The Uniters of Egypt

[WarriorHart of America]

Can someone explain to me more about the major figures of egyptian unification, namely the scoprion king, narmer, and menes
i'm kinda mixed up on this history, since I see many contradicting statments, was it king sciorpion who united the south (upper) or narmer? Was it narmer who united all of egypt or menes? Also, i've seen a bunch of sources that cite that narmer and menes were the same person, and some that mark them as different. Who did what, and against whom? Can someone fill me in on the major figures i'm missing?

Thanks!

[MaximiIian]

Narmer. The king who united the two Kingdoms of Egypt into one. Considered to be the first true "Pharoah" of Egypt. He is also named "menes" by some.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narmer

[Bovril]

There are three main sources from later Egypt, but they don't totaly agree. Manetho's king list says Menes was the uniter of Egypt and founder of the first dynasty. The Palermo stone agrees, but the Saqara stone misses out the traditional first five kings. Why the disagreement? Well its been proposed that the first two sources are part of the royal tradition, which saw Menes as the seminal king, and the Saqara stone was part of a local tradition of a place which did not come under central control untill quite a while after the traditional 'unification'.
This fits in with the most popular model of unification, i.e. slow absorbtion by increasingly large political units. We don't see any realy large political units forming in Lower Egypt, but in the south during the PD/ED we see Thebes and Hierakompolis gaining pre-eminance over the other towns. Inevitably they clashed several times. There is some evidence that it was Scorpion, king of Thebes, who united the two. From then on there seems to have been a gradual advance north, slowly absorbing the towns of the Delta under the reigns of Scorpion, Narmer and Menes (if these two are different) and later kings to some extent.
The trouble with associating Kings with later references to them (hence the Narmer Menes confusion) is that Egyptian kings had several names, and conventions for which ones were used changed with time and context.