Let’s talk about the 1st dynasty egypt.
Ah, the **First Dynasty of Egypt** — where myth bleeds into memory, and history crawls out of the Nile wearing a crown made of chaos and unification. Let’s set the scene:
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### 🏺 **The First Dynasty of Egypt (c. 3100–2890 BCE)**
#### 📜 The Big Picture
This is **where pharaonic Egypt begins**. Prior to this, Egypt was a patchwork of tribes and proto-kingdoms. Then along came a figure (likely mythical, possibly composite) named **Narmer** — or **Menes**, depending on which dusty scroll you ask. He *unified Upper and Lower Egypt*, laid the foundations of divine kingship, and started the dynastic tradition.
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### 🧑✈️ Key Rulers
1. **Narmer/Menes** (possibly same person) – The unifier. His **Narmer Palette** is one of the most important archaeological finds in Egyptian history: it literally depicts him smacking enemies and wearing both crowns — the White Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Crown of Lower Egypt.
2. **Hor-Aha** – Possibly Narmer’s son. Solidified control and built the first temples.
3. **Djer**, **Djet**, **Den**, **Anedjib**, **Semerkhet**, and **Qa’a** – Successive kings. Some were worshipped as gods, others lost control and saw early signs of palace intrigue and collapse.
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### 🧱 Politics, Culture & Death
– **Capital**: Memphis (strategically at the junction of Upper & Lower Egypt).
– **Administration**: Early bureaucracy, rudimentary writing (proto-hieroglyphics), tax collection, and territorial expansion south into Nubia.
– **Religion**: The king wasn’t just a ruler; he was a *god-king*, an intermediary between the gods and the people. You don’t vote for the pharaoh — he *descends*.
– **Burial**: Tombs at Abydos (like Tomb U-j) and Saqqara. These were massive **mastabas** (proto-pyramids), often with human sacrifices of servants. Yup — you die when your boss dies.
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### 🔍 Tech & Society
– Pottery was high-quality. Beer and bread were already cultural staples.
– Copper tools were standard, though stone was still used.
– Shipbuilding emerged for Nile trade and expeditions.
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### 🧠 Fun Skeptic Bait
– **Human sacrifice**: Confirmed. But was it always forced, or were these “volunteers” bought into the religion?
– **Narmer Palette**: Is it really a historical document, or royal propaganda to justify conquest?
– **Dynasty divisions**: Modern Egyptology categories — ancient Egyptians didn’t say “First Dynasty.”
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Want to dive into tomb architecture, Narmer’s real identity, or why Semerkhet had such a bad PR problem? Pick a trench and I’ll dig.
I thought it was Thoth that brought Egypt into being
Ah, now you’re asking the *real* question — not “Who ruled Egypt first?” but “Who **birthed** Egypt?”
Short answer: **Yes, according to myth, it was Thoth — not Narmer — who brought cosmic Egypt into being.**
Let’s split this:
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### 🧠 Mythic Egypt: The Realm of Thoth
**Thoth (Djehuty)** was the ibis-headed god of:
– Writing
– Knowledge
– Time
– Measurement
– Balance
– Magic
– and… reality itself, depending on which temple you ask
According to **Hermopolitan theology**, Thoth:
– **Spoke the world into existence** using the power of language (similar to Logos in Greek thought or “Word” in Christian theology).
– **Ordered chaos** through measurement and naming.
– **Created Ma’at** (cosmic balance) by scripting it into the cosmic record.
He was seen as the **scribe of the gods**, but in deeper myths — especially later, when merged with Hellenistic influences — he’s the **primordial Logos**, the first mover *through* mind, speech, and symbol.
So yes, **in the cosmological sense, Thoth “created” Egypt** — not as a nation-state with bureaucracy and beer, but as an *ordered world*, separating cosmos from chaos. That’s Egypt’s real identity: *Ma’at vs. Isfet*.
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### 🏛 Historical Egypt: The Realm of Narmer
Then you’ve got **Narmer**, whose story lives in stone not myth. He didn’t speak the world into being — he **conquered** it. He was the guy who:
– United Lower and Upper Egypt (~3100 BCE)
– Set up Memphis
– Created the **First Dynasty**, the historical beginning of pharaonic rule
Where Thoth’s world is metaphysical, Narmer’s is political.
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### 🧩 Putting It Together
– **Thoth birthed the cosmos**, wrote the divine laws, and made sure Egypt had spiritual *definition*.
– **Narmer birthed the nation**, enforced those laws, and gave Egypt *borders*.
In a way, Narmer was trying to manifest what Thoth had already scripted.
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So: Thoth **dreamed it**, Narmer **did it**. The god wrote the code, the king compiled and ran it.
Wanna go deeper into Hermopolis, the Ogdoad, or how Thoth is linked to Atlantis in later myths?
Where does tannis fit in?
Ah, **Tanis** — the city with a name like a cough drop and a mystery like a lost level in a video game. Let’s place it properly on the myth/history matrix:
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### 📍 What Is Tanis?
Tanis (modern **San el-Hagar**) was an **actual city in the northeastern Nile Delta**, not far from the Mediterranean. It *did not* exist during the First Dynasty — it came into prominence **much later**, during Egypt’s **Third Intermediate Period** (~1069–664 BCE), particularly the **21st and 22nd Dynasties**.
So if you’re expecting Tanis to show up in the Narmer/Thoth/First Dynasty crowd — nope, wrong epoch. It’s like expecting Rome to show up in a story about Sumer.
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### 🏛 Why Tanis Is Confusing (and Cool)
Tanis gets tangled up in both **archaeological confusion** and **Hollywood mythology**:
#### 1. **Replacement for Pi-Ramesses**
– After the Nile shifted and Pi-Ramesses (the capital of Ramses II) was abandoned, Tanis got built nearby using its ruins.
– Stone by stone, baby — Tanis was basically a recycled city.
#### 2. **Royal Necropolis**
– Became the burial site for pharaohs like **Psusennes I**, whose tomb rivals Tutankhamun’s in bling but not fame.
– Because of this, people often think Tanis was older than it actually was.
#### 3. **Raiders of the Lost Ark Nonsense**
– The movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark” claimed the **Ark of the Covenant** was hidden in Tanis. That is **pure fiction** — but it plugged Tanis into pop culture as a “lost city.”
– There’s no legit Egyptian myth connecting the Ark or anything biblical to Tanis.
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### ⚖️ Myth? Not Much. Mystery? Plenty.
Unlike Thebes or Heliopolis, Tanis doesn’t have much **mythic lore** tied to it. It’s not a city of gods — it’s a city of **buried treasures, collapsed dynasties, and convenient reuse**.
That said, Tanis *does* raise great questions:
– Why did Egypt reuse cities rather than build new ones?
– Why is Psusennes’ tomb intact while others were looted?
– Why did the Delta dynasties get overshadowed in history?
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### TL;DR
– 🏛 **Tanis** = Recycled capital city, not ancient or mythic.
– 🧙 **Thoth** = Mythic creator of order.
– 👑 **Narmer** = Real unifier of Egypt.
– 📽 **Indiana Jones** = Lied to you (but in a fun way).
Wanna dig into the Psusennes tomb, the Nile shifting cities, or Egyptian Delta politics?
Thoth talks about coming into a land where the peoples lived in caves and mud huts. Teaching those people and birthing a nation
Ahhh, now we’re dancing at the edge of myth, mystery, and the kind of civilization-building narrative that makes skeptics squint and esoteric historians nod like they’re in on a secret.
You’re referencing a **less mainstream, more mystical tradition** — often traced to **Egyptian priesthood accounts**, **Hermetic texts**, and even **Plato-adjacent Atlantis echoes** — where **Thoth isn’t just a god**, but a **civilizing bringer of knowledge** who **arrived** in Egypt, found it primitive, and transformed it.
Let’s unpack this layered claim:
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### 🧠 Thoth as a Culture Bringer
In **Hermetic and esoteric traditions**, Thoth isn’t born in Egypt — he **comes to Egypt**. This suggests:
– The land was populated by **pre-civilized peoples** — think mud huts, oral tradition, no writing.
– Thoth brings the **gifts of writing, astronomy, medicine, architecture, and law**.
– He **teaches** these early peoples and establishes the **priesthood, temples, and Ma’at**.
In this story, he’s not just a scribe — he’s **the architect of civilization**.
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### 🧙♂️ Sources of This Narrative
#### 1. **Hermetic Corpus**
– Later Greco-Egyptian texts (1st–3rd century CE) describe **Thoth as Hermes Trismegistus**, a sage or god who authored thousands of books and taught lost wisdom.
– These texts speak allegorically, but many interpreters took them literally: **Thoth was a real being**, maybe even from **elsewhere**.
#### 2. **Ancient Egyptian Inscriptions**
– The **priests of Thebes**, in conversations with Greek historians (like **Plato and Solon’s sources**), speak of a **”divine era” before the dynasties**, where gods like Thoth, Osiris, and Isis ruled *in person*.
– This era ends before Menes/Narmer’s rule begins — suggesting Egypt was a **hand-me-down** from the gods.
#### 3. **Plato’s Timaeus & Critias**
– While not directly naming Thoth, Plato’s account of **Atlantis** suggests an earlier, lost high civilization.
– Later esoteric thinkers **linked Thoth to Atlantis**, casting him as a survivor who brought knowledge to a broken post-cataclysm world — i.e., Egypt.
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### 🏚️ “Mud Huts and Caves” — Literal or Allegorical?
– Could be **literal**: Egypt was full of early Neolithic tribes pre-unification. Thoth arriving could symbolize **the sudden rise of complex culture**, almost out of nowhere — which, archaeologically, is… suspiciously abrupt.
– Or **allegorical**: The “cave” is ignorance, the “mud” is chaos, and Thoth’s light is consciousness, order, and language.
Either way, it supports the idea that Egypt wasn’t merely **born**, it was **guided** into being — not evolved, but catalyzed.
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### 🛸 A Nod to the Fringe
If you peek into the esoteric/alternative history aisle:
– Thoth is often seen as **Atlantean** or **extraterrestrial** (e.g., The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean — a 20th-century channeled text, not ancient but widely read).
– These traditions describe him as **immortal**, who “left” Egypt after his work was done, promising to return when the stars are right (yes, very Lovecraftian).
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### 🧬 TL;DR:
– Yes — in mythic and Hermetic traditions, **Thoth comes to a primitive Egypt** and *births* its civilization.
– This idea is **not in mainstream Egyptology**, but it **aligns with priestly legends** and **esoteric traditions** that point to a **pre-dynastic golden age**.
– The story echoes a global mythic pattern: **a god/teacher from the sky/sea brings knowledge to a lost people**. (Quetzalcoatl, Viracocha, Prometheus…)
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Wanna follow this thread down into the **Emerald Tablets**, **pre-dynastic anomalies**, or the **Atlantean connection**? Or are we staying grounded in the dusty tombs of mainstream academia?