Menes, Teti, Iti, Ita: An update

In 2012, a French-Egyptian team led by Pierre Tallet discovered a set of early pharaonic rock reliefs and inscriptions in the Wadi Ameyra, located in a little-known area of central west Sinai. These reliefs date from Naqada III up to the reign of Raneb, the second king of the 2nd Dynasty, and they are arranged in five panels, each of them including different documents joined together and made by the same hand, as well as some separate documents. We are here concerned with panel V, which dates from the reign of Djer, the third king of the 1st Dynasty. This panel is framed by the serekh of the king smiting an enemy, to the far right, and, to the far left, by an inscription which Tallet reads as a nominal sentence (“la toute première phrase transmettant un ‘énoncé fini’ à avoir été rédigée dans l’écriture hiéroglyphique”). In this paper, an alternative interpretation of this inscription is presented and some historical conclusions are drawn from it.