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Updated: May 31, 2025
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. The resemblance of Betju to Besh may have contributed to this confusion.
The name of Zugagib of Kish, for example, is paralleled by the title borne by one of the earliest kings of the Ist Dynasty of Egypt, Narmer, whose carved slate palettes have been found at Kierakonpolis; he too was known as "the Scorpion." Gen. iv. 17 ff.
Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the Northern towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer. It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis. The animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the North.
To all intents and purposes we have only legendary knowledge of the Southern kingdom until its close, when Narmer the mighty went forth to strike down the Anu of the North, an exploit which he recorded in votive monuments at Hierakonpolis, and which was commemorated henceforward throughout Egyptian history in the yearly "Feast of the Smiting of the Anu."
It may well be that it was in the reign of Merpeba, not in that of Aha or Narmer, that Memphis was founded. The XIXth Dynasty lists of course say nothing about Mena or Merpeba having founded Memphis; they only give the names of the kings, nothing more. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy is suspected.
M. Naville, for example, endeavours to prove that the buildings in the desert are not literally tombs, but rather temples for the cult of their Ka; and that there ought not to be kings anterior to Mena, particularly at Abydos: "Narmer" is really Boethos, the first king of the second dynasty.
Most of the 1st Dynasty objects are preserved in the Ashmo-lean Museum at Oxford, which is one of the best centres for the study of early Egyptian antiquities. Narmer and Khâsekhemui are, as we shall see, two of the first monarchs of all Egypt.
Close by it were found some of the most valuable relics of the earliest Pharaonic age, the great ceremonial mace-heads and vases of Narmer and "the Scorpion," the shields or "palettes" of the same Narmer, the vases and stelas of Khâsekhemui, and, of later date, the splendid copper colossal group of King Pepi I and his son, which is now at Cairo.
It may be that the city was founded by Aha or Narmer, the historical originals of Mena or Menés; but we have another theory with regard to its foundation, that it was originally built by King Merpeba Atjab, whose tomb was also discovered at Abydos near those of Aha and Narmer.
Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the god Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the "New Race" antiquities from Ballas and Tûkh, also to misdate several of the primitive antiquities, the lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now, in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.
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