Menes

Menes
/mee"neez/, n.
fl. c3200 B.C., traditionally the unifier and 1st king of Egypt: founder of the 1st dynasty. Cf. Narmer.

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▪ king of Egypt
also spelled  Mena,  Meni , or  Min 
flourished c. 2925 BCE
 
 first king of unified Egypt, who, according to ancient tradition, joined Upper (Upper Egypt) and Lower Egypt in a single, centralized monarchy. Manetho, a 3rd-century-BCE Egyptian historian, called him Menes; the 5th-century-BCE Greek historian Herodotus referred to him as Min; and two native-king lists of the 19th dynasty (Egypt, ancient) (13th century BCE) call him Meni. Modern scholars have inconclusively identified the traditional Menes with one or more of the archaic Egyptian kings bearing the names Scorpion, Narmer, and Aha.

      In addition to crediting Menes with the unification of Egypt by war and administrative measures, tradition attributes to him the founding of the capital, Memphis, near present-day Cairo. Excavations at Ṣaqqārah, the cemetery for Memphis, have revealed that the earliest royal tomb located there belongs to the reign of Aha. Manetho called Menes a Thinite—i.e., a native of the Thinite province in Upper Egypt—and, in fact, monuments belonging to the kings Narmer and Aha, either of whom may be Menes, have been excavated at Abydos, a royal cemetery in the Thinite nome. Narmer also appears on a slate palette (a decorated stone on which cosmetics were pulverized) alternately wearing the red and white crowns of Lower and Upper Egypt (see crowns of Egypt), a combination symbolic of unification, and shown triumphant over his enemies. Actually, the whole process probably required several reigns, and the traditional Menes may well represent the kings involved. According to Manetho, Menes reigned for 62 years and was killed by a hippopotamus.

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  • Ménes — (spr. mēnesch), Dorf im ungar. Komitat Arad, an der Staatsbahnlinie Arad Tövis, mit Winzerfachschule, (1901) 1331 meist rumänischen (griechisch oriental.) Einwohnern und berühmtem Weinbau in M. sowie in den benachbarten Orten Gyorok, Paulis etc.… …   Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon

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