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The 1st Dynasty: the first kings of Egypt and their names

17 October 2026

The 1st Dynasty was the first line of kings to rule a united Egypt, from about 3000 to 2890 BC. Narmer is usually counted as its first king, followed by Aha, Djer, Djet, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa'a, with Queen Merneith ruling for a time in the middle, perhaps as regent for the young Den.

Each of these kings had a Horus name inside a serekh: a rectangle drawn as the front of a palace, with the falcon of the god Horus standing on top. They were buried in the desert at Abydos, at the place now called Umm el-Qa'ab.

The Horus name stood in a serekh

A serekh is a picture of a building. The lower part shows the niched brick front of a palace. The upper part is the courtyard, and inside it the scribe wrote the king's name. On top perches the falcon (G5), Horus, the god the living king embodied. The whole frame reads as one statement: this is Horus, who lives in this palace.

Egyptologists call the name inside a serekh a Horus name. Later kings carried five names, two of them in cartouches, but the Horus name came first and stayed in the royal titles for three thousand years. The cartouche took over as the frame for the king's best-known names several hundred years later, in the Old Kingdom.

Den was the first king known to use the title nswt-bjtj, said nesu-bity, written with the sedge (M23) and the bee (L2): "he of the sedge and the bee", usually translated "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". In later centuries this title stands right before the throne name.

Falcon Sedge Bee

Djet's stela holds three elements

The finest serekh to survive is the stela of King Djet, a stone slab about 1.4 metres tall that stood at his tomb at Umm el-Qa'ab and is now in the Louvre in Paris. It holds just three elements, carved in relief with great care.

At the top stands the falcon, ḥr (hor), Horus. Below it is the palace front, its recessed panels drawn as vertical bars. Inside the courtyard sits a single snake, the sign that later writes the sound ḏ (dj, as in jump). The name is read ḏt, Djet, often rendered "Horus cobra", though the exact meaning is uncertain.

Other kings of the dynasty used the same frame with different signs inside. Den's name is written with a hand (D46) for d and a ripple of water (N35) for n: dn, Den. Its meaning is uncertain: suggestions range from "he who brings water" to "the slaughterer". Aha's serekh shows two arms holding a shield and a mace, ꜥḥꜣ, "the fighter".

Cobra Hand Ripple of water

Draw the cobra sign

Narmer heads the seal lists

Narmer's serekh holds a catfish, read nꜥr, above a chisel (U23), read mr. Put together they give nꜥr-mr, Narmer. Both are early rebus signs, picture words used for their sound, and scholars have not agreed on what the name means.

His name sits twice at the top of the Narmer Palette, a carved siltstone slab found by James Quibell at Hierakonpolis in 1897–98 and now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. One side shows him in the white crown of the south, the other in the red crown of the north, and small signs beside the figures label people and places.

He is counted first because clay seal impressions from the royal cemetery at Abydos list the kings of the dynasty in order, and the ones made under Den and Qa'a begin with Narmer. His tomb is a pair of brick chambers there, B17 and B18.

Chisel

See Narmer on the site

The kings were buried at Abydos

Umm el-Qa'ab, "mother of pots", is named for the broken offering jars that still cover the ground. Every king of the dynasty, and Merneith, had a brick-lined tomb pit here, roofed with timber and marked above by stelae carrying the owner's serekh. Merneith's tomb matches the kings' tombs in size.

The tombs grew more elaborate as the dynasty went on. Den's tomb, known as tomb T, was the first reached by a staircase, and its floor was paved with red and black granite from Aswan. A small ivory label in the British Museum, probably from it, shows Den striking down an eastern enemy, with a caption usually read as "first time of smiting the east".

Rows of small graves surround the tombs: 174 around Djet's tomb, and Djer's is linked with more than 300 people. Most were probably servants killed to follow the king into death. The practice ends with Qa'a, whose tomb is the last with these subsidiary graves.

The earliest names are hard to pin down

Names do not match across time. Later king lists, such as the one Seti I carved at Abydos about 1,700 years later, begin with Menes and use names that are not Horus names. Many Egyptologists think Menes was Narmer. Others argue for Aha.

Readings are conventional too. Early signs did not yet have the fixed sound values of later hieroglyphs, so a name like Djet or Den is a modern best guess, and older books spell them differently, Uadji for Djet, Udimu for Den.

Dates are the loosest of all. The site follows one standard chronology, which puts the dynasty at c. 3000–2890 BC, but radiocarbon studies and other books shift it by a century or more.

Open the 1st Dynasty on the timeline

Questions

Who was the first pharaoh of the first dynasty?

Narmer, in most modern lists, because the Abydos seal impressions place him at the head of the dynasty. Later Egyptians called the first king Menes, who may be the same man.

How many kings were in the first dynasty of Egypt?

Eight kings from Narmer to Qa'a, plus Merneith, who may have ruled as regent. A few shadowy names from the very end of the dynasty, known from scraps of inscriptions, are debated.

Did first dynasty kings use cartouches?

No. Their names were written in a serekh topped by the Horus falcon. The cartouche appears in the following centuries and became the usual frame for royal names in the Old Kingdom.

Where were the kings of the first dynasty buried?

At Umm el-Qa'ab, in the desert behind Abydos in Upper Egypt. Large brick tombs of the same period at Saqqara, near Memphis, are now thought by most Egyptologists to belong to high officials, though their excavator, Walter Emery, took them for the kings' real tombs.

Glossary

cartouche: An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
dynasty: A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
Horus name: The oldest of a king's names, written in a serekh under the Horus falcon. It names the king as the god Horus on earth.
Lower Egypt: The north of Egypt, the flat Nile Delta from around Memphis to the sea. It is called lower because it is downstream.
Old Kingdom: The age of the pyramid builders, about 2686 to 2181 BC, from the 3rd to the 6th Dynasty.
regent: Someone who rules for a king who is too young. Hatshepsut ruled so for the boy Thutmose III before she was crowned king herself.
relief: A carving on a flat surface. In raised relief the background is cut away. In sunk relief the figures are cut into the stone.
scribe: A person trained to read and write, who kept accounts, wrote letters and copied texts. Few Egyptians could write, and scribes were well respected.
serekh: A frame showing the front of a palace, with a king's Horus name written above it and the Horus falcon on top. The oldest royal names are written in serekhs.
stela: An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
throne name: The name a king took when he came to the throne, written in the first cartouche after the title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt". Egyptologists also call it the prenomen.
tomb: A burial place: a pit, a mastaba, a pyramid or rooms cut into rock. Its chapel was where the family brought offerings.