Hor-Aha

Hor-Aha lived in the 31st century BC, when Egypt's recorded history was just beginning to crystallize. Most Egyptologists place him as the second pharaoh of the First Dynasty, but others argue he was actually the first — the figure later remembered as Menes, the legendary unifier of Upper and Lower Egypt. The reign is thought to have been long, though the specifics dissolve into the murk of deep time. What survives is a name and the faint outline of rule at the very edge of what can be known.