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Djer

Djer is the second or third pharaoh of the first dynasty of Egypt, which dates from approximately 3100 B.C. Djer's Horus name means "Horus who succours".

The Abydos King List lists the second pharaoh as Teti, the Turin Canon lists Iteti, while Manetho lists Athothis. Some scholars, however, debate whether the first pharaoh, Menes or Narmer, and Hor-Aha might have been different rulers. If they were separate rulers, this would make Djer the third pharaoh in the dynasty. A mummified wrist of Djer or his wife was discovered, but has been lost.

Length of reign

While the Egyptian priest Manetho, writing in the third century B.C., stated that Djer ruled for 57 years, modern research by Toby Wilkinson in Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt stresses that the near-contemporary and therefore, more accurate Palermo Stone ascribes Djer a reign of "41 complete and partial years. Wilkinson notes that Years 1-10 of Djer's reign are preserved in register II of the Palermo Stone, while the middle years of this pharaoh's reign are recorded in register II of Cairo Fragment One.

Reign

The evidence for Djer's life and reign is:

tomb in Umm el-Qa'ab, Abydos
seal prints from graves 2185 and 3471 in Saqqara
inscriptions in graves 3503, 3506 and 3035 in Saqqara
Seal impression and inscriptions from Helwan (Saad 1947: 165; Saad 1969: 82, pl. 94)
Jar from Turah with the name of Djer (Kaiser 1964: 103, fig.3)
UC 16182 ivory tablet from Abydos, subsidiary tomb 612 of the enclosure of Djer (Petrie 1925: pl. II.8; XII.1)
UC 16172 copper adze with the name of Djer (tomb 461 in Abydos, Petrie 1925: pl. III.1, IV.8)
inscription of his name (of questioned authenticity, however) at Wadi Halfa, Sudan

The inscriptions, on ivory and wood, are in a very early form of hieroglyphs, hindering complete translation, but a wooden seal print at Saqqarah seems to depict the early Old Kingdom practice of human sacrifice. An ivory tablet from Abydos mentions that Djer visited Buto and Sais in the Nile Delta. One of his regnal years on the Cairo Stone was named "Year of smiting the land of Setjet", which often is speculated to be Sinai or beyond.

Similarly to his predecessor, Hor-Aha, Djer was buried in the holy place, Abydos. His tomb contains the remains of 300 retainers who were buried with him. Close to his tomb is that of Merneith, who was his daughter. She also was buried with the honors given to a ruling pharaoh, including many retainers. She was the wife of the next pharaoh, Djet, and mother of Den, for whom she may have served as regent, if not as pharaoh between the two. From the eighteenth dynasty, the tomb of Hor-Aha was revered as the tomb of Osiris and this first dynasty burial complex including the tomb of Djer, was very important in the Egyptian religious tradition.

Manetho indicates that the first dynasty ruled from Memphis, and a wife of Djer named, Herneith, is buried at Saqqarah. Manetho also claimed that Athothes, who is sometimes identified as Djer, had written a treatise on anatomy that still existed in his own day, over two millennia later.

References

Bibliography

Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge, London/New York 1999, ISBN 0-415-18633-1, 71-73
Toby Wilkinson, Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and Its Associated Fragments, (Kegan Paul International), 2000.