The Historians' History of the World 01

This prehistoric civilisation was much decayed when it was overcome by a new influx of people, who founded the dynastic rule. These came apparently from the Red Sea, as they entered Egypt in the reign of Coptos, and not either from the north or from the Upper Nile. They were a highly artistic people, as the earliest works attributable to them—the Min sculptures at Coptos—show better drawing than any work by the older inhabitants; and they rapidly advanced in art to the noble works of the Ist Dynasty. They also brought in the hieroglyphic system, which was developed along with their art. It seems probable that they came up from the Land of Punt, at the south of the Red Sea, and they may have been a branch of the Punic race in its migration from the Persian Gulf round by sea to the Mediterranean. They rapidly subdued the various tribes which were in Egypt, and at least five different types of man are shown on the monuments of their earliest kings.d Of these there were two distinct lines, the kings of Upper and the kings of Lower Egypt. The Palermo stone gives us the names of seven independent kings of Lower Egypt who ruled before the time of Menes—Seker, Tesau, Tau, Thesh, Neheb, Uat´-nar, and Mekha, while within the past few years the names of three pre-dynastic kings of Upper Egypt have been revealed—Te, Re, and Ka. To discover when and where these early monarchs reigned is probably the most interesting and important problem engaging the Egyptologist to-day.a

CHAPTER II. THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM

The First Dynasty

Thinites

Manetho

Turin Papyrus

Abydos

Saqqarah

Monuments

Years in Manetho

Afr.

Euseb.

1

Menes

Mena

Mena

Menes

62

60

2

Athothis

Atu

Teta

Teta

57

27

3

Kenkenes

Ateth

31

39

4

Uenephes

…a

Ata

23

42

5

Usaphaïdes

Hesep-ti

Hesep-ti

Hesep-ti

20

20

6

Miebidos

Mer-ba-pen

Mer-ba-pa

Mer-ba-pen

26

26

7

Semempses

Men-sa-nefer

Sem-en-Ptah

Sem-en-Ptah

18

18

8

Bieneches

…buhu

Kebh

Keb-hu

26

26

Total 253 (L. 263) 252 or 253 (L. 258)

[ca. 4400-4133 B.C.]

The first human king who, according to Greek authors as well as according to the Egyptian lists of kings, ruled over the Nile Valley was Menes, called Mena in Egyptian. His family came from Teni, a spot in Middle Egypt, the Greek This [or Thinis] in Abydos, a place which formed a certain religious centre of the kingdom down to a late period. Menes himself, it is true, soon quitted the place and built his residence on another more favourably situated spot, the place where the fruitful plains of the Delta began. This new capital is Memphis, the city that flourished down to the latest periods of Egyptian history as a royal residence and a commercial centre. The foundation of the place is to-day exposed to the flooding of the Nile; this was already the case in ancient days, and the king was forced to protect the ground from this danger by a powerful dam. The dike which he constructed is in the neighbourhood of the place called Cocheiche. And this dike to this day secures the whole province of Gizeh from the floods.

This danger of flooding is less to be apprehended from the Nile itself than from the natural canal, called Bahr Yusuf [“River of Joseph”], which skirts the Libyan Desert. Thus the topographical conditions of this place have hardly varied at all from the time of Menes. The ruined site of ancient Memphis is now traced by only a few monuments, and the excavations here have been very unproductive, while even in the days of the Arabs the remnants of the town aroused the highest admiration in Arabian authors. At all events the name has remained, and to this day the great mound at Mitraheni is called Tel-el-Monf, the mound of Monf. The ancient Egyptian name was Men-nefer, “the good place,” the sacred name Ha-kha-Ptah, “the house of the divine person of Ptah,” just as Ptah has remained for all time the chief god of the city. From this name, with but little right, it has been sought to derive the Greek name of the country of Egypt.

The acts, which for the rest are ascribed to Menes, are just those with which the first prince of a country is usually accredited. According to the Greeks he founded in Memphis the great temple of Ptah, the very first temple in Egypt; he regulated the service in the temple and the honouring of the god; he further was responsible for the introduction of the cult of Apis. Finally, he even discovered the alphabet, according to Anticlides, fifteen years (it would probably be more reasonable to read it 15,000) before Phoroneus, the architect of Argos.