Six of the Abydos kings have thus been identified with names in the lists and in Manetho; that is to say, we now know the real names of six of the earliest Egyptian monarchs, whose appellations are given us under mutilated forms by the later list-makers.  Prof.  Petrie further identifies (4) Tja Ati with Ateth, (3) Tjer with Teta, and (1) Aha with Mena.  Mena, Teta, Ateth, Ata, Hesepti, Merbap, Shemsu (?), and Qebh are the names of the 1st Dynasty as given in the lists.  The equivalent of Ata Prof.  Petrie finds in the name “Merneit,” which is found at Umm el-Ga’ab.  But there is no proof whatever that Merneit was a king; he was much more probably a prince or other great personage of the reign of Den, who was buried with the kings.  Prof.  Petrie accepts the identification of the personal name of Aha as “Men,” and so makes him the only equivalent of Mena.  But this reading of the 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.