Five thousand years ago in North Africa, an ambitious king, known today as Narmer, unified two lands into the world's first great territorial state—Egypt
The Narmer Macehead, made of limestone in Hierakonpolis, Egypt, circa 3100 B.C., is housed at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England.The shield-shaped palettes that the late Predynastic kings of Upper Egypt had inscribed with images are a key source for scholars of the period, but so too are limestone maceheads. These also bore images symbolizing the ideology of power and elites from the earliest days of the united Egypt.
The smiting tableau on the front of the Narmer Palette stood the test of time in Egyptian art. The positioning of Narmer’s body— with one upraised hand holding a mace while the other clutches a helpless enemy—can be found in almost every era of pharaonic Egypt. On the walls of his temple at Two of the most important were found in the 1980s by researchers from the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. They uncovered two cylinder seal impressions in the tomb of the pharaoh Den. These seals—still the oldest documented king lists to date—list rulers and successors of the 1st dynasty. One seal dates to the middle of the 1st dynasty and names six rulers. The other seal dates closer to the end of the 1st dynasty and names eight leaders. Both lists begin with Narmer.
Seti I's large mortuary temple in Abydos includes a passage known as the Gallery of the Ancestors. On one wall is inscribed a list of 76 pharaohs' names with Menes listed first.The Turin Papyrus is another king list from the same era as Seti I. Rather than being engraved in stone, it is cursive hieratic script written on papyrus and is one of the most accurate and complete king lists, covering the 1st through the 19th dynasties. It, too, names the first king as Menes and not Narmer.
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