name is still
doubtful. Arguing that Aha must be Mena, and having all the rest of the
kings of the Ist Dynasty identified with the names in the lists, Prof.
Petrie is compelled to exclude Narmer from the dynasty, and to relegate
him to "Dynasty 0," before the time of Mena. It is quite possible,
however, that Narmer was the successor, not the predecessor, of Mena.
He was certainly either the one or the other, as the style of art in his
time was exactly the same as that in the time of Aha. The "Scorpion,"
too, whose name is found at Hierakonpolis, certainly dates to the same
time as Narmer and Aha, for the style of his work is the same. And it
may well be that he is not to be counted as a separate king, belonging
to "Dynasty 0 "(or "Dynasty -I") at all, but as identical with Narmer,
just as "Sma" may also be. We thus find that the two kings who left the
most developed remains at Hierakonpolis are the two whose monuments at
Abydos are the oldest of all on that site. That is to say, the kings
whose monuments record the conquest of the North belong to the period
of transition from the old Hierakonpolite dominion of Upper Egypt to the
new kingdom of all Egypt. They, in fact, represent the "Mena" or Menes
of tradition. It may be that Aha bore the personal name of _Men_, which
would thus be the original of Mena, but this is uncertain. In any case
both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist Dynasty, with the result
that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in the
lists.

Nor is this improbable. Manetho's list is evidently based upon old
Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of
Abydos and Sakkara were based. These old lists were made under the
XIXth Dynasty, when an interest in the oldest kings seems to have been
awakened, and the ruling monarchs erected temples at Abydos in their
honour. This phenomenon can only have been due to a discovery of Umm
el-Ga'ab and its treasures, the tombs of which were recognized as
the burial-places (real or secondary) of the kings before the
pyramid-builders. Seti I. and his son Ramses then worshipped the kings
of Umm el-Ga'ab, with their names set before them in the order, number,
and spelling in which the scribes considered they ought to be inscribed.
It is highly probable that the number known at that time was not quite
correct. We know that the spelling of the names was very much garbled
(to take one example only, the signs for _Sen_ we