13 Facts About Menes

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.

Commonly-used name Menes derives from Manetho, an Egyptian historian and priest who lived during the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

Chief archaeological reference to Menes is an ivory label from Naqada which shows the royal Horus-name Aha next to a building, within which is the royal nebty-name mn, generally taken to be Menes.

Menes typically appears in later sources as the first human ruler of Egypt, directly inheriting the throne from the god Horus.

Menes appears in other, much later, king's lists, always as the first human pharaoh of Egypt.

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Menes appears in demotic novels of the Hellenistic period, demonstrating that, even that late, he was regarded as an important figure.

Menes was seen as a founding figure for much of the history of ancient Egypt, similar to Romulus in ancient Rome.

Manetho records that Menes "led the army across the frontier and won great glory".

Herodotus contradicts Manetho in stating that Menes founded the city of Memphis as his capital after diverting the course of the Nile through the construction of a levee.

Diodorus Siculus stated that Menes had introduced the worship of the gods and the practice of sacrifice as well as a more elegant and luxurious style of living.

In Pliny's account, Menes was credited with being the inventor of writing in Egypt.

Diodorus Siculus recorded a story of Menes related by the priests of the crocodile god Sobek at Crocodilopolis, in which the pharaoh Menes, attacked by his own dogs while out hunting, fled across Lake Moeris on the back of a crocodile and, in thanks, founded the city of Crocodilopolis.

The lead part of Menes is described in the dramatis personæ as "next male-heir to the crown" now worn by Seraphis, and was played by Samuel Reddish in a 1774 production by David Garrick at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.