Pharoah Narmer (??—??)

Pharoah Narmer was the Egyptian monarch credited with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt in 3100 BCE and thus creating the beginning of the powerful Egyptian state and sophisticated civilization. Narmer’s birth date and earlier life are unknown. Many Egyptologists scholars debate whether Narmer and Pharoah Menes were the same person.

Upper Egypt, originally under Narmer, was urbanized along the Nile River with the cities Thinis, Hierakonpolis, and Naqda. Lower Egypt, generally the Nile Delta that extended into the Mediterranean Sea, was more rural and agricultural noted for irrigated fields extending from the Nile River.

Once Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt, he established himself as its first Pharoah (king) and married Princess Neithhotep of Naqada. They had a child together named Nor-Aha, who would become the second Pharoah of the First Dynasty of Egypt.

During Narmer reign, religious practices and iconography where symbols such as the Djed (the four-tiered pillar representing stability) and the Ankh (symbol of life) appeared for the first time.  He also led military expeditions through lower Egypt to put down rebellions and expanded his territory North into Canaan (present day Israel) and Nubia in what is now Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. He also initiated the first large building projects that came to characterize Egyptian civilization for thousands of years.  Under his rule cities grew larger and more numerous.

The Narmer Palette (Also known as Narmer’s Victory Palette and the Great Hierakonpolis Palette) is an Ancient Egyptian artifact that is shape as a chevron shield, carved from a single piece of siltstone. It depicts the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Narmer. It also depicts some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions (writing) that were found during that period along with one of the earliest depictions of an Egyptian Pharoah. On one side, Narmer is depicted with the bulbed White Crown of Upper Egypt, and the other side depicts the king wearing the level Red Crown of Lower Egypt. The Narmer Palette was discovered in 1897-1898 by British archeologists James Quibell and Frederick W. Green at the city of Nekhen (also known as Hierakonpolis), one of the early capitals of the First Dynasty of Egypt.

The year of death of Narmer is unknown as is the year of his birth. He is buried in Umm el-Qa’ab located at Abydos, Egypt in two joined chambers lined in mud brick. In 1964, German Egyptologist Werner Kaiser identified the tomb as being that of Narmer. Narmer has many artifacts about him throughout Egypt, southern Canaan, and the Sinai Peninsula including 98 inscriptions at 26 sites. His name has appeared within a serekh, a rectangular enclosure representing the niched or gated façade of a palace surmounted by the Horus falcon. His name has also appeared at Hierakonpolis, Naqada, Abydos, and Coptos in Upper Egypt and Tarkhan, and Helwan in Lower Egypt.

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