AKA Menes. King Menes is credited with uniting the Two Lands and was thus the first pharaoh of the Kingdom of Egypt according to New Kingdom king lists. They name Meni as the first king, and drawing from the same sources, Africanus and Eusebius name him Menes, while Herodotus calls him Min. This conforms well with the name Menes. There is no contemporary archaeological evidence containing the cartouche name of Menes, as the use of cartouches did not begin until the time of the Old Kingdom. In the king lists of the New Kingdom, the nebty names were placed into cartouches because the scribes were unable to recognize or locate the corresponding names from the ancient sources. Fittingly, Meni means : He who endures. The contemporary Horus name of the first king, Narmer, is well attested. It is firmly established that he indeed was the first ruler of the kingdom. The early kings were only known by their Horus name, and there is no evidence that Narmer used any other.