Horus Narmer (Menes)

It was once uncertain whether to consider Narmer a king of Thinite or rather of Hierakonpolite origins; the contemporary attestations highly favour the former hypothesis; his tomb was built at Abydos although the most important specimens from his reign come from Nekhen -Hierakonpolis- (where they were re-buried centuries after his death). Hierakonpolis was a center of ancient leaders, one of the strongest predynastic regional states.
The circumstances from which the final unification arose can't be known: they might have been ferocious warfares or pacific relations cemented by marriages; but the relevant fact is that several years after these events had happened,the early kings of Egypt still held memory of the ancestral importance of centers as Nwbt (Naqada) and Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) so that they made the temples built therein object of worship and commemoration.
By the same way Abydos, the royal cemetery of the thinite early state, was retained as royal necropolis through all the first dynasty just because of its ancestral importance as birthplace of the archaic ('Dynasty 0') rulers buried in the cemeteries U and B; the nearby Umm el Qaab necropolis was contemporary with the North Saqqara earliest elite mastabas; probabily the own kings resided already in Memphis by that time, but they were buried at Abydos for the outstanding religious value that this center was credited with along the whole first dynasty age, a factor of highest importance for the legitimation of the thinite ruling family.
It can't be known, as we have told, if Scorpion, Ka and Narmer actually fought against the Delta rulers. The scenes on the mentioned artifacts of Narmer could be typical repetitions of apothropaic actions highlighting the king's power in winning the evil forces, with no relation with real foes or events.
Furthermore, although it appears very likely that the 'conquest' of the Delta by the Upper Egypt chiefs had begun generations before Narmer, no evident sign of war-like activities can be inferred by the attestation of Ka and Scorpion in Lower Egypt.
We are inclined to think that the first foundator of Memphis must have been Narmer; but this king was probabily more involved in keeping the trade relations with distant near eastern colonies and in the military control of the boundaries; in turn Aha, less attested abroad, must have devoted his major efforts in the construction/organization of the young northern capital, taking more time in these actions as well as the building and visiting of cult shrines, than in punitive expeditions; this suggests that Narmer's actions against the probable 'rebels' must have been very efficient. 'Menes' could therefore have been a New Kingdom/Greek- culture fusion of two distinct individuals.
Someone has also hypothized two different unifications: the first one by Narmer should have lasted only few years and then it was reattempted with success by Aha; nothing proves this theory and as we've stated, Aha seems to have been a more pacific sovereign (albeit his name meaning 'The Fighter') than Narmer. Aha certainly benefitted of the Narmer's economic developments: the increased size of mastabas built during his reign is a clear evidence of a higher prosperity. Few generations after the foundation of the Northern capital Memphis, in the decentralized south began a process of marked provincialization that lasted up to the Middle Kingdom age if not beyond.
B. Kemp' s model of the provincial temples (1989) has been criticized by D. O'Connor (in 'Followers of Horus' 1992): for the latter scholar the examples which Kemp has considered 'pre-formal' architecture do not represent, in the provincial centers considered (Abydos,Elephantine,Medamud) the principal temple but only secondary and less important shrines. Hence the supposed 'provincialization' of that period had to be less radical than how it appears nowadays by the lack of visible architectural examples apt to deny it.
It seems that, though under the 'wide wing' of the statal control, many centers once flourishing and of central importance began to lose their political authority (Abydos, Hierakonpolis) in the Second and expecially in the Third Dynasty when the baricenter of the state was definitively and more heavily established in Memphis.
Much more alive did remain their religious value as ancient holy places and birthplaces of ancestral rulers.
The most famous artifact of the Unification period is NARMER Palette which evidences the characters of the warrior god-king. Victorious over Delta peoles he wears the Red Crown of Lower Egypt; many discussions have been made about two main arguments concerning Narmer Palette's actual meaning: a sort of chronicle of Egypt Unification, or of a mere retaliation and rebels punishment; the symbolic representation of the king power; the origin of the defeated enemies: Libyans, western Delta inhabitants, eastern Delta rebels, Sinai bedawins, Asiatics. (A year-label found few years ago in the cemetery B at Abydos depicts a similar event with Narmer's serekh defeating a people symbolized by the papyrus plant. Beheaded corpses on the palette may perhaps represent the ritual execution of the battle prisoners; see below).
On the palette of narmer a boat is carved, which leads Horus in progress to Buto (?). Behind Narmer the sandal bearer (who also figures on the other side) and before the king the "vizier" (?) (not the royal wife) is indicated by the title Tjet(y) (surely attested in the full form, Tajty Zab Tjaty, only since the mid or late Second Dynasty -Menka-, written in ink on various inscriptions on stone vessels found in Netjerykhet/Djoser complex, galleries VI-VII).
Below there are two fantastic animals with long necks (the crossing necks form the circular shape for the kohl) probabily representing the two lands of Egypt, kept by cords; and in the lower register a bull (the king) smashes a fortress by his horns.
On the opposite side the king wears the Upper Egypt crown and he is in the standard pose with a mace that's going to hit the prisoners' heads which he takes by the hair with his other hand. The victim is on his knees and is surmounted by an icon of the Delta region which a falcon takes by a leash. Above, two Hathor (or Bat) heads with the serekh and the name between them.
The writing is already phonetic as the names or titles identifying some personages do show; but the most of these scenes must be read through the image symbolism as aztec pictographies: the positions, the relative dimensions and the poses of things and persons all have importance and contribute to explain the meaning of the pictures by clear descriptive sketches or through more or less evident metaphors. The third register of the palette depicts two further dead men, enemies killed by the king. The overall style recalls the King Scorpion macehead.
The long-neck felines, of sumerian and elamite iconography influence, belong to a group of motives that will be completely forgotten as soon as the reign of the following king Aha. A re-elaboration of kingship and religion doctrine(and iconography) was undertaken in the first half of Ist Dynasty.
Narmer macehead seems to depict a post bellic event; no traces of battle in course but the prisoners and the booty of war are shown (cattle in an enclosure) and enumerated. The king sits on a dais, wearing the Lower Egypt crown ; he is surmounted by the Nekhbet goddess vulture and receives a person who has been carried in a repit seat. Standards are brought by four men; the insignia are the same as those on the Narmer palette: two hawks, a canid and a circular figure with a kind of tail (the king's coushion?).
In the tomb of Neithhotep at Naqada an ivory plaque was found bearing the name of Aha in the Serekh and, beside it, in a kind of hut (wrmt), the Nebty name MEN (the gaming table); this name is not written opposite to the other but in the same direction so it could also be a ritual (succession) device showing the two kings as in a little King-list; it can't therefore be sure that the two names belong to the same ruler (Grdseloff in ASAE 44 p. 279,Vikentiev in ASAE 33,34,41,48 and Emery 'Archaic Egypt').
On a wooden seal there's the name Narmer with Men (written men+n).
On the Abydos list appear Meni and Teti as first two sovereigns; the second one is never attested on contemporary sources and it has been recently proposed to see Athotis as an ephemeral successor of Aha (Queen Neithhotep?).
The Turin Canon repeats twice the name "Meni" with a human and then with a divine determinative (on this point, I think hardly a copy error, there's much to think and too little has been said). The name Meni, enclosed in a cartouche, corresponds to the Menes of Manetho, but has equally been rendered as Menoete, Mnesis, Men and Mena(s); nowadays it has no sense to speak of Menes because this name is a New Kingdom introduction, and the cartouche is anachronistic for the first dynasty (it appears in the half second dynasty -Senedj, Neferkaseker, Peribsen- and in the third-Nebka, Huni-, but only later in IVth dynasty it did become usual). (For further and different interpretations of the Name of narmer cfr. Vikentiev J.E.A. 17 p.67-80 : he did propose a reading 'Nar Ba Tchai'; Godron A.S.A.E. 49 p.217-20 advanced 'Mery Nari'; a rare variant is Narmer-tchai).
The name of Narmer, as we have said above, has been found in many sites of the Upper and Lower Egypt Nile valley, as well as in the Delta, in the western and eastern deserts and in Palestine (Arad, Tell Erani): here we have almost uniquely serekhs on vessels or on vessels' fragments.
A bone statuette of a ruler with Upper Egypt crown (Petrie Abydos II p.24 tav. 2,13; Glanville J.E.A. 17 p. 65) has been often ascribed to Narmer; certainly of his is baboon statue (in the Berlin Museum) inscribed with the name of Narmer and that of 'Khnwmhotep' (cfr. MDAIK 50 and R.d.E. 21).
It has been also proposed to date to his reign the three colossi found by Petrie at Koptos (Williams in JARCE 25); this has been done on epigraphic and stylistic grounds: part of an inscription on one of the colossi (almost totally effaced) might be the tail of an hawk above that of the 'Nar' fish. However it seems clear that an eventual inscription of Narmer (which is indeed by no means certain) would have been carved only after a long sequence of superimposed graffiti (which Dreyer interprets as early Dynasty 0 royal names) of early Naqada III date, thus many decades older than Narmer's time.
The tomb of Narmer is the double grave B 17-18 at ABYDOS (Umm el Qaab cemetery B), excavated by Petrie in 1900 and more recently recleared by the German archaeologists' team of DAIK (Kaiser - Dreyer, in: MDAIK 38, 1982 and following reports by Dreyer et al.).