Before the Pyramids – Part 2: Menes, Narmer, or Someone Else? Untangling Competing Theories

I. OPENING: The Name Problem

If you ask most people who the first pharaoh of Egypt was, they’ll likely tell you it was Menes. This answer comes straight from the ancient Egyptian historical tradition itself, from king lists carved on temple walls and written on papyrus that place Menes at the very beginning of Egyptian history. Menes, according to these sources, was the founder of the unified Egyptian state and the first ruler of the First Dynasty.

There’s just one problem. We have no archaeological evidence for a king named Menes from the period when Egypt was unified. The physical record, which we explored in Part 1 of this series, gives us a king named Narmer, along with a handful of predecessors like Scorpion, Ka, and Iry-Hor. But Menes doesn’t appear anywhere in the artifacts from this period. His name doesn’t show up on any palette, seal, or pottery shard from around 3100 BCE.

This discrepancy between the written tradition and the archaeological record sits at the heart of one of Egyptology’s most enduring debates. Did Menes and Narmer refer to the same person using different names? Was Menes actually a later king who has been misidentified as the founder? Or is Menes a legendary figure who represents a composite of several real rulers? These questions have occupied scholars for more than a century, and they still don’t have definitive answers.

II. WHAT THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS SAID

To understand the debate, we first need to understand what the ancient Egyptians themselves recorded about their earliest kings. Three major sources give us the traditional account of Egyptian history’s beginning, and all three place Menes at the start.

The most detailed ancient account comes from Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote a history of Egypt in Greek around 280 BCE during the reign of Ptolemy II.[1] Manetho divided Egyptian history into dynasties, an organizational framework that Egyptologists still use today. He listed Menes as the first king of the First Dynasty and credited him with unifying Egypt, founding Memphis as the capital city, and establishing the institution of divine kingship. Manetho’s original work doesn’t survive intact. We know it primarily through excerpts that were preserved by later writers like Josephus, Africanus, and Eusebius, which means the text has passed through multiple hands and may contain errors or alterations that accumulated over centuries of copying.[2]

The Turin Canon, which is a papyrus king list dating to the reign of Ramesses II around 1279 to 1213 BCE, also begins its list of historical kings with Menes, though the papyrus is damaged and some portions are missing or unclear.[3] This document is particularly valuable because it was written in Egypt by Egyptians for administrative purposes rather than for Greek audiences, which suggests it reflects a genuine native tradition about the sequence of rulers.

The Abydos King List, which was carved on the walls of the temple of Seti I at Abydos around 1280 BCE, similarly begins with Menes as the first king.[4] This list was created as part of a royal cult honoring deceased kings, and it gives us a continuous sequence of rulers from Menes through Seti I himself.

All three sources agree that Menes was first. But all three were created at least 1,800 years after the events they describe, and in the case of Manetho, the account was filtered through Greek cultural frameworks as well as the passage of time. We need to treat these sources as valuable but imperfect records of a tradition that was itself very distant from the original events.[5]

III. THEORY 1: Narmer IS Menes

The most widely held scholarly theory holds that Narmer and Menes are simply two different names for the same person. Under this interpretation, Narmer was the king’s birth name or Horus name, which is the name we find in his serekh on artifacts, while Menes was either a throne name, a posthumous honorific, or a name that accumulated legendary significance over centuries of oral tradition.[6]

The supporting evidence for this theory is substantial. Narmer’s archaeological footprint places him precisely at the time and place where unification occurred. The Narmer Palette, as we discussed in Part 1 of this series, depicts a king wearing both the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt, which makes him the strongest candidate for the ruler who unified the two regions. The timing matches what Manetho and the king lists describe for Menes. If we’re looking for a historical figure who corresponds to the legendary first pharaoh, Narmer fits the profile better than anyone else in the archaeological record.[7]

Additionally, the practice of rulers having multiple names was deeply embedded in Egyptian royal tradition. Later pharaohs used five distinct names as part of their royal titulary, each serving a different religious or political function.[8] It’s entirely plausible that a king known to his contemporaries by one name could be remembered by a different name in later tradition. The name “Menes” itself may derive from the Egyptian word “mn,” which means “to endure” or “he who endures,” suggesting it might have been an epithet or honorific title that accumulated around the memory of the first unifier rather than a personal name.[9]

The primary weakness of this theory is that it remains an inference. We have no direct evidence connecting the name Menes to Narmer. No artifact has been found that bears both names together or otherwise links them explicitly. We’re matching two separate historical traditions and concluding they describe the same person, which is a reasonable scholarly inference but not a proven fact.

IV. THEORY 2: Hor-Aha IS Menes

A competing theory argues that Menes should be identified not with Narmer but with Hor-Aha, the king who succeeded Narmer and became the second ruler of the First Dynasty. This theory has attracted serious scholarly attention and has some intriguing evidence to support it.

The most compelling piece of evidence comes from ivory labels found at Naqada, one of the major predynastic sites in Upper Egypt. These labels appear to associate the name “Mn,” which is the root form of Menes, with Hor-Aha rather than with Narmer.[10] If these labels are correctly interpreted, they would suggest that the ancient Egyptians themselves associated the name Menes with Hor-Aha. However, the interpretation of these labels is disputed among scholars, and not everyone agrees that they establish a clear connection between Hor-Aha and the name Menes.

Proponents of this theory also argue that Narmer may have begun the process of unification militarily, while Hor-Aha actually consolidated and administered the unified state, effectively founding it as a functioning political entity. Under this interpretation, Narmer was the conqueror and Hor-Aha was the founder. The tradition of calling Menes the first king might reflect the memory of who actually built the institutions of the unified state rather than who won the final military campaign that made unification possible.[11]

The city of Memphis, which Manetho credits Menes with founding as Egypt’s capital, presents another point of interest for this theory. Some archaeological evidence suggests that the initial development of Memphis as an administrative center may be associated with Hor-Aha’s reign rather than Narmer’s, though the evidence for this is not conclusive.[12]

The weakness of this theory mirrors that of the first one. We have suggestive evidence but no definitive proof. The ivory labels from Naqada are open to multiple interpretations, and the broader argument rests on distinguishing between military conquest and administrative foundation in a way that may not reflect how ancient Egyptians thought about kingship and legitimacy.

V. THEORY 3: Menes as Legend or Composite Figure

A third theory takes a more radical position than either of the first two. Some scholars argue that Menes wasn’t a single historical individual at all, but rather a legendary figure who represents a composite memory of multiple rulers and the gradual process of unification. Under this interpretation, the ancient Egyptians created a founding myth that condensed generations of political development into a single heroic figure, much as other cultures have done with their own legendary founders.[13]

This kind of legendary consolidation isn’t unusual in ancient history. The Romans attributed the founding of their city to Romulus, a figure who modern historians generally regard as legendary or at best semi-historical. The Greeks credited Lycurgus with establishing the entire Spartan constitution, though historians debate whether he was a real person or a mythological construct. The tendency to personify complex historical processes in a single founding figure appears to be a nearly universal feature of how ancient cultures remembered their own origins.[14]

Applied to Egypt, this theory suggests that the tradition of Menes as founder reflects a genuine cultural memory of unification without necessarily preserving accurate information about which specific individual accomplished it. The name itself, derived from “mn” meaning “to endure,” sounds more like an honorific or symbolic title than a personal name, which lends some support to the idea that Menes was a constructed figure rather than a remembered individual.[15]

The weakness of this theory is that it proves difficult to test archaeologically. We can’t disprove the existence of a historical Menes simply because we haven’t found his name on artifacts. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, and the fragmentary nature of the archaeological record from this period means many things that once existed simply haven’t survived. However, this theory does help explain why the name Menes appears nowhere in the physical record from the unification period despite appearing consistently in later written traditions.

VI. THE DYNASTY 0 COMPLICATION

All three theories we’ve discussed so far share a common assumption. They all accept that the question of who was “first” should be answered by identifying the ruler who unified Upper and Lower Egypt around 3100 BCE. But the archaeological discoveries of the past several decades have revealed a much longer sequence of rulers preceding Narmer, and these discoveries force us to reconsider whether we’re even asking the right question.[16]

As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, archaeologists have identified a group of rulers now designated as Dynasty 0, a label that reflects their position before the traditional First Dynasty in the historical sequence. These rulers include Iry-Hor, Ka, Scorpion I, and possibly others whose names haven’t yet been recovered from the archaeological record. They ruled during what is called the Naqada III period, roughly 3200 to 3100 BCE, and the evidence suggests they exercised genuine royal authority over at least parts of Egypt.[17]

The German archaeologist Günter Dreyer, whose excavations at Abydos produced much of what we know about these early rulers, argued that the Dynasty 0 kings should be considered genuine predecessors to the First Dynasty rather than mere regional chieftains.[18] Their tombs at Abydos show increasing size and complexity over time, suggesting a developing institution of kingship rather than a sudden emergence of royal authority with Narmer. Their serekhs, bearing Horus falcons atop palace facades, use the same symbolic vocabulary as later pharaonic kingship. Their artifacts show evidence of administrative systems, trade networks, and ceremonial authority.

If these rulers were genuine kings, then Narmer wasn’t the first. He was simply the first to rule a unified Egypt, and even that distinction becomes complicated when we consider that unification may have been a gradual process spanning several reigns rather than a single event. The question of who was truly “first” depends entirely on what criteria we use to define the beginning of Egyptian kingship, and different criteria give us different answers.[19]

Some scholars place the beginning of pharaonic kingship with the first use of the serekh as a royal symbol, which would push the date back to Iry-Hor or possibly even earlier. Others define it by the first evidence of centralized administrative control extending over a significant territory, which might point to Scorpion I or Ka. Still others insist that only the ruler of a unified Egypt can properly be called a pharaoh, which would make Narmer the first by definition. Each of these positions is defensible, and each reflects different assumptions about what makes someone a pharaoh rather than simply a powerful regional king.[20]

VII. WHY SCHOLARS DISAGREE

Understanding why these debates persist despite decades of scholarship requires understanding something about how historical knowledge is constructed from fragmentary evidence. The scholars who study this period are all working from essentially the same body of artifacts, yet they reach different conclusions. This isn’t simply a matter of some scholars being right and others being wrong. It reflects genuine ambiguities in the evidence itself and legitimate differences in how scholars interpret that evidence.[21]

Linguistic interpretation plays a significant role in these disagreements. Many of the key debates hinge on how we read ancient Egyptian names and titles, and hieroglyphic writing from this early period is particularly difficult to interpret. The script hadn’t yet fully standardized, individual signs could carry multiple meanings, and the absence of vowels in the written language means that reconstructing how names actually sounded involves considerable uncertainty. Two scholars examining the same inscription might reach different conclusions about what it says, and both might be making reasonable arguments from the evidence available to them.[22]

Archaeological interpretation introduces another layer of uncertainty. When an artifact is found in a tomb, we have to make inferences about why it was placed there, what relationship it had to the tomb’s occupant, and what it tells us about the person or period it came from. These inferences are guided by theoretical frameworks and comparative evidence, but they’re still inferences. Different archaeologists working within different theoretical frameworks may interpret the same artifact very differently, and the history of Egyptology contains many examples of confident interpretations that were later overturned by new discoveries or new analytical approaches.[23]

The personal investment that scholars develop in their own theories also plays a role, as it does in any academic field. Once a scholar has published a major argument identifying Narmer with Menes, or distinguishing them as separate individuals, they have an intellectual stake in defending that position against challenges. This is a normal feature of academic discourse, and it generally produces productive debates that sharpen our understanding over time. But it does mean that competing theories can persist longer than the evidence strictly warrants, sustained by the reputations and arguments of their proponents.[24]

New discoveries continue to reshape these debates in ways that no one can predict. The excavations at Abydos that revealed Tomb U-j and the Dynasty 0 kings transformed our understanding of early Egyptian kingship in ways that couldn’t have been anticipated before those discoveries were made. Future excavations, or new analytical techniques applied to existing artifacts, could produce similar transformations. The field of early Egyptian history is genuinely open, with significant questions still unresolved and significant discoveries still waiting to be made.[25]

VIII. CLOSING: Living with Uncertainty

We may never know definitively who Menes was, or whether he was a real individual at all. The evidence that would answer these questions conclusively, perhaps an artifact bearing both the name Menes and a known royal serekh, or a contemporary written account identifying the first ruler of unified Egypt by multiple names, simply hasn’t been found. It may not exist. It may have been destroyed in antiquity. It may be waiting in an unexcavated tomb somewhere in the Egyptian desert.

What we can say with reasonable confidence is that Egypt underwent a process of political unification around 3100 BCE, that a king named Narmer was centrally involved in that process, that kings before Narmer exercised royal authority over parts of Egypt, and that later Egyptian tradition remembered a figure named Menes as the founder of the unified state. How these facts fit together remains genuinely uncertain.

This uncertainty isn’t a failure of scholarship. It’s an honest acknowledgment of the limits of what the evidence can tell us. The debates about Menes and Narmer reveal something important about how historical knowledge works. We construct narratives from fragments, we make inferences from incomplete evidence, and we revise our understanding as new evidence emerges. The story of Egypt’s first pharaoh is a story about how we know what we know, and how much we still don’t know, about the ancient world.

These debates also raise a deeper question that goes beyond the identity of any particular ruler. They force us to examine what we actually mean when we ask who the first pharaoh was. What exactly makes someone a pharaoh? When does a powerful regional king become the ruler of a unified state? When does a chieftain become a king? These questions will take us into the territory we’ll explore in Part 3 of this series, where we’ll examine the nature of pharaonic authority itself and ask whether our modern concept of “pharaoh” can even be meaningfully applied to the rulers of Egypt’s earliest dynasties.

REFERENCES

[1] Waddell, W.G. Manetho. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, 1940.

[2] Verbrugghe, Gerald P., and John Moore Wickersham. Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. University of Michigan Press, 1996.

[3] Gardiner, Alan H. The Royal Canon of Turin. Griffith Institute, 1959.

[4] Redford, Donald B. Pharaonic King-Lists, Annals and Day-Books: A Contribution to the Study of the Egyptian Sense of History. Benben Publications, 1986.

[5] Kitchen, Kenneth A. “The Chronology of Ancient Egypt.” World Archaeology 23, no. 2 (1991): 201-208.

[6] Wilkinson, Toby A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. Routledge, 1999, pp. 67-71.

[7] Wilkinson, Toby A.H. “What a King Is This: Narmer and the Concept of the Ruler.” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 86 (2000): 23-32.

[8] Quirke, Stephen. Titles and Bureaux of Egypt 1850-1700 BC. Golden House Publications, 2004.

[9] Cervelló-Autuori, Josep. “Narmer, Menes and the Seals from Abydos.” In Egypt at its Origins, edited by Stan Hendrickx et al., 993-1006. Peeters, 2004.

[10] Petrie, W.M. Flinders. The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties, Part II. Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901.

[11] Kaiser, Werner, and Günter Dreyer. “Umm el-Qaab: Nachuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 38 (1982): 211-269.

[12] Jeffreys, David. “Memphis.” In Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt, edited by Kathryn A. Bard, 488-490. Routledge, 1999.

[13] Trigger, Bruce G. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. American University in Cairo Press, 1993.

[14] Baines, John, and Jaromir Malek. Atlas of Ancient Egypt. Facts on File, 1980.

[15] Cervelló-Autuori, Josep. “Narmer, Menes and the Seals from Abydos.” In Egypt at its Origins, edited by Stan Hendrickx et al., 993-1006. Peeters, 2004.

[16] Hendrickx, Stan, and Pierre Vermeersch. “Prehistory: From the Palaeolithic to the Badarian Culture.” In The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, edited by Ian Shaw, 17-43. Oxford University Press, 2000.

[17] Wilkinson, Toby A.H. Early Dynastic Egypt. Routledge, 1999, pp. 55-67.

[18] Dreyer, Günter. “Umm el-Qaab: Nachuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof, 9./10. Vorbericht.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 54 (1998): 77-167.

[19] Spencer, A. Jeffrey. Early Egypt: The Rise of Civilisation in the Nile Valley. British Museum Press, 1993.

[20] Kemp, Barry J. Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006.

[21] Trigger, Bruce G., Barry J. Kemp, David O’Connor, and Alan B. Lloyd. Ancient Egypt: A Social History. Cambridge University Press, 1983.

[22] Kahl, Jochem. “Hieroglyphic Writing During the Fourth Millennium BC: an analysis of systems.” Archéo-Nil 11 (2001): 103-134.

[23] Bard, Kathryn A. An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. Blackwell Publishing, 2007.

[24] Midant-Reynes, Beatrix. The Prehistory of Egypt: From the First Egyptians to the First Pharaohs. Translated by Ian Shaw. Blackwell Publishers, 2000.

[25] Dreyer, Günter, et al. “Umm el-Qaab: Nachuntersuchungen im frühzeitlichen Königsfriedhof.” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 49 (1993): 23-62.