Six of the Abydos kings have thus been identified with names in the lists and in Manetho; that is to say, we now know the real names of six of the earliest Egyptian monarchs, whose appellations are given us under mutilated forms by the later list-makers. Prof. Petrie further identifies (4) Tja Ati with Ateth, (3) Tjer with Teta, and (1) Aha with Mena. Mena, Teta, Ateth, Ata, Hesepti, Merbap, Shemsu (?), and Qebh are the names of the 1st Dynasty as given in the lists. The equivalent of Ata Prof. Petrie finds in the name “Merneit,” which is found at Umm el-Ga’ab. But there is no proof whatever that Merneit was a king; he was much more probably a prince or other great personage of the reign of Den, who was buried with the kings. Prof. Petrie accepts the identification of the personal name of Aha as “Men,” and so makes him the only equivalent of Mena. But this reading of the name is still doubtful. Arguing that Aha must be Mena, and having all the rest of the kings of the Ist Dynasty identified with the names in the lists, Prof. Petrie is compelled to exclude Narmer from the dynasty, and to relegate him to “Dynasty 0,” before the time of Mena. It is quite possible, however, that Narmer was the successor, not the predecessor, of Mena. He was certainly either the one or the other, as the style of art in his time was exactly the same as that in the time of Aha. The “Scorpion,” too, whose name is found at Hierakonpolis, certainly dates to the same time as Narmer and Aha, for the style of his work is the same. And it may well be that he is not to be counted as a separate king, belonging to “Dynasty 0 “(or “Dynasty -I”) at all, but as identical with Narmer, just as “Sma” may also be. We thus find that the two kings who left the most developed remains at Hierakonpolis are the two whose monuments at Abydos are the oldest of all on that site. That is to say, the kings whose monuments record the conquest of the North belong to the period of transition from the old Hierakonpolite dominion of Upper Egypt to the new kingdom of all Egypt. They, in fact, represent the “Mena” or Menés of tradition. It may be that Aha bore the personal name of Men, which would thus be the original of Mena, but this is uncertain. In any case both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist Dynasty, with the result that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in the lists.
Nor is this improbable. Manetho’s list is evidently based upon old Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of Abydos and Sakkâra were based. These old lists were made under the XIXth Dynasty, when an interest in the oldest kings seems to have been awakened, and the ruling monarchs erected temples at Abydos in their honour. This phenomenon can only have been due to a discovery of Umm el-Ga’ab and its treasures, the tombs of which were recognized as the burial-places (real or secondary) of the kings before the pyramid-builders. Seti I. and his son Ramses then worshipped the kings of Umm el-Ga’ab, with their names set before them in the order, number, and spelling in which the scribes considered they ought to be inscribed. It is highly probable that the number known at that time was not quite correct. We know that the spelling of the names was very much garbled (to take one example only, the signs for Sen were read as one sign Qebh), so that one or two kings may have been omitted or displaced. This may be the case with Narmer, or, as his name ought possibly to be read, Betjumer. His monuments show by their style that he belongs to the very beginning of the Ist Dynasty. No name in the Ist Dynasty list corresponds to his. But one of the lists gives for the first king of the IId Dynasty (the successor of “Qebh” = Sen) a name which may also be read Betjumer, spelt syllabically this time, not ideographically. On this account Prof. Naville wishes to regard the Hierakonpolite monuments of Narmer as belonging to the IId Dynasty, but, as we have seen, they are among the most archaic known, and certainly must belong to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. It is therefore probable that Khasekhemui Besh and Narmer (Betjumer?) were confused by this list-maker, and the name Betjumer was given to the first king of the IId Dynasty, who was probably in reality Khasekhemui. The resemblance of Betju to Besh may have contributed to this confusion.
So Narmer (or Betjumer) found his way out of his proper place at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty. Whether Aha was also called “Men” or not, it seems evident that he and Narmer were jointly the originals of the legendary Mena. Narmer, who possibly also bore the name of Sma, “the Uniter,” conquered the North. Aha, “the Fighter,” also ruled both South and North at the same period. Khasekhemui, too, conquered the North, but the style of his monuments shows such an advance upon that of the days of Aha and Narmer that it seems best to make him the successor of Sen (or “Qebh “), and, explaining the transference of the name Betjumer to the beginning of the IId Dynasty as due to a confusion with Khasekhemui’s personal name Besh, to make Khasekhemui the founder of the IId Dynasty. The beginning of a new dynasty may well have been marked by a reassertion of the new royal power over Lower Egypt, which may have lapsed somewhat under the rule of the later kings of the Ist Dynasty.
Semti is certainly the “Hesepti” of the lists, and Tja Ati is probably “Ateth.” “Ata” is thus unidentified. Prof. Petrie makes him = Merneit, but, as has already been said, there is no proof that the tomb of Merneit is that of a king. “Teta” may be Tjer or Khent, but of this there is no proof. It is most probable that the names “Teta,” “Ateth,” and “Ata” are all founded on Ati, the personal name of Tja. The king Tjer is then not represented in the lists, and “Mena” is a compound of the two oldest Abydos kings, Narmer (Betjumer) Sma (?) and Aha Men (?).
These are the bare historical results that have been attained with regard to the names, identity, and order of the kings. The smaller memorials that have been found with them, especially the ivory plaques, have told us of events that took place during their reigns; but, with the exception of the constantly recurring references to the conquest of the North, there is little that can be considered of historical interest or importance. We will take one as an example. This is the tablet No. 32,650 of the British Museum, illustrated by Prof. Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16. This is the record of a single year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An. The capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of fortification, half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs already described are armed; this signifies the opening and breaking down of the wall.
On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt, Hemaka, mentioned; also “the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of the Libyans,” and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a king’s carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words “the king’s carpenter made this record.” All these little tablets are then the records of single years of a king’s life, and others like them, preserved no doubt in royal archives, formed the base of regular annals, which were occasionally carved upon stone. We have an example of one of these in the “Stele of Palermo,” a fragment of black granite, inscribed with the annals of the kings up to the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the monument itself was made. It is a matter for intense regret that the greater portion of this priceless historical monument has disappeared, leaving us but a piece out of the centre, with part of the records of only six kings before Snefru. Of these six the name of only one, Neneter, of the lid Dynasty, whose name is also found at Abydos, is mentioned. The only important historical event of Neneter’s reign seems to have occurred in his thirteenth year, when the towns or palaces of Ha (“North”) and Shem-Râ (“The Sun proceeds”) were founded. Nothing but the institution and celebration of religious festivals is recorded in the sixteen yearly entries preserved to us out of a reign of thirty-five years. The annual height of the Nile is given, and the occasions of numbering the people are recorded (every second year): nothing else. Manetho tells us that in the reign of Binothris, who is Neneter, it was decreed that women could hold royal honours and privileges. This first concession of women’s rights is not mentioned on the strictly official “Palermo Stele.”
More regrettable than aught else is the absence from the “Palermo Stele” of that part of the original monument which gave the annals of the earliest kings. At any rate, in the lines of annals which still exist above that which contains the chronicle of the reign of Neneter no entry can be definitely identified as belonging to the reigns of Aha or Narmer. In a line below there is a mention of the “birth of Khâsekhemui,” apparently a festival in honour of the birth of that king celebrated in the same way as the reputed birthday of a god. This shows the great honour in which Khâsekhemui was held, and perhaps it was he who really finally settled the question of the unification of North and South and consolidated the work of the earlier kings.
As far as we can tell, then, Aha and Narmer were the first conquerors of the North, the unifiers of the kingdom, and the originals of the legendary Mena. In their time the kingdom’s centre of gravity was still in the South, and Narmer (who is probably identical with “the Scorpion”) dedicated the memorials of his deeds in the temple of Hierakonpolis. It may be that the legend of the founding of Memphis in the time of “Menés” is nearly correct (as we shall see, historically, the foundation may have been due to Merpeba), but we have the authority of Manetho for the fact that the first two dynasties were “Thinite” (that is, Upper Egyptian), and that Memphis did not become the capital till the time of the Hid Dynasty. With this statement the evidence of the monuments fully agrees. The earliest royal tombs in the pyramid-field of Memphis date from the time of the Hid Dynasty, so that it is evident that the kings had then taken up their abode in the Northern capital. We find that soon after the time of Khâsekhemui the king Perabsen was especially connected with Lower Egypt. His personal name is unknown to us (though he may be the “Uatjnes” of the lists), but we do know that he had two banner-names, Sekhem-ab and Perabsen. The first is his hawk or Horus-name, the second his Set-name; that is to say, while he bore the first name as King of Upper Egypt under the special patronage of Horus, the hawk-god of the Upper Country, he bore the second as King of Lower Egypt, under the patronage of Set, the deity of the Delta, whose fetish animal appears above this name instead of the hawk. This shows how definitely Perabsen wished to appear as legitimate King of Lower as well as Upper Egypt. In later times the Theban kings of the XIIth Dynasty, when they devoted themselves to winning the allegiance of the Northerners by living near Memphis rather than at Thebes, seem to have been imitating the successors of Khâsekhemui.
Moreover, we now find various evidences of increasing connection with the North. A princess named Ne-maat-hap, who seems to have been the mother of Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of the sacred Apis of Memphis, her name signifying “Possessing the right of Apis.” According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the royal right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times, but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht’s tomb is similar. In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a giant seven feet high.