The kings of the First Dynasty not only achieved the military control of the whole country but developed a system of administration to govern it.The dates used throughout this volume follow the chronological table in my Ancient Egypt as Represented in the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, 1960). In the introduction to that table, p. 193, and more fully in JNES, 11 (1952), 113–23, an explanation has been offered for the dating used for the early period to the end of the Old Kingdom. I have suggested that if any lowering of the date 3200 B.C. for the beginning of Dynasty I is felt necessary for the purposes of relative chronology, attention should be turned to the seemingly excessive length of the first two dynasties rather than to shortening the First Intermediate Period. Perhaps the compiler of the Turin papyrus may have included in his figure of 955 years from the reign of Menes to that of Aba in Dynasty VIII part of the time before Menes. The name of Menes is apparently associated with th