The identity of Mina is disputed among Egyptologists. Some attribute it to King Hur-AHA, others to King Narmer. Different authorities credit both branches with uniting Egypt to different degrees.
Origin of the name
The name of Mina is mentioned in some ancient Egyptian writings as "Mini", and then the Egyptians changed the name to Mina, and it is strange that the word "Mini" means in the ancient Egyptian language "establishes" or "praises", as the Egyptians wanted to venerate his work in his name. And some historians assert that Mini is a verb or a surname, not a noun. As for the Coptic (Egyptian) language, the name Mina has many synonyms, including (fixed, established, enabled, permanent, remaining, or established), if Mina is considered the subject of the verb Mina in the Egyptian language. The commonly used name MENA is derived from Manetho, an Egyptian historian and priest who lived during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Manitou noted the name in Greek as Μήνης (translated: Mênês)
Narmer and Mina
The almost complete absence of any mention of Mina in the archaeological record, the comparative wealth of evidence of Narmer, a primitive figure credited to posterity, and in the archaeological record with a firm claim to unite the upper and lower regions. Egypt has led to the emergence of a theory linking Mina and Narmer. The main archaeological reference of Mina is an ivory poster from Naqada showing the name of the Royal Horus AHA (Egyptian King Hor AHA) next to a building, inside which there is the royal name mn, generally taken to be Mina. From this, various theories about the nature of the building (a funeral booth or a mausoleum)
The lists of the Kings of Turin and Abydos, generally accepted as correct, list the new bit names of the Kings of ancient Egypt, and not their Horus names, which are vital for the possible reconciliation of various records: the coronation name-the names of the King, the names of Horus - the archaeological record and the number of Kings in the first dynasty according to Manetho and other historical sources. Flinders Petrie tried this task for the first time, linking ITI with Jer as the third king of the first dynasty, Titi (Turenne) (or another ITI (Abydos)) with HUR-AHA as the second king, and Mina (fat name) with Narmer (Horus name) as the first king of the first dynasty Lloyd (1994) found this succession "very probable", and Cervelo autori (2003) categorically states that "Mina is Narmer and the first dynasty begins with him ". However, Seidelmeier (2004) stated that it is a "fairly safe conclusion" that Minnis was a Hur-AHA. Two documents have been presented as evidence, either that Narmer was a Mina or that HUR-AHA was a Mina. The first is the" Naqada poster " that was found at the Naqada site, in the Tomb of Queen Neith-hateb, often assumed to be the mother of Horus AHA. The label shows a poplar Fern next to a container inside which some scientists interpret symbols as "Mena". The second is the seal print from Abydos that alternates between the serekh Narmer and the checkerboard symbol "mn", which is interpreted as an abbreviation for enamel
After Herodotus mentioned the first king of Egypt, min, he wrote that Linus, whom the Egyptians called Maneros, was "the only son of the first king of Egypt" and that he died prematurely
History
By 500 BC, mythical and exaggerated claims had made Menes a hero of culture, and most of what is known about him comes from a later time.
Ancient tradition attributes to Mina the honor of uniting upper and Lower Egypt into one kingdom, becoming the first king in the first dynasty. However, his name does not appear on the pieces in the Royal annals (Cairo stone and Palermo Stone), a now fragmentary king list that was engraved on a plate during the Fifth Dynasty. He usually appears in later sources as the first human ruler of Egypt, inheriting the throne directly from the god Horus. He also appeared in other king lists much later, always as the first human king of Egypt. Mina also appears in the demotic narratives of the Hellenistic period, showing that, even as late as, he was seen as an important figure.
Mina was seen as an institutional figure in much of the history of ancient Egypt, similar to Romulus in ancient Rome. Manetho records that MENA "led the army across the border and won Great Glory."
Capital
Manetho connects the city of Thinis with the period of the early dynasties and, in particular, Menes, a "thinite" or a native of Thinis. Herodotus contradicts Manetho in saying that Mina founded the city of Memphis as his capital after diverting the course of the Nile by building a dam. Manetho attributes the construction of Memphis to Mina's son, Athos, and does not call any pharaohs before the Third Dynasty "memphites".
The stories of Herodotus and Manetho about the founding of Memphis are probably later inventions: in 2012, a relief recalling the visit to Memphis by ERI-Hur, a Predynastic ruler of Upper Egypt who ruled before Narmer-was discovered on the Sinai peninsula, indicating that the city was such. They existed already in the early thirty-second century BC.
Creation of the white wall fortress
King Mina thought about choosing a location in the middle of the North and South Kingdoms so that he could rule Egypt from it, so he built a fortress surrounded by a white wall and named it (min-Nefer), which means the beautiful port or the white wall, part of which is still left until now, and it was from afar the first capital of Egypt after the unity, but due to the power of the Kings of the southern cities, it did not settle separately as the capital of the country and did not reach its power and the peak of its rule only in the Old Kingdom, and then the Greeks called it Memphis or the road of Rams, then it was called Memphis the Arabs at the time of the conquest of Egypt were separated and it is now a dead zone belonging to the center and city of Al-Badrashin, Giza governorate.
While Gaston Maspero (1910) acknowledges the possibility that traditions concerning other kings may be mixed up with this story, he rejects suggestions by some historians that the story should be transferred to the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III and does not see it that way. A reason to suspect that Diodorus did not correctly record the Mina tradition. Later, Edwards (1974) stated that "the legend, which is full of anachronisms, is devoid of historical value".
Cultural influence Posters from the Tomb of Narmer The Sicilian Diodorus mentions that Mina introduced the worship of the gods and the practice of sacrifice, as well as a more elegant and luxurious lifestyle. For the latter invention, the memory of Mina was insulted by the pharaoh of the Twenty-Fourth Dynasty, Tefnakht, and Plutarch mentions a column in Thebes on which he inscribed an insult against Mina as a provider of welfare. In popular culture, Alexander Dow (1735/6-79), a Scottish Orientalist and playwright, wrote the tragedy of Sithona set in ancient Egypt. The main part of Mina in the character drama was described as the" next male heir to the crown, " now worn by Seraphis, and played by Samuel Reddish in a 1774 .