Egypt's Dynasties: First Dynasty of Ancient Egypt

First Dynasty of Egypt

Stela depicting the Horus name of the pharaoh Djer, on display at the Cairo Museum. Djer is the second or third pharaoh of the First Dynasty of Egypt. The Abydos King List lists the second pharaoh as Teti, the Turin Canon Iteti, while Manetho has Athothis.

image of Djet

Serekh containing the name of Djet, on display at the Louvre. Djet, also known as Wadj, Zet and Uadji (in Greek possibly the king known as Uenephes), c. 2920 BC, was the third Egyptian king of the First Dynasty.

image of Narmer

Narmer in the traditional pose of smiting the enemies of Egypt from the Narmer Palette. Narmer was an Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled in the 31st century BC. Thought to be the successor to the Predynastic Scorpion and/or Ka, he is considered by some to be the unifier of Egypt and founder of the First Dynasty, and therefore the first king of all Egypt.

Egypt's 1st Dynasty saw the emergence of a unified land stretching from the Delta to the first cataract at Aswan, a distance of over one thousand kilometers along the Nile Valley.

The First Dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with the Second Dynasty under the group title, Early Dynastic Period of Egypt. The capital at that time was Thinis.

Information about this dynasty is derived from a few monuments and other objects bearing royal names, the most important being the Narmer Palette. No detailed records of the first two dynasties have survived, except for the terse lists on the Palermo stone. The hieroglyphs were fully developed by then, and their shapes would be used with little change for a little more than three thousand years.

Large tombs of pharaohs or kings at Abydos and Naqada, in addition to cemeteries at Saqqara and Helwan near Memphis, reveal structures built largely of wood and mud bricks, with some small use of stone for walls and floors. Stone was used in quantity for the manufacture of ornaments, vessels, and occasionally statues. Human sacrifice, later discontinued, was evidently practiced during this First Dynasty, in addition to hundreds of retainers being buried in each pharaoh's tomb with him when he died.

Known rulers, in the History of Egypt, for the First Dynasty are as follows:

First Dynasty

Name

Comments

Dates

Narmer

- probably Menes in earlier lists

c. 3100-3050 BC

Hor-Aha

c. 3050 BC

Djer

41 years (Palermo Stone)

Regent for Den

30 to 50 years

10 years (Palermo Stone)

Semerkhet

9 years (Palermo Stone)

Qa'a

2916?-2890 BC

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