Ménès (pharaon)

Menes ( 3200–3000 BC; ˈmeːneːz; mnj, probably pronounced */maˈnij/; Μήνης) 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 identifies Menes with the Naqada III ruler Narmer or First Dynasty pharaoh Hor-Aha. Both pharaohs are credited with the unification of Egypt to different degrees by various authorities. The commonly-used name Menes derives from Manetho, an Egyptian historian and priest who lived during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Manetho noted the name in Greek as Μήνης (transliterated: Mênês). An alternative Greek form, Μιν (transliterated: Min), was cited by the fifth-century-BC historian Herodotus, but this variant is no longer accepted; it appears to have been 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". Rather than a particular person, 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. Narmer The almost complete absence of any mention of Menes in the archaeological record and the comparative wealth of evidence of Narmer, a protodynastic figure credited by posterity and in the archaeological record with a firm claim to the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, has given rise to a theory identifying Menes with Narmer.