Wadjenes also known as Wadjlas, Ougotlas and Tlas, is the name of an early Egyptian

Early Dynastic Period of Egypt

The Archaic or Early Dynastic Period of Egypt immediately follows the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt c. 3100 BC. It is generally taken to include the First and Second Dynasties, lasting from the Protodynastic Period of Egypt until about 2686 BC, or the beginning of the Old Kingdom...

 king

Pharaoh

Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...

 who may have ruled during the 2nd dynasty

Second dynasty of Egypt

The second dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasty I under the group title Early Dynastic Period. It dates approximately from 2890 to 2686 BC. The capital at that time was Thinis.-Rulers:...

. Since the name form "Wadjenes" is not contemporarily attested as the name of a king, but frequently appears in Ramesside

Ramesses II

Ramesses II , referred to as Ramesses the Great, was the third Egyptian pharaoh of the Nineteenth dynasty. He is often regarded as the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire...

 kinglists, Egyptologists to this day are trying to connect Wadjenes with contemporary Horus

Horus

Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists...

-kings.

Name sources

The king's name "Wadjenes" is attested only in the Ramesside kinglists, where he is always presented as the immediate successor of king Nynetjer

Nynetjer

Nynetjer is the Horus name of the third early Egyptian king during the 2nd dynasty. The exact length of his reign is unknown. The Turin Canon suggests an improbable reign of 96 years and the ancient Greek historian Manetho suggested that Nynetjer's reign lasted 47 years...

 and as the predecessor of king Senedj

Senedj

Senedj is the name of an early Egyptian king who may have ruled during the 2nd dynasty. His historical standing remains uncertain, as there are no contemporary records about Senedj. The earliest mention of his name appears during the 4th dynasty. The exact duration of Senedj´s reign is unknown...

. The same goes for the Royal Canon of Turin

Turin King List

The Turin King List, also known as the Turin Royal Canon, is a hieratic papyrus thought to date from the reign of Ramesses II, now in the Museo Egizio at Turin...

, where the entry for his name is damaged so only the years of rulership are preserved.

Whilst all kinglists match each other regarding the chronological

Chronology

Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...

 position of Wadjenes, Egyptologists are uncertain as to the origin of the name "Wadjenes". Egyptologists and historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

s such as Winfried Barta, Bernhard Grdseloff and Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards

I.E.S. Edwards

Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards CBE, FBA — known as I. E. S. Edwards— was an English Egyptologist considered to be a leading expert on the pyramids.-Biography:...

 believe that the papyrus haulm

Cyperus papyrus

Cyperus papyrus is a monocot belonging to the sedge family Cyperaceae. It is a herbaceous perennial native to Africa, and forms tall stands of reed-like swamp vegetation in shallow water....

, the first symbol in Wadjenes's name, is an misinterpretation of the hieroglyphic sign of a flower called Weneg (also read as Uneg), which is rarely used in Egyptian writing. A king Weneg (also written as "Weneg-Nebti") is also contemporarily identified by black ink

Ink

Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...

-inscriptions on alabaster

Alabaster

Alabaster is a name applied to varieties of two distinct minerals, when used as a material: gypsum and calcite . The former is the alabaster of the present day; generally, the latter is the alabaster of the ancients...

-shards and as incised writings on schist

Schist

The schists constitute a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is...

 vessels originating from the underground galleries beneath the step pyramid of king Djoser

Djoser

Netjerikhet or Djoser is the best-known pharaoh of the Third dynasty of Egypt. He commissioned his official, Imhotep, to build the first of the pyramids, a step pyramid for him at Saqqara...

 at Sakkara. It is possible that ramesside scribes interchanged the Weneg flower with the papyrus haulm, since both signs are very similar to each other in hieratic script

Hieratic

Hieratic refers to a cursive writing system that was used in the provenance of the pharaohs in Egypt and Nubia that developed alongside the hieroglyphic system, to which it is intimately related...

.
Besides the artefacts with the name "Weneg-Nebti", further objects made of alabaster show the personal name "Wadj-sen" in connection with the Sed festival

Sed festival

The Sed festival was an ancient Egyptian ceremony that celebrated the continued rule of a pharaoh...

. Egyptologists such as Wolfgang Helck

Wolfgang Helck

Hans Wolfgang Helck was a German Egyptologist, considered one of the most important Egyptologists of the 20th century. From 1956 until his retirement in 1979 he was a Professor at the University of Hamburg...

 think that Wadj-sen was a crown prince, since the titulary Wer-ma'a ("he who sees the greatest") was always reserved for the eldest son of a king and so it is also connected with Wadj-sen's name. However, egyptologists such as Peter Kaplony and Jürgen von Beckerath

Jürgen von Beckerath

Jürgen von Beckerath is a prominent German Egyptologist. He is a prolific writer who has published countless articles in journals such as Orientalia, Göttinger Miszellen , Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt , Archiv für Orientforschung and Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur among...

 believe that Weneg-Nebti and Wadjenes are identical and that Wadjenes's Horus name was Sekhemib-Perenmaat

Sekhemib-Perenmaat

Sekhemib, or Sekhemib-Perenma´at, is the horus name of an early Egyptian king who ruled during the 2nd dynasty. Similar to his predecessor Seth-Peribsen, Sekhemib is contemporarily well attested in archaeological records, but he doesn´t appear in any posthumous document...

 or Za.

The ancient Greek

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 historian Manetho

Manetho

Manetho was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos who lived during the Ptolemaic era, approximately during the 3rd century BC. Manetho wrote the Aegyptiaca...

 called Wadjenes "Tlas". This name distortion may be based on the coptic

Coptic

Coptic may refer to:*The Copts: were a major ethnic group in Egypt. This term described all the people living in Egypt under Roman rule during the 4th to 6th centuries A.D., and until the Muslims took over....

 rewriting of the name "Wadjenes" as "Ougotlas", meaning ″fresh of tongue″.

Reign

Very little is known about Wadjenes's reign. The Turin Canon lists Wadjenes as ruling for 54 years, whilst Manetho assigns 17 years to him. Egyptologists evaluate both lists as misinterpretations by Ramesside scribes or as an exaggeration. If Wadjenes was an independent ruler (as Richard Weill and Peter Kaplony believe) he was evidently the last to rule over a unified realm, since his name is found in both Memphite and Thinite

Abydos, Egypt

Abydos is one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, and also of the eight Upper Nome, of which it was the capital city. It is located about 11 kilometres west of the Nile at latitude 26° 10' N, near the modern Egyptian towns of el-'Araba el Madfuna and al-Balyana...

 royal chronicles. It is largely accepted by Egyptologists that the immediate successor of king Ninetjer left a divided Egypt, which was headed by two kings who ruled at the same time. The theory is based on the unusual serekh name

Serekh

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a serekh is a rectangular enclosure representing the niched or gated façade of a palace surmounted by the Horus falcon, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name...

 of a king called Peribsen, who succeeded Ninetjer and who placed the crest animal of Seth above his name. Since the deity Seth was of Ombite

Kom Ombo

Kom Ombo or Ombos or Latin: Ambo and Ombi – is an agricultural town in Egypt famous for the Temple of Kom Ombo...

 origin, king Peribsen was probably of Ombite origin, too, and he definitely ruled only in Upper Egypt

Upper Egypt

Upper Egypt is the strip of land, on both sides of the Nile valley, that extends from the cataract boundaries of modern-day Aswan north to the area between El-Ayait and Zawyet Dahshur . The northern section of Upper Egypt, between El-Ayait and Sohag is sometimes known as Middle Egypt...

. His name is missing from the Ramesside Memphite kinglists, because they were all written by Memphite priests and they did not accept any non-Memphite ruler as a rightful ancestor.