40 Fun Facts About Menes

According to Manetho, the priest who sorted Egypt's kings into dynasties, which animal killed Menes?

A hippopotamus carried Menes off, Manetho reports, after a reign that included a victorious campaign abroad. Different copies of the text give him 30, 60 or 62 years on the throne.

In a legend recorded by the Greek historian Diodorus, which animal carried the fleeing Menes across a lake?

A crocodile ferried him to safety on its back, and the grateful king is said to have founded a city in its honour. Historians treat the tale as a temple legend, not history.

Lower Egypt, the Nile Delta kingdom that Menes is said to have conquered, lay in which part of the country?

The north was 'Lower' Egypt because the Nile flows downhill from the highlands of East Africa to the Mediterranean. Upper Egypt, where tradition places Menes' home, lay upstream.

The line of pharaohs that tradition begins with Menes ended about 3,000 years later with which famous queen?

Cleopatra died in 30 BC, when Egypt became a Roman province. That puts her roughly a thousand years closer to the present day than to the reign of Menes.

The title 'pharaoh', not used for kings until long after Menes, comes from an Egyptian phrase meaning what?

Great house first meant the royal palace, and became a word for the king himself more than 1,500 years after Menes. Calling him a pharaoh is a modern habit.

Which creature names both a king whose realm Narmer may have conquered and a 2002 spin-off of The Mummy films?

Scorpion is the name scholars give a king known from a carved ceremonial weapon head. Some think Narmer absorbed his territory on the way to uniting Egypt.

Which Greek historian, a traveller in the fifth century BC, heard the story of Menes from Egyptian priests?

Herodotus set the story down in the fifth century BC. He says the priests followed it by reading him the names of 330 later kings from a long roll.

The sign used to spell the 'mn' sound in the name Menes pictures which everyday object?

A game board spells 'mn', and a seal from Abydos shows it alternating with Narmer's name. That tiny impression is a key clue that the two kings may be one man.

In a tale told by Diodorus, which attackers chased Menes until he fled across Lake Moeris?

His own dogs turned on Menes, the story goes. Priests in the lakeside Faiyum region told it to explain how their sacred city came to be founded.

Historians liken Menes, Egypt's half-legendary founding king, to which legendary hero?

Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, plays the same part: one hero credited with a long, messy process. Some scholars think 'Menes' blends several early rulers into a single name.

On the Narmer Palette, which bird, standing for the god of kingship, perches above the king's kneeling captive?

A falcon stands on a clump of papyrus above the prisoner on the palette. Early kings also drew the same bird on top of the frame that held their names.

Some ancient sources say Menes inherited the throne from which god, whose name early kings added to their own?

Horus was believed to live in each reigning king, so a throne received straight from him marked Menes as the first rightful mortal ruler.

The name 'Egypt' comes, by way of Greek, from a temple in which city that tradition says Menes founded?

Memphis housed a vast temple whose Egyptian name Greek speakers turned into Aigyptos. The city stood where the Nile valley opens into the Delta, a natural seat for ruling both halves.

According to an ancient Greek account, how did Menes prepare the site for his new capital?

He dammed the Nile, the story goes, forcing it into a new channel away from the western hills. The same account says the Persians still strengthened the barrier every year.

The Egyptian name behind 'Menes', spelled mnj in the old king lists, is thought to carry which meaning?

He who endures may not be a personal name at all. One Egyptologist suggested it was a later epithet for a half-legendary hero whose real name had been forgotten.

The name of Narmer, the king most often identified with Menes, is spelled with a chisel and which animal?

A catfish gives the 'nar' sound and the chisel gives 'mer'. Scholars translate the name as something like 'fierce catfish' or 'raging catfish'.

The capital that tradition says Menes founded was first called Ineb-hedj, an Egyptian name with which meaning?

White walls was the name of the fortress at the city's heart. A rock carving found in Sinai in 2012 shows the name in use under a ruler before Narmer, so the city is older than the legend.

Tradition says Menes built a major temple in his new capital to which creator god, the patron of craftsmen?

Ptah was said to have brought the world into being through the power of speech. Only priests and kings were allowed into the heart of his temple.

Besides Narmer, which king, whose name means 'the fighter', is the other leading candidate to be Menes?

Hor-Aha followed Narmer on the throne and may have been his son. His tomb at Abydos held servants and even a group of young lions, buried to serve him in the afterlife.

The Narmer Palette shows the king as which animal, trampling an enemy and smashing into a fortified town?

A bull was a favourite image of royal power: Narmer also wears a bull's tail hanging from the back of his belt on the same palette.

The 'Two Ladies' who protected Upper and Lower Egypt were a vulture goddess and a goddess shown as which animal?

A cobra stood for Wadjet of Lower Egypt and a vulture for Nekhbet of Upper Egypt. After unification both were fixed to the front of the king's headdress.

On the Narmer Palette, a servant walks behind the king carrying which of his belongings?

His sandals are carried by an attendant on both faces of the palette. A small rosette carved beside the man's head may spell out his name.

On the Narmer Palette, the king often identified with Menes raises which weapon over a kneeling captive?

A mace, a stone-headed club, is about to fall on a prisoner the king grips by the hair. On the other face of the palette he carries one in procession, along with a flail.

Stone palettes like the famous Narmer Palette, carved around Menes' time, were originally made for grinding what?

Cosmetics such as eye paint were ground on small palettes, but Narmer's is far too big and ornate for that. It was probably made as a gift for a temple.

Which piece of royal regalia, worn by Egypt's kings for 3,000 years, is Menes credited with inventing?

The double crown joined the tall white crown of Upper Egypt to the red crown of the Delta, so a king who wore it claimed both halves of the country at once.

Kings after Menes were styled 'Lord of' which phrase, the Egyptians' own name for their united country?

The Two Lands kept the memory of separate kingdoms alive long after Menes. Even the symbol for unification showed a pair of plants knotted together around a windpipe.

The title 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt', first used in Menes' dynasty, pairs a sedge plant with which insect?

A bee stood for Lower Egypt and the sedge for Upper Egypt, so the title reads 'he of the sedge and the bee'. Kings went on using it for the rest of pharaonic history.

The Abydos King List, which opens with Menes, is carved in the temple of which pharaoh, father of Ramesses II?

Seti I had 76 royal names carved in rows, starting with Menes. The list leaves out rulers his dynasty disapproved of, including Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and the female king Hatshepsut.

The Turin King List, which names Menes as first mortal king, was copied onto the back of which document?

A tax roll had already been used on one side before a scribe filled the blank back with kings. The papyrus crumbled into fragments on its way to Italy and has been pieced together like a jigsaw since.

The First Dynasty, which tradition says Menes founded, falls early in which age, named after a material?

The Bronze Age was just beginning. Estimates for the start of the First Dynasty range across four centuries, from the 34th to the 30th century BC.

The Roman author Pliny the Elder passes on a claim that Menes invented which skill in Egypt?

Writing was one of several gifts later authors pinned on Menes. Diodorus added religious worship and the practice of sacrifice to the list.

Manetho, who first recorded the name Menes, lived under which dynasty founded by a general of Alexander the Great?

The Ptolemies were Macedonian Greeks, which is why an Egyptian priest composed his country's history in Greek. His division of the kings into thirty dynasties is still in use.

Which English pioneer, called the father of Egyptian archaeology, came to identify Menes with Narmer?

Flinders Petrie dug the earliest royal tombs at Abydos around 1900. He first took Menes for Narmer's successor, then changed his mind, and scholars still argue both cases.

Manetho says Athothis, the son and successor of Menes, was a physician who produced books on which subject?

Anatomy books by the king were still in circulation in Manetho's own day, he claims, more than two thousand years later. He also credits Athothis with building a royal palace.

Narmer's tomb lies in an Abydos cemetery whose Arabic name, Umm el-Qa'ab, translates as 'Mother of' what?

Pots, millions of them, lie smashed across the site in a vast mound. One of the early royal tombs here was later treated as the grave of the god Osiris and drew pilgrims to an annual festival.

Diodorus says a later king carved a curse against Menes at Thebes for introducing what to the Egyptians?

Luxury was the charge. King Tefnakht, forced onto plain food during a desert campaign, enjoyed it so much that he cursed the ruler who first taught Egyptians soft living.

The 'Naqada label', a tiny tag once read as proof of who Menes was, is carved from which material?

Ivory, in this case, shows a king's name beside a building that holds the 'mn' sign. Scholars once read that as Menes, but most now think it names a shrine.

Manetho calls Menes a native of which Upper Egyptian city, whose ruins archaeologists have never located?

Thinis lay somewhere near Abydos, where the earliest kings were buried. Its modern name comes from Manetho, who labelled the first rulers 'Thinite'.

Which early queen, long mistaken for a male ruler because of her huge tomb, may have been Narmer's wife?

Neithhotep also left her name in rock carvings in Sinai, which suggest she later ruled Egypt for a time on behalf of a young king.

Narmer, the king often equated with Menes, left his name on wine jars found far beyond Egypt in which land?

Canaan, the region of modern Israel and Palestine, has yielded Narmer's name at nine sites. One sherd came from a wine jar shipped all the way from the Nile valley.