The beginning of the historical period is characterized by the introduction of written records in the form of
regnal year names—the records that later were collected in documents such as
the Palermo Stone.
The first king of Egyptian history, Menes, is therefore a
creation of the later record, not the actual unifier of the country; he is
known from Egyptian king lists and from classical sources and is credited with
irrigation works and with founding the capital, Memphis.
On small objects from this time, one of them dating to the important king Narmer
but certainly mentioning a different person, there are two possible mentions of
a “Men” who may be the king Menes. If these do name Menes, he was probably the
same person as Aha, Narmer’s probable successor, who was then the founder of
the 1st dynasty.
Changes in the naming patterns of kings reinforce the assumption that a new
dynasty began with his reign. Aha’s tomb at Abydos is
altogether more grandiose than previously built tombs, while the first of a
series of massive tombs at Ṣaqqārah, next to Memphis,
supports the tradition that the city was founded then as a new capital. This
shift from Abydos is the culmination of intensified settlement in the crucial
area between the Nile
The river valley and the delta, but Memphis did not yet overcome the traditional pull of its predecessor: the large tombs at Ṣaqqārah appear to
belong to high officials, while the kings were buried at Abydos in tombs whose
walled complexes have long since disappeared. Their mortuary cults may have
been conducted in designated areas nearer the cultivation.
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In the late Predynastic period and the first half of the 1st
dynasty, Egypt extended
its influence into southern Palestine and probably Sinai and conducted a
campaign as far as the Second Cataract. The First Cataract area, with its
centre on Elephantine,
an island in the Nile opposite the present-day town of Aswān was permanently
incorporated into Egypt, but Lower Nubia was not.
Between late predynastic times and the 4th dynasty—and probably early in
the period—the Nubian A-Group came to an end. There is some evidence that
political centralization was in progress around Qustul, but this did not lead
to any further development and may indeed have prompted a preemptive strike by
Egypt. For Nubia, the malign proximity of the largest state of the time stifled
advancement. During the 1st dynasty, writing spread
gradually, but because it was used chiefly for administration, the records,
which were kept within the floodplain, have not survived. The artificial
writing medium of papyrus was
invented in the middle of the 1st dynasty. There was a surge in prosperity, and
thousands of tombs of all levels of wealth have been found throughout the country. The richest
contained magnificent goods in metal, ivory, and other materials, the most
widespread luxury products being extraordinarily fine stone vases. The high
point of the 1st-dynasty development was the long reign of Den (flourished c. 2850 BCE).
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During the 1st dynasty three titles were added to the royal Horus name:
“Two Ladies,” an epithet presenting the king as making manifest an
aspect of the protective goddesses of the south (Upper Egypt) and the north
(Lower Egypt); “Golden Horus,” the precise meaning of which is unknown; and
“Dual King,” a ranked pairing of the two basic words for a king, later associated
with Upper and Lower
Egypt. These titles were followed by the king’s own birth name, which in
later centuries was written in a cartouche.
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