Hierakonpolis, or "City of the Hawk," is the Greek name for the modern city of Kom el-Ahmar, known to its ancient residents as Nekhen.
Before the construction of the pyramids, Hierakonpolis was one of the largest urban centers along the Nile -- a vibrant, bustling city containing many of the features that would later come to typify Dynastic Egyptian civilization. Stretching for over 3 km along the edge of the Nile flood plain, already by 3600 BC it was a city of many neighborhoods and quarters.
According to Egyptian legend, Nekhen was the first capital of Egypt—the spot from which the first pharaoh launched the military expeditions that unified the land around 3100 B.C.
Legends suggest that when Menes founded the first dynasty, he and the protodynastic kings who preceded him (Narmer and Scorpion) were followers of the hawk-headed god Horus who came from the city Nekhen, or as the ancient Greeks later named it, Hierakonpolis.
The ancient city of Nekhen has been regarded as one of the key Upper Egyptian sites that can be closely linked to the emergence of the ancient Egyptian state and the formation of early kingship. It has also been interpreted as the seat of power for early rulers exercising power over a larger region or “proto-kingdom,” until it became integrated into the administrative system of provinces during the early Old Kingdom as the capital of the third Upper Egyptian nome.
The most famous Middle Kingdom tomb at Hierakonpolis belongs to Horemkhawef. He was a chief overseer of priests of Horus of Nekhen and overseer of the fields His tomb is dated, for stylistic reasons, to the late Middle Kingdom to Second Intermediate Period.
Ancient city of Nekhen
