5,000 years ago, in North Africa, an ambitious king, now known as Narmer, unified the lands of Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the north into the first great territory in the world – Egypt. However, the origins of Egyptian civilization remain quite ambiguous to this day. What remains about the first Pharaoh of Egypt is merely a name.
The Narmer Palette
To date, although Egyptologists have identified Narmer with the pharaoh of the First Dynasty of Egypt, the identity of this king remains highly debated due to insufficient evidence for a definitive confirmation. This is due to the fact that the primary source providing information about the royal succession in Egypt is the Palermo Stone – a black granite slab inscribed with the names of Egyptian kings up to the Fifth Dynasty, which unfortunately has lost the inscriptions of the first and second kings of the First Dynasty.
Head statue of the first king of Egypt, who unified the lands of Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt.
Conclusions regarding Narmer’s role are primarily based on the Narmer Palette, which indicates that Narmer was the unifier of Egypt and two burial seals from Umm el-Qa’ab, Abydos show that he was the first king of the First Dynasty. The approximate dating of Narmer is estimated to be in the 31st or 32nd century BCE. The ancient Egyptians had a system of hieroglyphic writing.
The name Narmer consists of two hieroglyphs: a catfish (read as Nar) and a chisel (Mer). Instead of combining both hieroglyphs, Narmer’s name is often represented in an abbreviated form using only the catfish symbol, sometimes stylized, and in some cases represented merely by a horizontal line.
Two alternative representations of Narmer’s name have also been found. On a clay seal from Tarkhan, the symbol representing the Tjay bird was added to the two symbols for Narmer within a serekh. It is understood to mean “Namer, the man.” Additionally, two seals from the Abydos King List, inscribed on the walls of the mortuary temple of Seti I, present this name in an unusual manner: the chisel is depicted in a position typically reserved for the catfish.
This symbol has been interpreted by some scholars as a piece of animal skin. It could be a catfish with a bull’s tail, similar to the image of Narmer on the Narmer Palette, where he is depicted wearing a shendyt, a type of pleated skirt or kilt characteristic of the ruling class and bearing a bull’s tail as a symbol of power, representing the strength necessary to rule the Nile country.
Royal documentation from Narmer’s time is very scarce and incomplete. While there are some “king lists” recording the names of pharaohs and their successors, intact records from the early periods are very few. Two of the most important documents were discovered by researchers from the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo during the 1980s. They found two cylinder seals in the tomb of Pharaoh Den.
These seals – which remain the oldest recorded king lists to date – list the rulers and successors of the First Dynasty. One seal, dating to the middle of the First Dynasty, names six rulers. The other seal, dating near the end of the First Dynasty, names eight kings. Both lists begin with Narmer.
However, the royal lists created millennia later, during the New Kingdom, contained some confusion. One of the most complete lists is the Abydos King List, inscribed on the walls of the mortuary temple of Seti I (13th century BCE), which shows that the first king listed in the boxes inscribed with names of past pharaohs of Egypt is Menes, not Narmer.
The Turin Papyrus – another king list contemporary with Seti I also names the first king as Menes, not Narmer. Instead of being inscribed on stone, this list is written on papyrus and is one of the most accurate and complete king lists, covering dynasties from the 1st to the 19th. Centuries later, classical authors, such as the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, when visiting Egypt to gather the names of kings, wrote that Menes was the unifier of Egypt. The issue is, Herodotus conducted his journey to Egypt during the late period of Egypt, approximately 2,500 years after Narmer/Menes lived. Moreover, Egyptian pharaohs used multiple names throughout their lives. However, by the 3rd century BCE, the priest in the temple at Heliopolis, Manetho, also listed Menes as the first king.
There is no evidence to prove that Menes and Narmer are the same person. Ultimately, British Egyptologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie proposed the most widely accepted theory that Narmer is the birth name of the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, and Menes is a honorific title.
Before Egypt was unified, depictions of kings in Upper and Lower Egypt exhibited different rituals. The rulers of Upper Egypt wore a tall white crown called hedjet, while in Lower Egypt, kings wore a short red crown called deshret. But Narmer changed all that. Starting with Narmer, Egypt developed its unique visual style to convey power, strength, and unity for many millennia. Narmer commissioned a slate palette carved with images of gods and beasts for use in prayer rituals.
British archaeologists James Quibell and Frederick Green discovered this palette in the ruins of a temple in Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), south of Luxor, in 1897-1898. This shield-shaped object dates back to around 3,200-3,000 BCE. It seems the ruler dedicated this palette to the temple of the falcon-headed god Horus, a symbol of cosmic and political power.
Narmer’s symbolic representation from Umm el-Qa’ab, Abydos showing him as the first king of the First Dynasty.
The Mystery of Death
The exact details of Narmer’s life remain difficult to ascertain. He is believed to have come from Hierakonpolis. He is said to have organized his newly unified kingdom into about 40 regions, known as nomes. He married, and his wife’s name is Neithhotep, named after a goddess of creation, Neith. Narmer also built a temple dedicated to the creator god Ptah in Memphis – an important ancient city of Egypt. Narmer also established the city of Hierakonpolis, known as Nekhen in ancient Egypt, where he founded the Horus cult, the first national religious cult.
Establishing cities was an important part of becoming an Egyptian pharaoh. According to ritual, the king would mark the settlement by making an indentation on the land near the Nile River. Then, builders would begin laying the foundations for official buildings such as temples and royal palaces. A granary was also built to store precious grain for distribution in the event of drought or disaster.
Remaining documents, including those by Herodotus and Manetho, describe Narmer as a seasoned military leader. The kingdoms of Lower and Upper Egypt had fought for centuries before being subdued by Narmer, who imposed his rule over the entire Nile valley. Artifacts such as the Narmer Palette, Narmer’s mace (which is a weapon itself), and several inscribed lines, seals, and an ivory plaque indicate he ruthlessly killed enemies. Current Egyptologists also suggest that Narmer ventured into Palestine, as some serekh with the name Narmer have been found in southern Israel.
For two centuries, archaeologists have been struggling to find the location of Narmer’s burial. Early Egyptian pharaohs constructed a type of tomb called a mastaba, a mudbrick structure named after the Arabic word for bench. Every king in the ancient kingdom was buried inside a mastaba until the end of the Third Dynasty, when they began building pyramids. Thus, it is hypothesized that Narmer was buried in one of the many mastabas in the mastaba fields at Saqqara. However, since no tomb has been found bearing Narmer’s name, this has never been proven.
Subsequently, Egyptologists discovered a large field of royal tombs from the pre-dynastic and early dynastic periods at Umm el-Qa’ab, a site near Abydos. Professor Werner Kaiser from the German Archaeological Institute identified Narmer’s name in an inscription found at Umm el-Qa’ab in 1964. However, this site has suffered significant disturbances and looting over 5,000 years, and artifacts bearing Narmer’s name are found scattered throughout the site, making it impossible to know the exact location of Narmer’s tomb.
To this day, archaeologists and Egyptologists have not reached a consensus on whether Narmer was buried at Saqqara or Umm el-Qa’ab, and this question is unlikely to be resolved as long as the body of the first pharaoh of Egypt remains missing.
