Hor-Aha

Hor-Aha was probably the son of Narmer. His mother is usually identified as Neithhotep, whose name appears beside those of both kings, although some scholars think she was Hor-Aha's wife rather than his mother. He inherited a country that Narmer had already brought under one crown, and seal impressions made in the reigns of Den and Qa'a list him as the second king of the dynasty.

As under Narmer, the evidence is mostly labels, seals and inscribed jars. They show an administration that sealed and recorded goods and named each year after a notable event. The Palermo Stone, a royal annal carved centuries later, preserves part of the record of his last year: a festival called the "Following of Horus" and the making of an image of the god Anubis, together with the height of the Nile flood.

Manetho, writing some 2,500 years later, says that Hor-Aha built a palace at Memphis. Some scholars think the royal residence moved there in his reign, but this is an interpretation, not a recorded fact.

An ivory label from Abydos names one of his years as the "year of smiting Ta-Sety", the "land of the bow" in Lower Nubia. It is the clearest record of a campaign in his reign, other victory scenes may be standard royal imagery rather than real events. Cedar wood in his tomb shows that timber from the Lebanese coast was already reaching Egypt, probably through Byblos, although direct contact is not proven.

Hor-Aha's tomb at Umm el-Qa'ab is far larger than those of his predecessors: three great chambers, B10, B15 and B19, lined with mud brick. A huge mastaba at Naqada, about 54 by 27 metres, carries the names of Narmer and Hor-Aha and is usually attributed to Neithhotep. At Saqqara, near Memphis, the first large tomb with a niched "palace facade", S3357, dates from his reign, its owner is unknown, perhaps a member of the royal family or a high official.

Hor-Aha's very name, "Horus the fighter", presents the king as the falcon god in action. Beside his tomb at Abydos lie 36 subsidiary graves in three rows, holding servants, dwarfs, women and even dogs: the earliest known case in Egypt of people buried with a king to serve him in the afterlife. How they died is unclear, but the custom continued throughout the First Dynasty.

Hor-Aha was buried at Abydos, and his son Djer, whose mother Khenthap is named on the Palermo Stone, succeeded him. Later Egyptians remembered the founder of their state as Menes, and the first names in the king lists, Meni and then Teti, are usually matched with Narmer and Hor-Aha. A minority of Egyptologists, among them Günter Dreyer, Wolfgang Helck and Peter Kaplony, think Menes was Hor-Aha, most think he was Narmer.