Thus, at this time Egypt seems to have been a state unified under kings who introduced writing and the first bureaucratic administration. These kings, who could have ruled for more than a century, may correspond with a set of names preserved on the Palermo Stone, but no direct identification can be made between them. The latest was probably Narmer, whose name has been found near Memphis, at Abydos, on a ceremonial palette and mace-head from Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, and at the Palestinian sites of Tall Gat and ʿArad. The relief scenes on the palette show him wearing the two chief crowns of Egypt and defeating northern enemies, but these probably are stereotyped symbols of the king’s power and role and not records of specific events of his reign. They demonstrate that the position of the king in society and its presentation in mixed pictorial and written form had been elaborated by the early 3rd millennium bce.
During this time Egyptian artistic style and conventions were formulated, together with writing. The process led to a complete and remarkably rapid transformation of material culture, so that many dynastic Egyptian prestige objects hardly resembled their forerunners. The Early Dynastic period (c. 2925–c. 2575 bce) The 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775 bce)
The beginning of the historical period is characterized by the introduction of written records in the form of regnal year names—the records that later were collected in documents such as the Palermo Stone. The first king of Egyptian history, Menes, is therefore a creation of the later record, not the actual unifier of the country; he is known from Egyptian king lists and from classical sources and is credited with irrigation works and with founding the capital, Memphis. On small objects from this time, one of them dated to the important king Narmer but certainly mentioning a different person, there are two possible mentions of a “Men” who may be the king Menes. If these do name Menes, he was probably the same person as Aha, Narmer’s probable successor, who was then the founder of the 1st dynasty. Changes in the naming patterns of kings reinforce the assumption that a new dynasty began with his reign. Aha’s tomb at Abydos is altogether more grandiose than previously built tombs, while the first of a series of massive tombs at Ṣaqqārah, next to Memphis, supports the tradition that the city was founded then as a new capital. This shift from Abydos is the culmination of intensified settlement in the crucial area between the Nile River valley and the delta, but Memphis did not yet overcome the traditional pull of its predecessor: the large tombs at Ṣaqqārah appear to belong to high officials, while the kings were buried at Abydos in tombs whose walled complexes have long since disappeared. Their mortuary cults may have been conducted in designated areas nearer the cultivation.
Figure perhaps representing Menes on a victory tablet of Egyptian King Narmer, c. 2925–c. 2775 bce.Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich
In the late Predynastic period and the first half of the 1st dynasty, Egypt extended its influence into southern Palestine and probably Sinai and conducted a campaign as far as the Second Cataract. The First Cataract area, with its centre on Elephantine, an island in the Nile opposite the present-day town of Aswān, was permanently incorporated into Egypt, but Lower Nubia was not.
Between late predynastic times and the 4th dynasty—and probably early in the period—the Nubian A Group came to an end. There is some evidence that political centralization was in progress around Qustul, but this did not lead to any further development and may indeed have prompted a preemptive strike by Egypt. For Nubia, the malign proximity of the largest state of the time stifled advancement. During the 1st dynasty, writing spread gradually, but because it was used chiefly for administration, the records, which were kept within the floodplain, have not survived. The artificial writing medium of papyrus was invented by the middle of the 1st dynasty. There was a surge in prosperity, and thousands of tombs of all levels of wealth have been found throughout the country. The richest contained magnificent goods in metal, ivory, and other materials, the most widespread luxury products being extraordinarily fine stone vases. The high point of 1st-dynasty development was the long reign of Den (flourished c. 2850 bce).
During the 1st dynasty three titles were added to the royal Horus name: “Two Ladies,” an epithet presenting the king as making manifest an aspect of the protective goddesses of the south (Upper Egypt) and the north (Lower Egypt); “Golden Horus,” the precise meaning of which is unknown; and “Dual King,” a ranked pairing of the two basic words for king, later associated with Upper and Lower Egypt. These titles were followed by the king’s own birth name, which in later centuries was written in a cartouche. The 2nd dynasty (c. 2775–c. 2650 bce)
From the end of the 1st dynasty, there is evidence of rival claimants to the throne. One line may have become the 2nd dynasty, whose first king’s Horus name, Hetepsekhemwy, means “peaceful in respect of the two powers” and may allude to the conclusion of strife between two factions or parts of the country, to the antagonistic gods Horus and Seth, or to both. Hetepsekhemwy and his successor, Reneb, moved their burial places to Ṣaqqārah; the tomb of the third king, Nynetjer, has not been found. The second half of the dynasty was a time of conflict and rival lines of kings, some of whose names are preserved on stone vases from the 3rd-dynasty Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah or in king lists. Among these contenders, Peribsen took the title of Seth instead of Horus and was probably opposed by Horus Khasekhem, whose name is known only from Kawm al-Aḥmar and who used the programmatic epithet “effective sandal against evil.” The last ruler of the dynasty combined the Horus and Seth titles to form the Horus-and-Seth Khasekhemwy, “arising in respect of the two powers,” to which was added “the two lords are at peace in him.” Khasekhemwy was probably the same person as Khasekhem after the successful defeat of his rivals, principally Peribsen. Both Peribsen and Khasekhemwy had tombs at Abydos, and the latter also built a monumental brick funerary enclosure near the cultivation. The 3rd dynasty (c. 2650–c. 2575 bce)
There were links of kinship between Khasekhemwy and the 3rd dynasty, but the change between them is marked by a definitive shift of the royal burial place to Memphis. Its first king, Sanakhte, is attested in reliefs from Maghāra in Sinai. His successor, Djoser (Horus name Netjerykhet), was one of the outstanding kings of Egypt. His Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah is both the culmination of an epoch and—as the first large all-stone building, many times larger than anything attempted before—the precursor of later achievements. The pyramid is set in a much larger enclosure than that of Khasekhemwy at Abydos and contains reproductions in stone of ritual structures that had previously been built of perishable materials. Architectural details of columns, cornices, and moldings provided many models for later development. The masonry techniques look to brickwork for models and show little concern for the structural potential of stone. The pyramid itself evolved through numerous stages from a flat mastaba (an oblong tomb with a burial chamber dug beneath it, common at earlier nonroyal sites) into a six-stepped, almost square pyramid. There was a second, symbolic tomb with a flat superstructure on the south side of the enclosure; this probably substituted for the traditional royal burial place of Abydos. The king and some of his family were buried deep under the pyramid, where tens of thousands of stone vases were deposited, a number bearing inscriptions of the first two dynasties. Thus, in perpetuating earlier forms in stone and burying this material, Djoser invoked the past in support of his innovations.