The unification of Egypt

The story

A slab of stone that tells of a victory

In 1897–1898 two English archaeologists, James Quibell and Frederick Green, were digging at Hierakonpolis, in Upper Egypt, the place the ancients called Nekhen. In the storeroom of a temple they found a slab of dark green stone, about 64 centimetres tall, carved on both faces. At the top, on both sides, are two cow heads with horns and, between them, a rectangle with the name of a king written with two signs: a catfish (nar) and a chisel (mer). It reads Narmer. Today the slab is called the Narmer Palette and is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

On one side we see a king wearing the white crown, tall and shaped like a skittle, raising a mace to strike a kneeling enemy; above them a falcon, symbol of the god Horus, holds by a rope a prisoner whose head grows out of a papyrus-shaped land. On the other side the same king wears the red crown, low, with a stalk rising at the back, and walks behind ten beheaded enemies. It is a very clear political message: this king wins in the south and wins in the north, and wears both crowns. That is why many scholars regard it as the oldest document of the unification.

Two lands under one king

To understand what this means, we have to look at Egypt as it was. The Nile flows for more than a thousand kilometres from south to north and, near the sea, fans out into the delta. The Egyptians called the south, the narrow valley, Upper Egypt, and the north, the delta, Lower Egypt. The first was symbolised by the lotus plant and the white crown, the second by papyrus and the red crown. Together they made the double crown, which the Greeks called the pschent. The pharaoh called himself “lord of the Two Lands”. And even when Egypt was united, the Egyptians went on talking about the Two Lands.

Before 3100 BC several communities lived in the valley, each with its own chief: one at Naqada, one at Thinis (near Abydos) and one at Hierakonpolis, perhaps the most powerful in the south. These communities shared the same culture, called the Naqada culture, and traded with the Levant and with Mesopotamia. Over the centuries the strongest swallowed up the others. Around 3100 BC a single king, who came from the south, also controlled the delta. Scholars think the unification was not a single day of battle, but a long process, perhaps lasting generations.

Narmer or Menes?

Here a small riddle begins. In the lists of kings written much later, and in the account of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote in Greek around 280 BC, the first pharaoh was called Menes. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Menes built a dam to divert the Nile and founded the city of Memphis, at the point where the two lands met. But there is no inscription of a King Menes from that time. What do exist are the names of Narmer and of his successor Aha. Many scholars think Menes is another name for Narmer, others that he is Aha, and others still that Menes is only a symbolic figure. There is no certain answer.

The date is approximate too. The unification is placed around 3100 BC, but with an uncertainty of a few decades, perhaps more. Radiocarbon work on remains from that period has helped to pin it down, but not to remove the doubts.

What came next

With the new state came a completely new form of government: a god-king, the pharaoh (the word means “great house”, that is, the palace), helped by officials and scribes. The king was seen as the embodiment of the falcon god Horus, and after death he became Osiris. A capital, Memphis, controlled the whole country, and the river was its main road: with the wind behind you, you sailed upstream; with the current, you rowed downstream. Egypt became the first great territorial state in history, much larger than the city-states of Mesopotamia.

The united kingdom, with interruptions and periods of crisis, lasted more than three thousand years, until the Roman conquest in 30 BC. Historians divide it into the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms, separated by intermediate periods in which power broke apart. Each time Egypt was reunited, kings went back to calling themselves “lords of the Two Lands” and wearing the double crown: a very ancient image that for their subjects meant order, peace and good harvests.