Djet

Djet was the son of Djer, his mother may have been Herneith or Nakhtneith, but this is not known. His wife Merneith may have been his sister or half-sister. Seal impressions show that the government he inherited carried on without a break: the official Amka, who had begun his career under Djer, became royal steward under Djet.

Only two year labels of Djet are known, and both are hard to read. One seems to mention the planning of a building, the "birth" of lotus buds and a ceremony in the shrine of the Two Ladies, the other a victory, the making of a statue and perhaps the founding of a fortress. A single festival of Sokar is attested, which fits a reign of six to ten years. Seal impressions and vessel fragments of his time point to active trade with Syria and Canaan.

No campaign of Djet is recorded with certainty: one year label mentions a victory without saying over whom. A short rock inscription with his name, found in the Eastern Desert near Marsa Alam on the Red Sea, shows that Egyptian expeditions travelled there in his reign. Canaanite pottery in graves at Tarkhan and Saqqara shows that trade with the southern Levant continued.

Djet's tomb at Umm el-Qa'ab, tomb Z, lies west of his father's. Beside it stood a stela with his name: a falcon above a serekh in which a serpent rises over the palace facade. Found by Émile Amélineau, it is now in the Louvre and is one of the finest pieces of early Egyptian relief. An ivory comb with his name, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, shows the sky as the outspread wings of a falcon, together with a sacred boat.

Djet's name links the king to the serpent, a protective power in Egyptian belief, whether it means "serpent" or "cobra" is debated. The ivory comb gives an early glimpse of Egyptian ideas about the world: the sky as a falcon, the god Horus, whose wings span the earth, crossed by a divine boat. A festival of Sokar, a god of the necropolis, is the only religious event of his reign that the labels record.

Djet seems to have left a young heir. His tomb was surrounded by 174 subsidiary graves, most of them retainers buried at his death. Like the other royal tombs at Abydos, it was later burned and then restored when the site became linked with the cult of Osiris. The throne passed to his son Den, but for the first years power seems to have been held by Den's mother, Merneith, whose own tomb at Abydos is as large as a king's.