Menes
(Μένης), a Thracian, from whom the town of Menebria or Mesembria was said to have received its name. (Strab. vii. p.319.) [L.S]
(Μένης). This is the most usual form of the name, which, however, we also find written as Menas, Menis, Meinis, Men, Min, and Mein (Μηνις, Μηνις, Μεῖνις, Μῆν, Μιν͂, μεῖν). Menes was the first king of Egypt, according to the traditions of the Egyptians themselves. Herodotus records of him that he built Memphis on a piece of ground which he had rescued from the river by turning it from its former course, and erected therein a magnificent temple to Hephaestus (.Pthah). (Comp. Diod. 1.50; Wess. ad loc.) Diodorus tells us that he introduced into Egypt the worship of the gods and the practice of sacrifices, as well as a more elegant and luxurious style of living. As the author of this latter innovation, his memory was dishonoured many generations afterwards by king Tnephachthus, the father of Bocchoris; and Plutarch mentions a pillar at Thebes in Egypt, on which was inscribed an imprecation against Menes, as the introducer of luxury. There is a legend also, preserved by Diodorus, which relates (in defiance of chronology, unless Mendes is to be substituted for Menas), that he was saved from drowning in the lake of Moeris by a crocodile, in gratitude for which he established the worship of the animal, and built a city near the lake called the City of Crocodiles, erecting there a pyramid to serve as his own tomb. That he was a conqueror, like other founders of kingdoms, we learn from an extract from Manetho preserved by Eusebius. By Marsham and others he has been identified with the Mizraim of Scripture. According to some accounts he was killed by a hippopotamus. (Hdt. 2.4, 99; Diod. 1.43, 45, 89; Wess. ad loc.; Plut. De Is. et Osir. 8; Perizon. Orig. Aegypt. 100.5; Shuckford's Connection, bk. iv.; Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, vol. ii. pp. 38-45.) [E.E]
(Μένης), a citizen of Pella, son of Dionysius, was one of the officers of Alexander the Great; and after the battle of Issus (B. C. 333) was admitted by the king into the number of his body-guards, in the room of Balacrus, who was promoted to the satrapy of Cilicia. In B. C. 331, after Alexander had occupied Susa, he sent Menes down to the Mediterranean to take the government of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cilicia, entrusting him at the same time with 3000 talents, a portion of which he was to transmit to Antipater for his war with the Lacedaemonians and the other confederate states of Greece. Apollodorus of Amphipolis was joined with him in this command. (Arr. Anab. 2.12, 3.16; Diod. 17.64; Curt. 5.1; Freinsh. ad loc.) [E.E]
(Μήν and Μήνης). The first king of Egypt, according to the Egyptian traditions, and the one who introduced into Egypt the worship of the gods, sacrifices, and many of the usages of advanced civilization (Herod.ii. 4, 99). His date is given as between B.C. 4500 and 4000. See Aegyptus, p. 28.