Menes

Menes or Min according to Herodotus, is the name given to the first human ruler of Egypt and is thought by some scholars to have also been known as Narmer. It is sometimes argued that ‘Menes’ is a title rather than a name and maybe a variant of Minos^(b), the ruler of ancient Crete, just as Kaiser, Caesar and Czar have similar meanings. Consequently, some claim that Menes should be identified not only as Narmer, but as Scorpion I or Hor-Aha!

The World History Encyclopedia has an informative entry for Narmer, noting that “little archaeological evidence supported Menes’ existence while Narmer was well attested to in the archaeological record. The great Egyptologist Flinders Petrie (1853 – 1942 CE) claimed Narmer and Menes as the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty in that the two names designated one man: Narmer was his name and Menes an honorific.”^(d)

R. Cedric Leonard in a longer article debunking the Minoan Hypothesis included the following point “Many modern scholars believe it highly likely that King Minos, the founder of the Minoan empire, is identical to the famed King Menes (3100 B.C.) who also unified Upper and Lower Egypt. The Minoan empire is younger than the Sumerian, Hindu, and Egyptian civilizations, and thus cannot be Atlantis.”^(c)

Modern research attributes a date of circa 3000 BC to the reign of Menes. Herodotus (Bk II. 99 & 142) was told by the Egyptian priests that Menes lived around 11,500 years earlier (10,000 BC). This discrepancy of around 7,000 years is comparable with the difference between the date for Atlantis given to Solon by Egyptian priests and the clear Bronze Age setting as recorded by Plato.

It is not unreasonable to speculate that this disparity may be the result of the priests using lunar cycles rather than solar years to calculate time.

Even more entertaining is a claim of an Irish connection from Fiona Cameron Lister – “It seems that Menes died from a bee sting in Ireland and was buried in Knockmany, County Tyrone, although the site has never been excavated to confirm this find. Nor, indeed, has Scotia’s grave in County Kerry, which is widely accepted as being the resting place of an Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter who arrived in Ireland around 1700 B.C.”^(a) However, there is general acceptance that Narmer was killed by a hippo.

^(a) https://fcameronlister.medium.com/the-surprising-location-of-atlantis-aa75937356e2 (33% of the way down)

^(b) https://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/Amazing-resonance-from-Egypt-and-Sicily.php

^(c) Could the island of Santorini be Atlantis? (archive.org)

^(d) https://www.worldhistory.org/Narmer/