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All the sources of Egyptian history declare unanimously that Menes
was the first Pharaoh.
A virtual confirmation is given by the famous
“Pietra” in Palermo.
The superior register gives only the names, under a
quite fanciful way, of kings on whom the analyst is not able to give
more information. The second register would certainly have begun with
Menes, but the part concerning him was lost; in analogy with the other
two kings of the I dynasty mentioned in the big fragment in Cairo, it’s
believed with almost complete certainty that there were both his name of
Horo as well as his own name, maybe with that of his mother’s.
Under the heading the place reserved to the dating remembered with no doubt the
most important events for each year of his reign, even if it’s possible
that the compiler, considering it was an epoch so remote,
must have used his own imagination.
It would be interesting to know if
it was mentioned in an explicit way the unification of the Two Countries
that was for the Egyptians the memorable event from which the human
history began.
A hint to this event is in the expression Union between
High and Low Egypt; the round of walls that mark the first year of reign
for each sovereign in the “Pietra” in Palermo and other, documents, and
that evidently refer to the ceremony with which the sovereign’s descent
from the founder of the dynasty was legitimized.
The mentioned walls
should be those in Menfi , of which the foundation is attributed to Menes by Erodoto and, with some confusion, also by Diodoro Siculo.
The
“Stele di Rosetta”, talking about
Menfi, talks about the rituals usually
performed by the king when taking up his high role.
The moving of the
royal residence from an unknown place in the South to this city with a
beautiful natural position at the peak of the delta must be so
considered a direct consequence of the establishment of the double
reign.
The other important acts attributed to Menes by Erodoto regard
the creation of an embankment that had to protect Menfi from the floods
of the Nile and the building of the temple in Ptah, south of the
bastions of the city; this last event has an implicit confirmation from
a tablet from the XIX Dynasty that mentions Ptah by Menes.
As you can
well imagine, considering the lack of historic finds and the defective
knowledge of the hieroglyphics of that period, the identification of a
king of the I Dynasty is never accurate and certain.
That’s how then Menes is identified with Narmer by some historians, while for others he
and Aha are the same person.
By others, Narmer, Menes and Aha were three
different persons. |
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