Memphis, the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the…

Memphis, the ancient capital of Aneb-Hetch, the first nome of Lower Egypt, becomes the first capital of the new Egyptian state, unified through warfare.

Menes, the first pharaoh to unite Egypt's Two Lands, establishes his capital on the banks of the Nile by diverting the river with dikes, according to a legend recorded by the Egyptian priest Manetho, writing in the third century BCE.

Meni, the Egyptian form of the pharoah's name, is taken from the Turin and Abydos king lists (dated Dynasty XIX).

The name Menes means "He who endures".

Rather than a particular person, the name may conceal collectively the protodynastic pharaohs Ka, Scorpion and Narmer.

The archaeological record for the Early Dynastic Period refers to the pharaohs by their Horus-names, while the historical record, as evidenced in the Turin and Abydos king lists, uses an alternative royal titulary, the nebty-name.

The different titular elements of a pharaoh's name are often used in isolation, for brevity's sake, although the choice varied according to circumstance and period.

Mainstream Egyptological consensus follows the findings of Flinders Petrie in reconciling the two records and connects Hor-Aha (archaeological) with the nebty-name Ity (historical).

The same process has led to the identification of the historical Menes (a nebty-name) with the Narmer (a Horus-name) evidenced in the archaeological record (both figures are credited with the unification of Egypt and as the first pharaoh of Dynasty I) as the predecessor of Hor-Aha (the second pharaoh).

The commonly used name Hor-Aha is a rendering of the pharaoh's Horus-name, an element of the royal titulary associated with the god Horus, and is more fully given as Horus-Aha.

There has been some controversy about Hor-Aha.

Some believe him to be the same individual as the legendary Menes and that he was the one to unify all of Egypt.

Others claim he was the son of Narmer, the pharaoh who unified Egypt.

Narmer and Menes may have been one pharaoh, referred to with more than one name.

Regardless, considerable historical evidence from the period points to Narmer as the pharaoh who first unified Egypt (see Narmer Palette) and to Hor-Aha as his son and heir.

Legend has it that Hor-Aha was carried away by a hippopotamus, the embodiment of the deity Seth.

Provided that Hor-Aha was the legendary Menes, another story has it that Hor-Aha was killed by a hippopotamus while hunting.

Hor-Aha's chief wife was Benerib, whose name was "written alongside his on a number of [historical] pieces, in particular, from tomb B14 at Abydos, Egypt".

Tomb B14 is located directly adjacent to Hor-Aha's sepulcher.

Hor-Aha also had another wife, Khenthap, with whom he became father of Djer.

She is mentioned as Djer's mother on the Cairo Annals Stone.

If Menes or Narmer and Hor-Aha were separate rulers, this would make Djer the third pharaoh in the dynasty.

The Abydos King List lists the second pharaoh as Teti, the Turin Canon lists Iteti, while Manetho lists Athothis.

Djer's Horus name means "Horus who succors".

Manetho indicates that the First Dynasty ruled from Memphis—and indeed Herneith, one of Djer’s wives, was buried nearby at Saqqara.

Manetho also claimed that Athothis, who is sometimes identified as Djer, had written a treatise on anatomy that still existed in his own day, nearly three millennia later.