Menes

Menes (fl. c. 3200–3000 BC; ; Ancient Egyptian: mnj, probably pronounced */maˈnij/; Ancient Greek: Μήνης and Μήν) was a pharaoh of the Early Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt, credited by classical tradition with having united Upper and Lower Egypt, and as the founder of the First Dynasty.

The identity of Menes is the subject of ongoing debate, although mainstream Egyptological consensus inconclusively identifies Menes with the Naqada III ruler Narmer or his successor, the First Dynasty pharaoh Hor-Aha.

Name and identity

The name Menes is first documented in the work of Manetho, an Egyptian historian and priest of the relatively late Ptolemaic period. Manetho noted the name in Greek as Μήνης (transliterated: Mḗnés). An alternative Greek form, Μιν (transliterated: Min), was cited by the fifth-century-BC historian Herodotus, but this variant appears to be unrelated, the result of contamination from the name of the god Min. The Egyptian form, mnj, is taken from the Turin and Abydos King Lists, which are dated to the Nineteenth Dynasty, whose pronunciation has been reconstructed as */maˈnij/. By the early New Kingdom, changes in the Egyptian language meant his name was already pronounced */maˈneʔ/. The name mnj means "He who endures", which, I.E.S. Edwards (1971) suggests, may have been coined as "a mere descriptive epithet denoting a semi-legendary hero [...] whose name had been lost". Alternatively, the name may conceal the collective identity of the Naqada III rulers: Ka, Scorpion II and Narmer, or may simply refer to a functional leadership role.