were viewed as descendants as of the Gods. King Aha “The Fighter” (2900 B.C.) unified warring kingdoms and built the capital of Memphis. He ruled for 62 years, His reign came to an end one story goes when he was trampled to death by a rampaging hippopotamus. Aha was succeeded by Djoer and Qaa.
Herodotus on the Origin of Egypt and Menes
Fifth Century B.C. historian Herodotus wrote in Book 2 of “Histories”: But as to those matters which concern men, the priests agreed with one another in saying that the Egyptians were the first of all men on earth to find out the course of the year, having divided the seasons into twelve parts to make up the whole; and this they said they found out from the stars: and they reckon to this extent more wisely than the Hellenes, as it seems to me, inasmuch as the Hellenes throw in an intercalated month every other year, to make the seasons right, whereas the Egyptians, reckoning the twelve months at thirty days each, bring in also every year five days beyond number, and thus the circle of their season is completed and comes round to the same point whence it set out. They said moreover that the Egyptians were the first who brought into use appellations for the twelve gods and the Hellenes took up the use from them; and that they were the first who assigned altars and images and temples to the gods, and who engraved figures on stones; and with regard to the greater number of these things they showed me by actual facts that they had happened so. They said also that the first man who became king of Egypt was Menes; [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A.D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]
Of Menes, who first became king of Egypt, the priests said that on the one hand he banked off the site of Memphis from the river: for the whole stream of the river used to flow along by the sandy mountain-range on the side of Libya, but Menes formed by embankments that bend of the river which lies to the South about a hundred furlongs above Memphis, and thus he dried up the old stream and conducted the river so that it flowed in the middle between the mountains: and even now this bend of the Nile is by the Persians kept under very careful watch, that it may flow in the channel to which it is confined, and the bank is repaired every year; for if the river should break through and overflow in this direction, Memphis would be in danger of being overwhelmed by flood. When this Menes, who first became king, had made into dry land the part which was dammed off, on the one hand, I say, he founded in it that city which is now called Memphis; for Memphis too is in the narrow part of Egypt; and outside the city he dug round it on the North and West a lake communicating with the river, for the side towards the East is barred by the Nile itself. Then secondly he established in the city the temple of Hephaistos a great work and most worthy of mention. [Source: Herodotus, “The Histories”, Egypt after the Persian Invasion, Book 2, English translation by A.D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920, Tufts]
After this man the priests enumerated to me from a papyrus roll the names of other kings, three hundred and thirty in number; and in all these generations of men eighteen were Ethiopians, one was a woman, a native Egyptian, and the rest were men and of Egyptian race: and the name of the woman who reigned was the same as that of the Babylonian queen, namely Nitocris. Of her they said that desiring to take vengeance for her brother, whom the Egyptians had slain when he was their king and then, after having slain him, had given his kingdom to her — desiring, I say, to take vengeance for him, she destroyed by craft many of the Egyptians. For she caused to be constructed a very large chamber under ground, and making as though she would handsel it but in her mind devising other things, she invited those of the Egyptians whom she knew to have had most part in the murder, and gave a great banquet. Then while they were feasting, she let in the river upon them by a secret conduit of large size. Of her they told no more than this, except that, when this had been accomplished, she threw herself into a room full of embers, in order that she might escape vengeance. As for the other kings, they could tell me of no great works which had been produced by them, and they said that they had no renown except only the last of them, Moiris: he (they said) produced as a memorial of himself the gateway of the temple of Hephaistos which is turned towards the North Wind, and dug a lake, about which I shall set forth afterwards how many furlongs of circuit it has, and in it built pyramids of the size which I shall mention at the same time when I speak of the lake itself. He, they said, produced these works, but of the rest none produced any.
Who Was the First Ancient Egyptian King — Narmer or Menes or Were They the Same Person
It is not clear who was definitively the first pharaoh. Royal records from the early periods of Egyptian history are scarce, and many of the existing ones are incomplete. According to National Geographic History: While there are several “kings lists” that record the names of pharaohs and their successors, intact ones that extend all the way back to that Early Dynastic era are few. Two of the most important were found in the 1980s by researchers from the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. They uncovered two cylinder seal impressions in the tomb of the pharaoh Den. These seals—still the oldest documented king lists to date—list rulers and successors of the 1st dynasty. One seal dates to the middle of the 1st dynasty and names six rulers. The other seal dates closer to the end of the 1st dynasty and names eight leaders. Both lists begin with Narmer. [Source: National Geographic, National Geographic, June 10, 2022]
Royal lists created millennia later, during the New Kingdom, have created the confusion. One of the most complete is the Abydos King List, engraved upon the wall of the mortuary temple of Seti I (13th century B.C.). Engraved on the wall, Seti and his heir, Ramses (the future Ramses II), face rows of cartouches bearing the names of Egypt’s past pharaohs. On this list, however, the first king listed is Menes, not Narmer.
The Turin Papyrus is another king list from the same era as Seti I. Rather than being engraved in stone, it is cursive hieratic script written on papyrus and is one of the most accurate and complete king lists, covering the 1st through the 19th dynasties. It, too, names the first king as Menes and not Narmer. Writing centuries later, classical authors, such as the fifth-century B.C. Greek historian Herodotus, wrote of Menes rather than Narmer as the unifier of Egypt. A third-century B.C. priest in the temple at Heliopolis, Manetho, was an author of another trusted source that also lists Menes as the first king.
Egyptologists tried to reconcile the use of these two names. Perhaps they were two different people, one who unified Egypt and another who ruled after him. Or Menes could have been a composite figure, cobbled together from the lives and deeds of other early kings. English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie came up with the most widely accepted theory: Narmer and Menes were the same person. Narmer was the name of the first pharaoh of the 1st dynasty, and Menes was an honorific title, meaning “he who endures.”
Was Queen Meret-neith a Powerful Ruler 5,000 Years Ago?
Excavations of the tomb of ancient Egyptian queen Meret-Neith in the early 2020s yielded a huge trove of grave good, suggesting she may have been Egypt's first female ruler, archaeologists contend. Not everyone is onboard with this assertion and some experts have doubts about whether she actually reigned. Meret-Neith's tomb was originally discovered in 1900. The excavations reveal that the queen's monumental grave was piled with hundreds of jars of wine and other grave goods usually only found in royal tombs. Inscriptions discovered inside the tomb, located in Abydos, in central Egypt, also indicate Meret-Neith played an important role in overseeing the treasury and served in other governmental positions around 3000 B.C. "It most certainly is a tremendously important tomb," Ronald Leprohon, a professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Toronto, told Live Science. [Source:Sascha Pare, Live Science, October 18, 2023]
Sascha Pare wrote in Live Science: Meret-Neith, whose name means "beloved of the goddess Neith," was the wife of King Djet — the third king of the first dynasty of ancient Egyptian rulers, according to Leprohon — and the mother of his heir, King Den. Her tomb complex includes the graves of 41 courtiers and servants and was made with mud bricks, clay and wood over several construction phases. An earlier finding showed that the queen's name features after her son's on an inscribed list of rulers discovered in his tomb at Saqqara, followed by the title "king's mother," which suggests she ruled as regent during Den's youth, Leprohon said.
Her regency could explain why she was buried with such pomp in the royal cemetery at Abydos, Leprohon said. "The very fact of having added her name to the list of kings shows that something highly important had to have happened with Meret-Neith," he said. But exactly what occurred remains a mystery, said Christiana Köhler, an archaeologist and professor of Egyptology at the University of Vienna in Austria who led the excavations at Abydos. "There is indeed a lot of debate going on among Egyptologists as the evidence is not entirely conclusive," Köhler told Live Science.
Some experts believe Meret-Neith held the same powers as those granted to male kings, based on the previously discovered list of rulers and other clues. "No other queen in the early dynastic period possessed so many royal privileges," Jean-Pierre Patznick, an Egyptologist at Sorbonne University in France who was not involved in the recent excavation, wrote in the "Proceedings of the Seventh European Conference of Egyptologists" (Archaeopress Publishing, 2017). "Meret-Neith became the very first woman pharaoh of history."
Others are not so sure, arguing that women rarely reigned in ancient Egypt, especially this early on. "Wives and daughters were not typically considered in terms of royal successions," Margaret Maitland, principal curator of ancient Mediterranean collections at National Museums Scotland, told Live Science. Nevertheless, the new evidence suggests Meret-Neith had "an unusually high level of authority for a royal woman," Maitland said. Elizabeth Carney, a professor emerita of history at Clemson University in South Carolina, agreed. "It really would be striking if you had a female king as early as the first dynasty," she told Live Science.
Even if Meret-Neith did rule over Egypt 5,000 years ago, she probably wasn't considered a "pharaoh," Leprohon said. The term — meaning "great house" in ancient Egyptian — likely only came into use much later and referred to monarchs from the 18th dynasty (circa 1550 to 1295 B.C.) onward, he said.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated July 2024