The Children of Adam and Eve

Khenthap was a queen consort of ancient Egypt. She lived during the 1st dynasty.

Not much of an archaeological trace is left for a person named Khenthap. The currently known seal impressions from first dynasty tombs never mention her. She appears only in an inscription on the so called Palermo Stone, which is a shist madestela that reports the Kings from Narmer onWard up to King Neferirkare. Additionally the Stone reports the mothers of each King. The inscription spells Khenthap´s name, but doesn´t record any of her titles.

The inscription on the cairo fragment describes Khenthap as the mother of King Djer. Joyce Tyldesley thinks Khenthap as a wife of King Hor-Aha and that her grandson was King Djet, for Djet is thought to be the son of King Djer (Aha´s son). SilkeRoth instead thinks Khenthap as a wife of King Teti I., a King mentioned in the Saqqara Tablet and in the royal canon of Turin and there described as a ruler who leaded the throne for only 1 year and 45 days.

Khenthap´s name means ‘musician of (god) Hapi’, which may point to an religious and cultic role of the lady in lifetime, since her name is connected to a god and reminds to the later occurring Kings title ‘bull of his mother’.

Hor-Aha (or 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 commonly-used name Hor-Aha is a rendering of the pharaoh's Horus-name, an element of the royal titulary associated with the god Horus, and is More fully given as Horus-Aha.

For the Early Dynastic Period, the archaeological record refers to the pharaohs by their Horus-names, while the historical record, as evidenced in the Turin and Abydos king lists, uses an alternative royal titulary, the nebty-name. The differenttitular elements of a pharaoh's name were often used in isolation, for brevity's sake, although the choice varied according to circumstance and period.

Mainstream Egyptological consensus follows the findings of Petrie in reconciling the two records and connects Hor-Aha (archaeological) with the nebty-name Ity (historical).

The same process has led to the identification of the historical Menes (a nebty-name) with the Narmer (a Horus-name) evidenced in the archaeological record (both figures are credited with the unification of Egypt and as the first pharaoh ofDynasty I) as the predecessor of Hor-Aha (the second pharaoh).

Around the thirty-second century BC, his father, Narmer, had united Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. Hor-Aha became pharaoh at about the age of thirty and ruled until he was about sixty-two years old. Legend had it that he was carried away by ahippopotamus, 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 andMenes 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 chief wife was Benerib, whose name was "written alongside his on a number of [historical] pieces, in particular, from tomb B14 at Abydos, Egypt". Tomb B14 is located directly adjacent to Hor-Aha's sepulchre. Hor-Aha also had anotherwife, Khenthap, with whom he became father of Djer. She is mentioned as Djer's mother on the Cairo Annals Stone.

Khenthap was a queen consort of ancient Egypt. She lived during the 1st dynasty.

Not much of an archaeological trace is left for a person named Khenthap. The currently known seal impressions from first dynasty tombs never mention her. She appears only in an inscription on the so called Palermo Stone, which is a shist madestela that reports the kings from Narmer onWard up to king Neferirkare. Additionally the Stone reports the mothers of each king. The inscription spells Khenthap´s name, but doesn´t record any of her titles.

The inscription on the cairo fragment describes Khenthap as the mother of king Djer. Joyce Tyldesley thinks Khenthap as a wife of king Hor-Aha and that her grandson was king Djet, for Djet is thought to be the son of king Djer (Aha´s son). SilkeRoth instead thinks Khenthap as a wife of king Teti I., a king mentioned in the Saqqara Tablet and in the royal canon of Turin and there described as a ruler who leaded the throne for only 1 year and 45 days.

Khenthap´s name means ‘musician of (god) Hapi’, which may point to an religious and cultic role of the lady in lifetime, since her name is connected to a god and reminds to the later occurring kings title ‘bull of his mother’.