========================================================================= | | | | | | Years in | | Turin | | | | Manetho | Manetho | Papyrus | Abydos | Saqqarah | Monuments +-----+------ | | | | | |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) =========================================================================
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.