Hor-Aha

Pharaoh Infobox | Name=Hor-Aha |

Caption=Faience vessel fragment inscribed with the name of the pharaoh Hor-Aha, on display at the British Museum
Reign=Dates unknown
Dynasty=1st Dynasty
Predecessor= Narmer or Menes?
Successor= Djer|

Nebty="men"
Established
Horus="Hor-aha"
The fighting hawk
Father=Probably Narmer
Mother=Probably Queen Nithotep
Children= Djer? with Queen Benerib| Consort=Probably Queen Benerib
Dynasty=1st Dynasty
Alt= Africanus: Athôthis Eusebius: Athôthis, Athothis
Monuments=Temple to Neith at Sais

Hor-Aha is considered the second pharaoh of the first dynasty of Ancient Egypt in current Egyptology. He lived around the thirty-first century BC. The two logographic glyphs used to write his name are roughly translated as "Hor", (a reference to the hawk deity, Horus), and "Aha", meaning "to fight".

Around the thirty-second century BC, his father, Narmer, had united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Hor-Aha (whose birth name is transliterated as Ity or Iteti, "Hor-Aha" being his "Horus" or throne name) became pharaoh at about the age of thirty and ruled until he was about sixty-two years old.Fact|date=May 2008 Legend had it that he was carried away by a hippopotamus, the embodiment of the deity Seth. Provided that Hor-Aha was the legendary "Menes", another story has it that Hor-Aha was killed by a hippopotamus while hunting.

There has been some controversy about Hor-Aha. Some believe him to be the same individual as the legendary Menes and that he was the one to unify all of Egypt. Others claim he was the son of Narmer, the pharaoh who unified Egypt. Narmer and Menes may have been one pharaoh, referred to with more than one name. Regardless, considerable historical evidence from the period points to Narmer as the pharaoh who first unified Egypt ("see Narmer Palette") and to Hor-Aha as his son and heir.

Hor-Aha's queen was most likely "Benerib", whose name was "written alongside his on a number of [historical] pieces, in particular, from tomb B14". [Aidan Dodson & Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson (2004), p.46] Tomb B14 is located directly adjacent to Hor-Aha's sepulchre. [Dodson & Hilton, op. cit., p.46]

References

*Toby A. H. Wilkinson, "Early Dynastic Egypt", Routledge, London/New York 1999, ISBN 0-415-18633-1, 70-71

ee also

* Ancient Egypt
* Pharaoh
* First dynasty of Egypt
* Narmer
* Menes
* History of Egypt
* The Greatest Pharaohs
* List of Pharaohs