Narmer Quotes & Sayings

According to royal doctrine, the king's role as defender of Egypt (and the whole of creation) involved the corresponding defeat of Egypt's neighbors (who stood for chaos). To instill and foster a sense of national identity, it suited the ruling elite - as leaders have discovered throughout history - to cast all foreigners as the enemy. An ivory label from the tomb of Narmer shows a Palestinian dignitary stooping in homage before the Egyptian king. At the same time, in the real world, Egypt and Palestine were busy engaging in trade. The xenophobic ideology masked the practical reality. — Toby A.H. Wilkinson

That's Narmer with the spoon," I guessed. "Angry because the other bloke stole his breakfast cereal? — Rick Riordan

If one single invention was necessary to make this larger mechanism operative for constructive tasks as well as for coercion, it was probably the invention of writing. This method of translating speech into graphic record not merely made it possible to transmit impulses and messages throughout the system, but to fix accountability when written orders were not carried out. Accountability and the written word both went along historically with the control of large numbers; and it is no accident that the earliest uses of writing were not to convey ideas, religious or otherwise, but to keep temple records of grain, cattle, pottery, fabricated goods, stored and disbursed. This happened early, for a pre-dynastic Narmer mace in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford records the taking of 120,000 prisoners, 400,000 oxen, and 1,422,000 goats. The arithmetical reckoning was an even greater feat than the capture. — Lewis Mumford