Menes
First to Write the Law
(r. ca. 3040 B.C.)
“In succession to the Spirits of the Dead and the Demigods,
the Egyptians reckon the First Dynasty to consist of eight kings.
Among these was Mênês, whose rule in Egypt was illustrious.”
—MANETHO, AEGYPTIACA1
The First to Write Laws Among Men
“After the gods, (they say), Menes was the first king of Egypt.”2 So states the Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus. A look into King Menes of Egypt, then, takes us, to the dusk of the reign of the Egyptian gods, and the twilight of the reign of men. Only faded shadows of fact exist about King Menes, the supposed founder of Memphis, faded shadows in remnants of papyrus, and cryptic etchings upon implements of ivory, schist, alabaster, porphyry, and basalt. He may have been the first Egyptian pharaoh, son or grandson of the famed Scorpion King. Yet, despite the evidence we have, King Menes may not even be a shadow, not even a “penumbra from emanations,” but a mirage of legend or myth.3
Traditionally, as a result of the testimony of the Greek-writing historians who wrote hundreds of years after his reign, King Menes is accorded the honor of being the unifier of Egypt, Egypt’s first lawgiver—indeed—the first in the history of the world to undertake to write the law.4 Thus Menes has been seen as the inseminator or progenitor of the Rule of Law among the various tribes of men. It is for that reason that he was chosen to be among the great lawgivers of history in the South Wall Frieze of the United States Supreme Court. Menes is carved there, the first in the procession of ancient lawgivers. In confident stride, Menes approaches the symbol of Fame, holding the ubiquitous Egyptian symbol of life, the ankh. If Menes was the first to write the laws of men, surely he deserves such a place in the Law’s iconography.
Menes and the Greek Historians
What does history say of this Menes? There is no historical artifact contemporary with his reign that conclusively bears the name Menes, and so would confirm his reality among historical men to the satisfaction of skeptical Egyptologists.5 In fact, his name, his identity, his existence, are all uncertain, as is his exact place among the lists of Egyptian kings and pharaohs. Is he legendary or not? We perhaps shall never know. If he is historical, he sits surely on the cusps of prehistory and history, where we see, not through a glass darkly, but, as it were, through a dusty glass, needing to brush through the dust with the instruments of the dig.
Menes6 is mentioned in the histories of Egypt written in Greek many centuries after this king allegedly unified Egypt, passed its laws, and, like all men (even the supposed divine pharaohs) must do, breathed his last breath. Under many variants, his name is mentioned by Manetho, Herodotus, Diodorus, and Josephus.
Perhaps the most important of these historians for those specializing in Egyptian history is the historian-priest Manetho of Heliopolis. By order of Ptolemy I, Manetho compiled a history of Egypt entitled Aegyptiaca. Written in Greek and completed around 251 B.C., the work sought to document Egyptian history from the time of myth through Alexander the Great. It was Manetho who first divided the numerous Egyptian pharaohs into dynasties, identifying “Menes of This” or Thinis as the founder of the 1st (Thinite) Dynasty. Sadly, however, Manetho’s work is lost. Though it has been re-created through the excerpts contained in writings of Josephus Flavius, Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius of Cesarea, and George Syncellos, there are obvious mistakes and discrepancies in these works. For example, the scraps of Manethos in Josephus have Menes ruling 62 years, whereas the scraps in Syncellos and Eusebius have him reigning only 30 years.[.7
Menes as Mni: Was he Narmes or Aha?
Menes and the King List of Turin
Whatever the conflicts associated with the Greek historians, there are some archaeological links between Menes and the Egyptian kings mentioned in dynastic lists. These were not contemporary to the time of Menes, but were made much later, in the dynasties of Ramses II or Seti I.
Under the name of Mni,8 the mysterious king Menes appears on the papyrus List (or Canon) of Kings of Turin, a list probably created during the reign of Ramses II.9 Directly or indirectly, this list, or perhaps one like it, was the likely source for Manetho and the other Greek historians.10 The similarity between the Egyptian Mni and the Greek Menes is much too striking to escape that conclusion. After vaguely identifying regnant Gods and pre-menite sovereigns like “The Followers of Horus,” the List (or Canon) of Turin identifies Menes (in hieroglyphics) thus:
- [nsw] bi.tj (mni) anx wDA snb ir.n ///The King of [Upper and] Lower Egypt Menes (mni), may he live, prosper and be healthy, has functioned ///11
Between the wasp and the ankh, surrounded by the cartouche which is an indication of divinity and rule, there are the hieroglyphs of a checkerboard, water, and feather—symbols which, until the advent of Champollion, communicated nothing. Now we know them to indicate the name of Mni, very likely our Menes.12
Curiously, the name of Mni appears twice on the fragmentary King List of Turin. As if we are dealing with a king who straddles humanity and divinity, the reign of gods and the reign of men, his name is written “on the first of the two lines with a human determinative, and on the second one with a god determinative.”13 Is this what Manetho and Diodorus Siculus saw when they wrote that it was at the end of the rule of the gods that Menes became king?14
Menes and the King List of Abydos
King Menes also starts off the impressive list of kings in the Abydos King List found in the Temple of Seti I, also known as the Osireion. In the carvings in the temple, the Pharaoh Seti I and his son, Rameses, are depicted making an offering to their 76 predecessors. There, among the kings listed, Mni appears as the first king of the 1st Dynasty.15
In linking the name of Mni on the king lists of Turin and Abydos to archaeological monuments contemporary with the early kings, Egyptologists confront the problem associated with the many titulary names by which pharaohs were called. Commonly, pharaohs used multiple titulary names, including their birth names, their nsw bity names, and Horus names. The various names sometimes make it difficult to associate the pharaoh on the later king lists, which appear to use the pharaoh’s birth name, whereas on monuments associated with the early kings, the Horus name was typically used.17 “There are,” therefore, “difficulties of identification . . . the first four names and particularly that of Mēnēs.”18 Egyptologists debate on whether Mni on the King Lists refers to the kings with the Horus names Aha or Narmer, the Horus names of two of the Predynastic/Protodynastic and Dynastic kings buried in the royal cemeteries at Umm el Qa‘ab.19
Menes and the Royal Cemeteries at Umm el Qa‘ab
In their studies of that period of Egypt’s history whene there was unification of the Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt and the formation of pharaonic dynasties, Egyptologists divide the time into (Early and Middle) Predynastic [5200-3400 B.C.], the Late Predynastic and/or Protodynastic [3400-3060 B.C.], and Dynastic (the Early Dynastic [3060-2710 B.C.].20 Menes falls into the Early Dynastic period. Perhaps the single most important archeological find with respect to the Predynastic and Early Dynastic eras is at Abydos.
Three hundred or so miles south of the modern city of Cairo, and roughly nine and a half miles west from the banks of the Nile, near Abydos, is an area called the Umm el Qa‘ab by the locals, meaning the “Mother of Pots.” It was the center for the cult of Osiris, considered by the Egyptians to be the god of the underworld. It was also the burial spot for the early kings of unified Egypt and their immediate predecessors. At Umm el Qa‘ab archaeologists have found the tombs of the kings of Predynastic Egypt, as well as those of the 1st Dynasty. For those interested in Menes, Abydos is therefore a central preoccupation. If Menes existed, evidence of his existence would be found in “Cemetery B.” Cemetery B contains the royal tombs of the 1st Dynasty and its immediate predecessor, “Dynasty 0.” Archaeologists have identified the tombs of Narmer [B17-18] and his son and successor, Aha [B10, 15, 19].21 These kings, identified by their Horus names, are the kings commonly associated with the Menes of the King Lists. If Menes is to be linked with the pharaoh bearing the name Narmer, his reign would have been in the early Naqada IIIc1 period [3060-3000 B.C.]. If Menes is to be linked with the pharaoh bearing the name Aha, his reign would have been in the late Naqada IIIc1 period [3060-3000 B.C.] and early Naqada IIIc2 period [3000-2920 B.C.].22
Menes= Aha?
In the tombs of the ancient kings at Umm el Qa’ab at Abydos, are the tombs marked B10, 15, and 19. These tombs are those of the king with the Horus name of Aha. Following the falcon god Horus, is the name aHA (Aha), meaning “the Fighter.”23
Some Egyptologists link Aha to Menes. This linkage comes from the hieroglyphs that appear to be associated with the Horus name Aha on a number of objects, including a label found in Naqada, at the site of a giant niched mastaba built in honor of a Neithhotep, the mother of the king who constructed it.24 The ivory label found to its right bears the so-called “Men-checkerboard” sign (transliterated: mn).25 According to Gardiner, the presence of the vulture and cobra leaves “no question” that this mn is a “Two Ladies” or Nebti title.26 Scholars debate whether the mn is a Nebti or “Two Ladies” name that should be tied to Horus name Aha, or to Aha’s dead father, Narmer, husband of the buried queen.27 There are at least two difficulties with the association of Menes with Aha through this artifact. First, it ignores the house-like structure in which the name Menes appears. That structure appears to be a funerary booth or similar structure. This suggests that the identified mn was dead during the reign of Aha.28 It also ignores the direction in which the name symbols (the vulture and the cobra) face. The “universal rule” was that the Horus Name and the king’s personal name faced each other, and there this is not the case where the names are both oriented in the rightward direction.29 It is therefore more likely that the label relates to an event in which Aha participated, a place associated with Menes.30 There are also serious problems in trying to reconcile the King’s Lists if the Horus Aha is identified with Menes. Additionally, Aha appears to have been king after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, thus contradicting the testimony of the Greek historians which link this event with Menes.31 The Egyptologist Gardiner therefore concludes: “Here, then, although there is no proof that Na‘rmer was Mēnēs, we at least obtain the assurance that Mēnēs was not ‘Aha, but must have been his predecessor.”32
Menes=Narmer?
In the tombs marked B17 and B18, archaeologists claim to have found the burial spot of the Egyptian King with the Horus name of Narmer. The Horus name Hr nar-mr (Narmer), is formed by the Horus, the falcon god, and the combination of a catfish and chisel, which means “Striking Catfish.”33
About Narmer, the Italian Egyptologist Raffaele states:
Was this Narmer the legendary Menes?
The answer was thought to exist in the Narmer Palette. Found in 1897 by the archeologist J. E. Quibell at Kōm el-Ahmar, the Narmer Palette—a slate palette containing the Horus name Narmer—was found. For a time the Narmer palette was hailed as incontrovertible proof that Menes referred to Narmer.35 The scene on the palette was interpreted as depicting the unification of Egypt. On one side of the palette, Narmer appears to be shown wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt (the deshret). On the other side, Narmer is shown wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt (the hedjet). Because Menes was traditionally identified with this act, Egyptologists identified Menes with King Narmer. Nowadays, however, the Narmer palette is “almost completely and unequivocally dismissed as proof of such an event and removed from discussions about unification.”36 Though it still is a clear reference to Narmer, it is now considered to document a lesser historical event—perhaps a military victory over Libya, and so its evidentiary value as a link between the Menes of the Greek historians and the Narmer of the royal burial grounds is devalued.37 The fact that the Narmer Palette shows the king with the crowns of both Egypts remains significant evidence pointing to him being the legendary Menes.38 Apparently the first archeological object to show a king with both crowns, “[i]t is precisely this fact which justifies the belief that Na‘rmer was none other than Mēnēs himself."39 The Narmer Palette thus remains “an indisputable link between the late predynastic and the earliest dynastic periods.”40
Another piece of evidence that is frequently cited as proof of a link between the Horus Narmer and the legendary Menes is the “prince’s seal” found by Flinders Petrie at the Umm el Qa’ab site at Abydos. These fragments appear to have a checkerboard hieroglyph—the private name Mn—and the Horus name of Narmer, implying the identity of Narmer as Menes, but, based upon the comparison of other seals, it is far from certain whether this is the correct interpretation.41 It has been proposed that the name Mn—rather than referring to the Horus Narmer—may actually be referring to another person, perhaps a prince.42
Two other seals found at Umm el Qa’ab probably dated from after the death of King Den and the time of King Qa’a, respectively, have short king lists.43 Both lists begin with the Horus Narmer. Since there are kings buried at Abydos that predate Narmer, the lists on the seals suggest that King Narmer had special status, a status superior to the kings that predeceased him. The clear suggestion is that Narmer, not Aha, was the unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt.44
Conclusion
There are many questions and there is much confusion in the relatively sparse archeological record between Pre-Dynastic Egypt and Dynastic Egypt. Among those is the question of whether Menes was in fact part of that transition. The archeological evidence points to two kings, Narmer and Aha, who were particularly important in the unification of Egypt and in ushering it into the age of Dynasties. It is more probable that Narmer is the legendary Menes. But as one Egyptologists summarizes the state of the evidence at this point:
The Life of Menes and the Life of the Law
Leaving aside the presently unanswerable question (at least if one seeks certainty) of whether Menes was Narmer or Aha, what significance does Menes offer for the history of the law?
If the Greek-writing historians are to be believed, King Menes was the Egyptian king who unified the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt into one, the Sma Tawy.46 He was likely the first to wear the double crown of the pharaohs—that combination of the white conical hedjet of Upper Egypt with the red deshret of Lower Egypt, to form the pschent of the two Egypts.
In his study of Ancient Egypt, B. Kemp described the process of the unification of Egypt and the formation of the Egyptian State from small, independent agricultural communities. Central to this aggregative process was the notion of the “containment of the unrule.” This concept was one which drove the “need for kingship,” a kingship required to re-impose the order of a mythical age, where ma’at—justice and harmony—ruled and combated the forces of chaos. By a sort of divine dispensation the kings participated in the power of ma’at, who was, in fact, a goddess as well as a concept. It was their rule that assured that order prevailed over the chaos of unrule.47 The unification of Egypt thus was inextricably linked to the promotion of law. As Diodorus informs us:
As founder of the First Dynasty of Egypt, Menes ushered in the rule of Pharaonic Egypt—a civilization that would last longer than any other in the history of man. It would last, in fact, until another civilization of great lawgivers as well as conquerors—the Romans ruled at the time by the great Augustus Caesar—was to disassemble it after his victory at the Battle of Actium. The law of the pharaohs, first founded by Menes, disappeared from history with the last gasp of Cleopatra’s breath, though by then it had been substantially Hellenized.
Yet while it lasted, the Rule of Law introduced by Menes spawned a nation of great might and great lawgivers. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus identified six including Menes: Sasychis, Sesoosis or Sesostris, Bocchoris (Bakenrenef, ca. 722-15 B.C.), Amasis, and Darius, the Persian who had Egypt’s laws translated to Aramaic.49 There are others such as Harmhab,50 and the great judge Rekhmire,51 whose tomb has been uncovered. The Egyptian laws must have been recognized as civilized for the times,52 as there is record of other civilizations studying Egyptian laws so as to improve their own. For example, in the 6th century B.C., Solon and Lycurgus—the great Athenian and Spartan nomothetes or law givers—are traditionally said to have gone to Egypt to study its laws before returning and providing a code of law to their people.53 The patrician Romans are then said to have sent representatives to Greece to learn from Solon when the plebeian Terentilius’s rebellion spurred them to agree to write down their laws.
According to Diodorus, Menes did more that implement laws after unifying Egypt. He taught the people how to worship God, and how to drape their beds with blankets, and their tables with tablecloths, and introduced them to “a delicate and sumptuous way of living.” In later age, Gnephachthus [Tefnakht, Tefnakhte, or Tnephachthos], the father of the great lawgiver Bocchoris, was to criticize Menes for his luxurious ways. This, Diodorus states, “seems to be the reason that the fame and glory of Menes did not persist into future ages.”54 Herodotus, the Greek historian, states that Menes was the first king of united Egypt, and that built the city of Memphis on the shores of the Nile, after diverting its flow between some mountains, and protecting it with man-made lakes. He also built a temple to Hephaistos (the Egyptian Ptah), “a great work and worthy of mention.”55
And yet—the why of it remains unknown—there is no formal Egyptian code of law prior to Ptolemaic Egypt that has been preserved either whole or in any significant part. As part of judicial practice, the many rolls that contained the codes of Egyptian law were placed on a table before the judge during the court’s session, and so we suppose at one time they existed.56 Even the dry desert sands, which preserved the flesh of human mummies all these many years, have not preserved for us Egyptian laws. There are, it is true, treaties, wills, deeds, divorce decrees, warrants, civil pleadings, and trial proceedings from which we can obtain a patchwork understanding of the complexity of this system.57 But the codes, including Menes’ code, have vanished, as if stolen by an anarchic tomb raider. It is a historical anomaly, indeed, when human flesh outlasts the written law.
Menes died after a reign of perhaps as long as 62 years.58 The Egyptian historian Manetho states that this illustrious king was trampled or carried off, rather inillustriously, by a hippopotamus.59 He died, according to Manetho, “Anno mundi 2900,”60 or, more accurately, 3000 years before Anno Domini.
Assessment
Though Menes’s influence on modern law is nil, this king remains a powerful symbol of the law’s first great step, and of the law’s importance in ordering the activities of men, and in assuring that the chaos and disorder never gain the upper hand. It is through the energies of men and women, governed by the Rule of Law, that justice operates. If he existed historically, Menes was at the head of this grand scheme; the first, perhaps, who in the world of men walked in the ways of law. He preceded even the venerable Hammurabi by almost twelve centuries. He resides, true enough, in a gray area between history and legend. And of the substance of his laws we know nothing. Yet if we but give him the benefit of the doubt, he becomes for us the first lawgiver in the recorded history of man who put the law in writing. If he was the first human lawgiver, and the first to put the law in script, he was worthy of the fame equivalent to his name which, Manetho tells us, “being interpreted, means ‘everlasting.’”61
Endnotes
1 Manetho, Aegyptiatica (trans. W. G. Waddell) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 31. ⇑
2 Historical Library, Diodorus the Sicilian (trans. G. Booth) (London: W. M. McDowall, 1814), Vol. I, Book I, Chap. IV, 51 (translation of Bibliotheke). The original “Menis” is replaced with “Menes.” ⇑
3 Despite the difficulties associated with Menes, “it is not easy to think that Menes (Meni in the New Kingdom lists) ought to be considered an entirely mythical figure.” Francesco Raffaele, “Dynasty 0,” 17 AEGYPTIACA HELVETICA 2003, 107. ⇑
4 See John Henry Wigmore, A Panaroma of the World’s Legal Systems (Saint Paul: West Publishing, 1928), Vol. I, 17. (“The earliest human law-giver, in Egyptian tradition, was named Menes (or, Mna).”) ⇑
5 Jacques Kinnaer, “Aha or Narmer: Which was Menes?” KMT Vol. I, No. 3 (Fall 2001), 75. ⇑
6 Mēnēs is the most common form of this King’s name in the Greek sources. He is sometime refered to as Mēnas, Mēnis, Meinis, Mēn, Min, and Mein. See Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (187) (s.v. “MENES”). This may be an effort to render the name Mni into Greek. Mni is the name of the first king in the Abydos and Turin king lists. ⇑
7 http://wwplw.narmer./main/mantho_en.htm. Cf. Manetho. ⇑
8 Is it coincidence, or is there reason, in the similarities between the name of the great mythical law giver of the Hindus “Manu,” that of the Crete “Minos,” and that of the Egyptians “Menes” or “Mni”? See Wigmore, 17-18 (“[A]n outstanding coincidence, still unexplained by the science of comparative law, is not only that this name of the first human law-giver, as handed down by tradition, was substantially the same in three of the oldest civilizations—Menes in Egypt, Minos in Crete, and Manu in India; but that in all three also the bull was the animal held sacred as his emblem.”). ⇑
9 The Turin list of kings, known also as the Turin Royal Canon, is a list of kings written on papyrus and written in hieratic text. It resides in the Egyptian Museum at Turin, Italy, and thereby obtains its name. Broken into many fragments, the papyrus, 1.7 meters in length and 0.4 meters in width, is thought to have been written during the reign of Ramses II. The list begins with gods, and then begins to list the names of kings. The list of kings is written on the back of a tax roll. http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html (created by Jacques Kinnaer); Raffaele, 100. ⇑
10 Raffaele, 100 n. 7. ⇑
11 http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html (created by Jacques Kinnaer) ⇑
12 The hieroglyphs of Mni, Aha, and Narmer, are taken from http://www.narmer.pl/indexen.htm. The Turin list is in hieratic script, not hieroglypics. ⇑
13 Raffaele, 107. ⇑
14 See supra note 2. ⇑
15 http://www.narmer.pl/indexen.htm. The list of kings is taken from from http://www.narmer.pl/indexen.htm. Photographs of this impressive list can be seen at http://www.phouka.com/pharaoh/egypt/photos/abydos/seti-04.html. Another important King List is that of Saqqāra. Menes is omitted from the King List of Saqqāra. See Alan Gardiner, Egypt of the Pharaohs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), 430. The Palermo stone is another King List, but only part has survived, and that part that would have included Menes was destroyed. ⇑
16 See supra note 12. On the king list the name is given vertically, not horizontally as here depicted. ⇑
17 Gardiner, 400, 430. As it developed, the titulary customs surrounding the pharaohs resulted in the pharaohs bearing numerous names. These customs in their fully developed form post-date the Pre-Dynastic and early Dynastic periods. Pharaohs had up to five names: (i) the Serekh name or Horus Name; (ii) the Nebti (“Two Ladies”) name; (iii) the Rn Nbw, Gold or Golden Horus name; (iv) the Nswt Bity or Throne Name (praenomen); and (v) the Sa Ra or St Ra (Daughter of Ra) Name (nomen). However, even early pharaohs were given various titular names in addition to their personal names. For example, in the tombs at Abydos, the kings are identified by their Horus Names, a name indicated by the presence of the god Horus, the falcon god. Menes could be one titulary name, and the name of Aha or Narmer would be the Horus name of the same Menes. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fivefold_Titulary. Gardiner, 401. http://kingtutankhamen.blogspot.com/2006/01/note-on-royal-kemetic-names.html. ⇑
18 Gardiner, 430; see also id., 402. ⇑
19 Kinnaer, 75 (“The debate surrounding the identify of Menes has mainly focused on two archaeologically attested kings: the Horus Narmer and the Horus Aha”). ⇑
20 The Late Predynastic/Protodynastic periods are divided into various schema. One schema was devised by William Flinders Petrie (1894), but has been largely superseded by the schema of Werner Kaiser (1957). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqada. With respect to the late Predyanstic period and Early Dynastic period, the Petrie schema is indicated in bold italics, and the Kaiser schema in parentheses. Late Gerzean (Naqada IId1-2) [3400-3300 B.C.], the Semainean (Naqada IIIa1-IIIb2) [3300-3060 B.C.]. The Semainean period is further subdivided into “Dynasty 00” (Naqada IIIa1-2) [3300-3200 B.C.] and Dynasty 0 (Naqada IIIb1-2/early Naqada IIIc) [3200-3090/3060 B.C.]. The Early Dynastic is divided into Dynasty I (Naqada IIIc1, 2, 3) [3060-2860 B.C.] and Dynasty II (Naqada IIId) [2860-2710 B.C.]. Nammer ruled in Naqada IIIc1, and Aha’s rule spanned the Naqada IIIc1 and early Naqada IIIc2 periods. See http://xoomer.alice.it/francescoraf/hesyra/synthesis.htm. ⇑
21 The general discussion is derived from Marie Parsons, Abydos in Egypt, at http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/abydos.htm. See also http://touregypt.net/featurestories/ahatomb.htm; Jimmy Dunn, Tomb B17-B18 at Umm el Ga’ab in Abydos: Narmer – I Dynasty, at http://touregypt.net/featurestories/narmertomb.htm. The map of the Tombs at Umm al Qa’ab is taken from these sites. See also http://xoomer.alice.it/francescoraf/hesyra/synthesis.htm. ⇑
22 See supra note 20. ⇑
23 See supra note 12. ⇑
24 Raffaele, 106. ⇑
25 The label of Aha which is from a Naqada label and the seal which shows Aha and Mn is taken from Jimmy Dunn, “Who was Menes” on http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/menes1.htm. Some do not interpret this sign as a checkerboard (the symbol for mn); rather, they distinguish it from a checkerboard and suggest that it is a crude representation of a shrine—perhaps the shrines of Nekhbet and Edjo, the goddesses represented by the vulture and cobra. Kinnaer, 76-77. ⇑
26 Gardiner, 404. The vulture and the cobra represent two patron goddesses of Egypt, Nekhbet and Edjo (Wadjet), respectively. Kinnaer, 75. But see Kinnaer, 76, observing that the Nebti names were not used in the Predynastic/Early dynastic era and that Nebti names were not used to refer to dead kings. ⇑
27 Raffaele, 106. Ludwig Borchardt argued that the nsw bity name of mn was tied to the Horus name Aha. Kinnaer, 75-76 (citing Ludwig Borchardt, “Ein neuer Königsnamen der erstern Dynastie,” Sitzungsberichte de Preussischen Akadamie der Wissenschaften 48 (1897), 1054-58 and Ludwig Borchardt, “Das Grab des Menes,” Zeitschrift fur Ägyptische Sprache 36 (1897), 87-105. ⇑
28 Kinnaer. 76 (citing B. Grdseloff, “Notes d’épigraphie archaïque,” Annales du Service des Antiquites d’Égypte 44 (1944), 279-310) ⇑
29 Id. ⇑
30 If the sign in the structure is not a checkerboard and does not refer to Mn, but rather the shrines of the goddesses Nekhbet and Edjo, see supra note 25, then perhaps it merely indicates that Aha visited the shrines. In such case, the Naqada label “no longer . . . has any bearing on the discussion regarding Menes’s identity.” Kinnaer, 77. ⇑
31 Kinnaer, 78-79. ⇑
32 Gardiner, 407. See also Kinnaer, 78 (“[I]t has been shown that the certain identification of Horus Aha with Menes is unfounded.”). ⇑
33 See supra note 12. The hieroglyph is vertical, in serekh style, which refers to the stylized paneling, façade, or house-like structure over which the hieroglyph is placed, as if it were on top of or enclosed in a palace. Gardner, 52. ⇑
34 Raffaele, 106. ⇑
35 Gardiner, 402. The name of Narmer, a close up from the Narmer palette, is taken from http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html. For a view of both sides of the entire palette see 
. ⇑
36 Raffaele, 99. ⇑
37 Raffaele, 99 n. 1 (citing Schulman, BES 11, 1992, 79-105). ⇑
38 The ivory label, found at Abydos, which shows the Horus name Narmer (catfish and chisel) in the upper right is taken from http://xoomer.alice.it/francescoraf/hesyra/labels/xxnarmer1.htm. These ivory labels have a hole in them, which indicates that they were tied to vessels holding oil or other commodities to identify their ownership. ⇑
39 Gardiner, 404. ⇑
40 Gardiner, 402. See also Dennis C. Forbes, “The Narmer Palette: One of the Great Monuments of the Early Dynastic Period,” KMT Vol. I, No. 3 (Fall 2001), 83 (Narmer Palette “one of the best arguments for identifying the latter king [Narmer] with the legendary founder of the Egyptian state, Menes.”) ⇑
41 Kinnaer, 77. ⇑
42 Kinnaer, 77 (citing Helck, “Untersuchungen zur Thinitenzeit,” Ägyptologische Abandlungen 45 (Wiesbaden, 1987), 359). ⇑
43 Respectively, Den was the fourth, and Qa’a the last king of Egypt’s First Dynasty. ⇑
44 Kinnaer, 80-81. ⇑
45 Raffaele, 106. ⇑
46 Sma Tawy means “Uniter of Two Lands.” Raffaele, 100. ⇑
47 Barry Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization (Routledge: 1989), 31-63 in Francesco Raffaele, Predynastic and Protodynastic Egypt: A Synthetic Model of the Ancient Egyptian Civilization Origin and Development at http://xoomer.alice.it/francescoraf/hesyra/synthesis.htm. ⇑
48 Edwin Murphy, The Antiquities of Egypt: A Translation, with Notes, of Book I of the Library of History of Diodorus Siculus (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 119-20. I have altered the name Mneves in the original to Menes, in that the former is probably merely a variant of the name Menes. Id. 119, n. 191. The Greek Hermes (= Roman Mercury) is the same as the Egyptian Thoth (Djehuti or Tehuti), the god of magic, learning, and writing. ⇑
49 Diodorus, I, 94-95; Girgis Mattha, The Demotic Legal Code of Hermopolis West (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1975). ⇑
50 Wigmore, 18-19. ⇑
51 Wigmore, 39. ⇑
52 For a general overview of ancient Egyptian law, see Russ VerSteeg, Law in Ancient Egypt (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2002). ⇑
53 So Diodorus Siculus, ch. 96; see Murphy, 122. ⇑
54 Diodorus Siculus, ch. 45; see Murphy, 58. ⇑
55 Herodotus, Histories II, 99.1-4. ⇑
56 Wigmore, 18, 31. ⇑
57 Wigmore, 20 ff. ⇑
58 Manetho, 215. ⇑
59 Manetho, 29, 31, 33. ⇑
60 Manetho, 215. ⇑
61 Manetho, 215. ⇑
