Hor-Aha
First king of the 1st Dynasty at Memphis (2920 B.C.), probably the legendary Menes because the name Men was among his royal titles. Aha, unlike the fabled Menes, was not the unifier of Egypt but did begin the great dynastic era of the nation. Legends credit him as the founder of the city of Memphis, having built a dike to reroute a branch of the Nile so that a flat plain could be formed. Memphis was just one of the important political centers of Egypt at the time, but Aha made it his capital. During his reign, the land around the First Cataract appears to have ocme under Egyptian domination, and Aha commemorated the event. Berenid was his queen, and his mother was probably Neithotpe. Aha's son and heir, Djer, was born to a lesser ranked wife, Hent.
Two legends grew in later eras about Aha. One was that he was killed by a hippopotamus, the other that he was ttacked by wild dogs and saved by a crocodile in the Faiyum. He is credited with founding the city of Crocodilopolis as a result. Aha is listed as having conducted a campaign against the Nubians, perhaps on the occasion of Egypt's southern expansion into the First Cataract. He was buried at Saqqara, the necropolis off Memphis, but he built a second mortuary complex near Abydos. He is supposed to have ruled until his death at the age of sixty-three.
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