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The Man Who split the Kingdom was, according to one ancient source, both wicked and mad.

His horace name of Mariub Thawi proclaimed him loved by the heart of the two lands, but that was far from truth.

He was, in fact, the governor on no mark, of a fairly

unremarkable province, some 60 miles south of the current capital of Memphis. He mainly

differed from his contemporaries in the scope of his ambitions and his willingness to act.

Around 2160 BC, the man formerly known as Kethe proclaimed himself the Pharaoh Keti

the first Maribtawi, and his city of Hennon Nesut, child of the Pharaoh, the new Egyptian capital.

He drew his legitimacy, or so he claimed,

from a golden line of earlier pharaohs fallen into obscurity. But his actual power was based on military strength. We know this because his revolt succeeded, as well as from the historian Manetho, who records that the new king, here called Akhthawes, was more cruel than all his predecessors, and visited the whole of Egypt with dire disasters.

Not exactly a glowing report, but then Keddy was clearly coloring outside the lines. The situation in Kettie's time was novel in several respects. A thousand

years earlier, almost precisely, Egypt had first become united under a legendary

figure named Narmur. The unification was the end result of a process spanning centuries,

the details of which I'll cover more next episode. But the foundation of the pharaonic state is clearly linked to Narmor, who, on his famous

palate, is the first to wear the distinctive crowns of upper and lower Egypt.

Fueled by the vital force of the Nile, a thousand years of history unfolded.

...