The Search for the Earliest Kings of Egypt

For regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations, please subscribe. By the time the pharaonic civilization was established, as it appears to us through texts and grandiose monuments, Egypt already had a long past. While the history of the first kings of the dynastic period dates to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE, Egypt had a history before that. It's not as simple to identify the first rulers of Egypt, though. The origins of kingship were even a subject of debate among the ancient Egyptians themselves. Menes, or Narmer, may have headed the classic New Kingdom king lists, but a far older line of kings was given primacy in Old Kingdom royal chronicles. They were recorded a thousand years earlier. The past few decades have witnessed growth in scholarly interest in the origins of early Egyptian state society and kingship. This also has been one of the most challenging areas of research, especially because Egyptian archaeology must rely heavily on funerary data and artistic representations. In particular, the towering concept of pharaonic kingship, so manifestly embodied in the royal monumental art and architecture of the Old Kingdom, has tended to overshadow inquiries into the origins of the state and of complex society. But today we're going to take a look into this dark and mysterious period. Who were the first kings in Egypt? Come with me and I'll tell you what we have so far found out and what we still do not know. This video is sponsored by Brilliant, an interactive learning platform that specializes in math, data science, and computer science. There are thousands of lessons available and more are added every month, and they range from basic difficulty to advanced. You can customize the content to fit your needs. 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Plus, the lessons are bite-sized so you can engage a few minutes each day and gradually improve over time without any major changes to your schedule. To try everything Brilliant has to offer, free, for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org slash world of antiquity, or click on the link in the description. The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription. I want to begin today's discussion with the work of a man named Diodorus Siculus, that is Diodorus of Sicily, who lived in the first century BCE during the time of Roman rule in the Mediterranean. He wrote a history of the world called the Bibliotheca Historicae in Greek, and in part of it he relates the history of ancient Egypt, as it was related to him by some recent Egyptian historical writings that he had in his possession. Diodorus speaks of the first king of Egypt, Menes, who we discussed in another video. Keep in mind that Menes is said to have been the first king of a united Egypt. Diodorus says his Egyptian source places Menes's reign 5,000 years before Alexander the Great. We now know from archaeological and documentary evidence from earlier times that this figure is 2,000 years too long, but we are interested in what happened before Menes. Diodorus says prior to him Egypt was ruled over directly by the gods, the first being Osiris, who they say reigned 18,000 years before Menes, and the last being Horus, and before Osiris he says was the great flood of Deucalion. Now before we get all excited about this amazing bit of information, we need to keep in mind that Diodorus was writing in the first century BCE, thousands of years after the events he describes. His Egyptian source appears to be from Hellenistic times as well, because he speaks of the flood of Deucalion and many other Greek myths in connection with Egyptian history. So this shows an Egyptian history influenced by the Greeks. Moreover, archaeological evidence indicates very clearly that in the time of Menes, Egyptian writing was still in a rudimentary stage, and it was only in early dynastic times that the Egyptians began writing full sentences. So this means the 18,000 year period that Diodorus speaks about would have left no documentation. How then could the Egyptians of later times have known about it? Only through oral means. I realize some of you may have dismissed the idea already that gods ruled Egypt before the time of the human kings, but I know some of you out there are envisioning extraterrestrials or Atlanteans, so let's look at this matter more closely. 200 years before Diodorus, Menetho wrote a comprehensive history of Egypt. What does he say about this time period? Well, his work is no longer preserved, but those who read it summarized what was in it. Menetho says that before the human kings, first the gods reigned, then the demigods, and then the spirits of the dead. His list is different from Diodorus's, and the chronology is different too, but it shows that in the Ptolemaic period in Egypt, that's when the Greeks were ruling, the idea that gods ruled Egypt before humans was prevalent among the Egyptians. What's interesting is that in both cases there are no human rulers existing before Menes. Going back to Herodotus, who spoke to the Egyptians about their history almost two centuries before Menetho, we find that he begins the history with Menes. Nothing is said about gods ruling the country before him, or any other rulers for that matter. If we go further back to the time of the Egyptian New Kingdom, we find the Abydos king list. This dates to some 800 years before Herodotus, but as in Herodotus, the first king listed is Mene, Menes. It is this way in all our New Kingdom king lists. However, if we go back further in time, all the way back to the Old Kingdom, we finally get to a king list that preserves the names of pre-dynastic kings. You may have heard of the Palermo Stone. It is a fragment of a document we call the Royal Annals of the Old Kingdom. It's not fully preserved, but we do get the names of some kings that immediately preceded the first dynasty. Seca, Cayu, Teu, Thesh, Neheb, Wazner, Mech. These names do not match the names of gods or demigods or spirits of the dead mentioned in Menetho or Diodorus. They appear to be legitimate names of real kings. Indeed, the story of the gods ruling the country appears to have been a later invention from a time after the actual names of the pre-dynastic kings had been forgotten. Our understanding of the beginnings of ancient Egypt has greatly advanced as a result of archaeological excavations. Although Narmer had a significant role in Egyptian history and was thought to be the first of the first dynasty, it is now known that he was not Egypt's first king. In the early royal cemetery at Abydos, archaeologists discovered tombs that predate Narmer's, yet whose construction and contents distinguish them as royal. As a result, Egyptologists invented the title Dynasty Zero to describe the line of rulers who reigned prior to the first dynasty, even though it's not certain that it was a single line at all or that its earlier rulers controlled large territories in Egypt. This is in Upper Egypt, by the way, the south. The term dynasty then is a little misleading because we don't know if it was really a dynasty. So some people prefer the term proto-dynastic. Just understand that we use the term Dynasty Zero loosely. The period is kind of a muddle. That said, two of the features that can be said to most closely define pharaonic kingship did exist at this time. The association between kings and the god Horus and some measure of control over both the Nile Valley and or the Nile Delta. The reconstruction of the royal names is, of course, a subject of debate. Since many kings are attested only very poorly in the subject of pre-dynastic Egypt, we can talk about the fundamental signs of kingship prior to being able to name individual kings with certainty. What is not up for debate, however, is that in the couple of generations preceding Narmer, we've been able to find kings with legible names, recognizable tombs, and they had the means of gathering and labeling goods. And thus we can speak of a dynasty with maybe somewhat more confidence. Archaeology showed that these early kings asserted their difference through the possession of luxury objects. This was the era of large knives, the crafting of which was one of the world's pinnacles of flint knapping, copper and gold jewelry, elaborate ivories, precious stones that sometimes came from very far away, such as lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, zoomorphic blush palettes, and beautiful white bottom pottery decorated with ochre painted motifs, spirals, ripples, undulating lines, but also complex scenes dominated by the theme of navigation. A stunning discovery in the royal burial mound at Abydos threw open the whole discussion about Egypt's first kings. It's a huge tomb with items befitting a king, most notably an ivory scepter, and it's designed to seem like a small royal palace. This burial, dubbed Tomb UJ by its archaeologist, is notable for being more than a century older than the first dynasty. The owner must have had control over the whole northern Nile valley and delta as it is the biggest tomb of its period anywhere in Egypt. The tomb was full of pottery bearing animal and plant motifs painted in red ochre, which were interpreted as the first signs of hieroglyphic writing, and read as designating the domain of kings who reigned during Dynasty Zero. Very important for our understanding of this period, between 3300 and 2900 BCE to be exact, is that we see the emergence of the codification process, one of the hallmarks of state societies and indicative of a high degree of hierarchization. The great novelty of this period, running from Nakara III to the early dynastic period, was the beginning of writing. From this period onwards, a typical rectangular sign called a seric, considered to represent the facade of a palace, appeared incised on the body of pottery, sometimes surmounted by a falcon, horus, and inside which, under the first dynasty, the name of the king was placed. It is due to the beginning of writing that we can now know several kings from this period. These enigmatic royal names from the beginning of Egyptian history have been found in diverse contexts. Some are written in ink on pots, some incised as pot marks, others scratched on rocks in the western and eastern deserts. Our understanding of early hieroglyphic writing is not yet good enough to decipher these names with certainty, and we don't have full sentences, we just have these names. But what is clear is that the period immediately preceding the reign of Narmer was characterized, in both Egypt and Nubia, by a plethora of rulers claiming royal authority. The names of three dynasty zero kings are known, Erihor, Ka, and Scorpion II. They were rulers from the city of Genu, or Thinis in Upper Egypt, and directly preceded Narmer. Scorpion II can be seen depicted on this amazing mace head discovered in the late 1800s. He wears the crown of Upper Egypt. The opening of an irrigation channel is shown at the city of Neken, which is where the mace head was found. Two hieroglyphic symbols, a scorpion and a rosette placed in front of the king's face, identify him as the one depicted and who is conducting this act. The king is typically characterized as King Scorpion, since the rosette was the first used to denote a ruler at this time. Some Egyptologists, however, prefer to view the scorpion as a title as opposed to a name. Could be he seems to have ruled just before or at around the same time as Narmer, although no tomb that could be identified as being his has been discovered in the ancient royal cemetery at Abydos. It has been hypothesized that Scorpion may have been a local monarch who dominated the southernmost portion of the Nile Valley, since Neken is in the far south of Egypt, while Narmer reigned in Thinis. Certainly, Neken had played a significant role in the centuries before the beginning of the First Dynasty, but it appears that Thinis, a city located a bit further north, ultimately prevailed during the last phases of Egyptian unification. So yeah, the Scorpion King existed. There may also have been a King Crocodile from this period, but this is less certain. There are other kings from a little earlier, also from Upper Egypt, which some have grouped into a dynasty double zero. One is named Scorpion I, and another we just call King A, because we don't know the actual name. As we go back in time, we of course know less. There were kings of Lower Egypt too. The names on the Palermo stone are Lower Egyptian. Unfortunately, no contemporary evidence has been found for any of them. We have found objects with the names of others, Heduhor, Nihor, Ninit, a double falcon, and then there is the King Wash, named on the Narmer palette. But kings may have gone back even further. Archaeologists discovered a decorated pottery jar from approximately 3800 BCE in a tomb at Abidas, designated U-239. The decor has symbols that have appeared in every following era of Egyptian civilization. A decorated vessel found in the tomb shows a human figure wearing a headdress, probably made of feathers, and an animal tail, and holding a mace, with which it is very likely about to strike a group of smaller figures. This motif would eventually turn into the ultimate symbol of Egyptian regal authority. Evidently, the ideas and representations that Egypt's monarchs were connected with historically date back to considerably further in antiquity. So kingship appears to have started several centuries before the first dynasty, at least in terms of ideology. What is a king anyway? Even before ancient civilization took hold in the Nile Valley and began to form towns and cities, the idea of a man with semi-divine powers telling people what to do was well established. While some may have already had large swaths of territory in their hands, others were likely hardly more than mayors. By the time Egypt was starting to form a cohesive, complex state, it was becoming more typical for rulers to dress like we would imagine kings to dress. What we see as we approach the time of Narmer is a dizzying rise of the elite, which is reflected in the monumentality of the tombs, and the accumulation of funerary furnishings. The art produced in this period is marked by an exaltation of violence, which is totally dominated by the monarchical institution. In other words, it sublimates strength and power, expressing an ideology from which the image of the pharaoh will be generated throughout the centuries to come. But many of these names are still obscure. Some are not even known at all. We have no idea exactly how far back they go. So it's still a big mystery. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. 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