[Music] hello and welcome to today's lecture on king narmer i'm your professor dr rob steffen and today we're going to take an in-depth look at the king who many scholars think was the first to unify upper and lower egypt in doing so we'll get an in-depth case study concerning the interpretation of archaeological artifacts learning what they can tell us and where they leave us short we'll also end up investigating one of the ongoing mysteries about early egypt whether narmer is the same king that monito calls manys the first king of unified egypt so if you're sick of being a measly regional ruler or you're just looking to unify your country journey with me as we investigate king narmer unifier of egypt so [Music] in today's lecture we'll take our first in-depth look at one of the individual kings of egypt but while this episode will mainly be focused on narmer we're going to start with someone else a king that the greco-egyptian historian minitho calls many's by the time monito was writing in the 3rd century bce the tale of many's had already grown tall not only was he considered the unifier of upper and lower egypt he was frequently considered the first human ruler of egypt after a long line of divine gods now later greek and roman historians they go even further deodoris a greek historian write in a couple hundred years after monito claimed that many's was the first to worship the gods and that he even invented sacrifice itself pliny a different greco-roman historian writing in the 2nd century ce claimed that manny's invented writing itself but perhaps the craziest story comes from the priests of sobek the crocodile god they ended up claiming that one day while out hunting menys was attacked by his own dogs he fled across a lake on the back of a crocodile to get away from them and as a thank you afterwards he founded crocodilopolis sacred to the god sobek try saying that one three times fast you'd think it'd be easy to confidently identify a person with such famed accomplishments the early texts from the old kingdom however never mention anyone by the name of manys or anything like it usually the greek names for kings are just slight variations based on the phonetics of the egyptian originals but in this case we have nothing well the problem here ends up coming down to egyptian naming conventions there wasn't just one name the king had a birth name often known as the sedge and b name but the king also had a horus name the kingly name he took upon entering the position of pharaoh so think of something similar happening with like um like popes today right uh and scholars today think that manny's might have been the unifier's birth name while narmer was clearly a horus name or a new kingly name so if you're thinking okay this guy keeps saying that people with completely different names may actually be the same person well what in the world is the evidence for that well you're asking exactly the right questions and the simple answer is that a lot of archaeological evidence clearly identifies a king named narmer doing a lot of the things that later historians suggest many's did the most famous of these archaeological artifacts is known as the narmer palette let's take a closer look at that now so the narmer palette is decorative well palette you know uh that was discovered in 1897 at the site of hierokonpoulos in upper egypt now a palette's a stone tool and it's used for the grinding of minerals often used in cosmetics right think of like a mortar and pestle kind of situation and you can see here right the area where the minerals would actually go and then they'd be crushed using a stone pestle the fine decoration on the narmer palette though suggests that it was used more for display and for status rather than for the actual grinding of minerals here we're looking at the front or non-grinding side of the pallet we immediately see a large figure wearing the white crown of upper egypt holding a mace and ready to smite an enemy we can tell this is an armor from the cerec above the king which contains a catfish and chisel the hieroglyphs that make the name narmer the bulls on top symbolize the power of the king and below the king are two trampled foes [Music] but what ends up making this about the unification of upper and lower egypt well to answer that question look just to the right of the king's head and here we see horus the god of kingship depicted in his form as a falcon having subdued a half-man half-plant creature scholars think that creature represents lower egypt because of the reeds that arise out of its back there and those reeds are a traditional symbol of lower egypt and the nile delta so it's not just that narmer's conquering foes it's that he a king of upper egypt is specifically conquering foes from lower egypt [Music] the story continues on the back of the palate once again we see the name of narmer enclosed within the cerec and we get the bulls that symbolize power presiding over the entire scene the scenes below are broken into registers on the top level we see the king noteworthy because of his relative size this time wearing the red crown of lower egypt and holding the mason flail two of his symbols of power and just in case it wasn't clear that this was narmer they repeat his name in hieroglyphs next to his head continuing to the right we get standard bearers marching forward with symbols of the king's power but that's not all to the right of the standard bearers we get 10 captives over there and oh boy it turns out you did not want to lose the kingdom armor the 10 captives have each been decapitated and if that's not bad enough they've also been castrated and their dismembered members have been placed atop their decapitated heads all that stuff lying between their legs nasty stuff there narmer but above the captives the symbols of possibly they possibly represent the towns from which those captives came symbolizing the areas that narmer conquered below that register we get the center of the palette here two attendants hold back the long necks of two mythical creatures thought to be half serpent and then half lion or leopard not only do scholars think that these symbolize the king's power but they also symbolize his ability to overcome strong enemies and the interlocking nature of the necks of these creatures which forms the area where the minerals would have actually been ground may also symbolize the unification or interlocking of upper and lower egypt now finally at the bottom the king is represented as a bull the symbol of the bulls heads at the top are replaced by the king actually as a bull trampling his foes at the bottom and the circle with the square knobs jutting out from it right there well that represents the enemy's fortified city which the king is also trampled into [Music] submission so there's no real debate about who this palette belonged to it was almost certainly the possession of a king named narmer what is hotly debated however is the issue of whether the events and iconography represented on the narmer palette are indicative of real historical events or whether they're more representative of kingly power more generally basically does this represent the actual event of the unification of ancient egypt or does it just show narmer's strength and power over a united egypt there's still no clear consensus on this it tends to be that earlier scholars well they thought that this represented the actual moment of unification but more recent scholars interpret it as a symbolic artifact displaying the king's power over his enemies and over the forces of chaos so unfortunately there's like a good chance that we'll never actually have a concrete answer to the question of whether this represents an actual historical event or is something more symbolic of the power of the king what we do have however is more evidence of gnarmer's portrayal as conqueror of foes and subduer of disorder the narmer mace head excavated shortly after the pallet at the same site of hierokompolis once again portrays narmer's dominance over the captives of lower egypt we once again see him identified by his catfish and chisel saric and then he's portrayed sitting on a throne wearing the red crown and holding the royal flail bound captives are led in from the right while standard bearers occupy the top of the scene the enclosure with a calf and a bowl represent the lower egyptian capital of bhuto which narmer possibly conquered during the unification process now one of the crazy things here is that the narmer mesan lists the amount of booty taken from this event perhaps suggesting that it was indeed an actual historical event so we get for example 400 000 cattle we get 1.4 million goats and to top it all off we've got 120 000 captives listed in the bottom of the register scene [Music] so was narmer the same person as benito's minis the argument in favor of this normally goes that the events depicted on the narmer palate and upon the mace head and on the inscriptions throughout egypt and the sinai correspond to the idea of many's unification of egypt and the difference in names can be explained by the different types of names that kings use narmer would have been the horus name adopted upon taking power and many's would have been the sedging bee name which he was given at birth [Music] now other scholars suggest that many should be linked with an entirely different king one by the name of hor aha who succeeded in armor as king of egypt now supporters of the aha point of view uh they point to an ivory label that shows the cerec of hor aha alongside the symbol of king menese which looks like a chessboard with some cones on top of it not to be outdone supporters of narmer as the same person as many's point towards an ancient seal which produces alternating cerex of narmer with chessboards of many's for them this seal is representing both the names of the same king and would thus imply that narmer and many's are indeed the same person supporters of aha aren't done yet though they've analyzed other seals from the same time and just for some background info here these little seals they're like little carved stone artifacts and they would have been used to show something uh hasn't been tampered with right so it's like sealing a letter and then you put the seal over it to show that nobody's messed with it and they say that this alternating format of the narm or cerric and the mendy's chessboard is actually what you would get it's what you'd expect from a king prince relationship rather than a king king relationship suggesting that narmer is the father of many's who would then be associated with of course or aha so what do we make of all this well far more recent evidence found at a bios in the last few decades has produced several king lists and each of these king lists starts with narmer as the first king of egypt suggesting that he is indeed beneath those manys it's impossible to tell my money is on the fact that narmer and many's are indeed the same person although there's no way of knowing for sure but what we can take away from all this is the sheer amount of information we can glean from archaeological artifacts think of all the messages that are conveyed by the narmer palette and the narmer mace head all with an incredibly limited set of words the kings use symbols like maces and pallets to convey their power and their ability to subdue chaos and as archaeologists our job right is to decipher exactly what these artifacts are trying to say so sometimes an artifact really can say a thousand words although exactly which words may be up for debate just a couple lessons you can take away from [Music] agents [Music] foreign