Timeline › Protodynastic Period
Dynasty 0 c. 3200–3000 BC
The kings before Narmer, known from their tombs at Abydos and the first written royal names.
Dynasty 0 is the name Egyptologists give to the kings who ruled in Upper Egypt before Narmer. Manetho's list, the source of the dynasty numbers, begins with Menes, so these kings have no number of their own. Their dates are rough: around 3200 to 3000 BC in the Oxford History chronology, and a century or more earlier in others.
Several of them were buried at Abydos, in the desert cemetery now called Umm el-Qa'ab, in mud-brick tombs beside the later tombs of the 1st Dynasty kings. Their names are known from pottery jars, seal impressions and small ivory labels. Ka is the earliest king whose name stands in a serekh on many objects, a frame shaped like the front of a palace that kings used for their main name for centuries.
How far these kings ruled is debated. Iry-Hor's name turned up in 2012 in a rock inscription in the Sinai beside the name of Memphis, and jars with Ka's name reached the Delta and the southern Levant. King Scorpion of the Hierakonpolis macehead is seen by many as Narmer's predecessor or rival, and by a few as Narmer himself under another name. Narmer, who followed them, is usually counted as the first king of the 1st Dynasty.
- Period
- Protodynastic Period
- Capital
- Uncertain: This (Thinis) or Hierakonpolis (royal tombs at Abydos)
- Famous monuments
- Royal tombs at Umm el-Qa'ab, Abydos · Scorpion Macehead
Kings in order
- Scorpion I: Perhaps the owner of tomb U-j at Abydos. Whether the scorpion signs found there name a king is debated
- Iry-Hor: Buried at Abydos, his name found in the Sinai in 2012
- Ka: Perhaps read Sekhen, the first king whose name stands in a serekh on many objects
- Scorpion: Scorpion II, the king of the macehead from Hierakonpolis, probably just before Narmer
Written in Dynasty 0
- Labels from tomb U-j at Abydos
- More than a hundred small bone and ivory labels from a tomb at Abydos, from around 3250 BC, carry one to four signs each. Some seem to name places, perhaps Buto and Bubastis in the Delta. Proposed dates run from about 3320 to 3150 BC, which puts them among the oldest writing known from Egypt.
- Royal names on jars
- The names of Iry-Hor, Ka and other early kings were scratched on pottery jars and pressed into seals. Ka's name is often framed in a serekh, sometimes with the Horus falcon on top. Some serekhs from the Delta hold no name at all.
- Scorpion Macehead
- A large limestone macehead from the temple at Hierakonpolis, found in 1897–98 and now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. A king in the white crown of Upper Egypt holds a hoe beside a waterway, and a seven-petalled rosette and a scorpion stand in front of his face, read by most scholars as his name.
Where to see it
Abydos
Abydos was the holy city of Osiris and a royal burial ground from the very start of Egyptian history. For hieroglyph lovers it has everything: some of the oldest writing known, the famous King List, and the finest painted relief of the New Kingdom.
MuseumAshmolean Museum, Oxford
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford holds some of the earliest royal writing from Egypt, found at Hierakonpolis in 1897 to 1899: the Narmer and Scorpion maceheads and a seated statue of Khasekhem. Two thousand years later in date, a sandstone shrine of the Kushite king Taharqa from Kawa in Nubia stands whole in the gallery, its walls covered in his name.
MuseumPetrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, London
The Petrie Museum at University College London holds more than 80,000 objects from Flinders Petrie's excavations, and much of what is written on them is everyday: stelae, labels, letters and accounts. Kings appear on temple reliefs from Koptos, among them Senusret I before the god Min and a slab with the name of Pepi II.
Their names in hieroglyphs
Sources
Dates are approximate; we follow Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000).