Читать книгу History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery - L. W. King - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Until the recent discoveries had been made, which have thrown so much light upon the early history of Egypt, the traditional order and names of the kings of the first three Egyptian dynasties were, in default of more accurate information, retained by all writers on the history of the period. The names were taken from the official lists of kings at Abydos and elsewhere, and were divided into dynasties according to the system of Manetho, whose names agree more or less with those of the lists and were evidently derived from them ultimately. With regard to the fourth and later dynasties it was clear that the king-lists were correct, as their evidence agreed entirely with that of the contemporary monuments. But no means existed of checking the lists of the first three dynasties, as no contemporary monuments other than a IVth Dynasty mention of a IId Dynasty king, Send, had been found. The lists dated from the time of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, so that it was very possible that with regard to the earliest dynasties they might not be very correct. This conclusion gained additional weight from the fact that no monuments of these earliest kings were ever discovered; it therefore seemed probable that they were purely legendary figures, in whose time (if they ever did exist) Egypt was still a semi-barbarous nation. The jejune stories told about them by Manetho seemed to confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed founder of the monarchy, was generally regarded as a historical figure, owing to the persistence of his name in all ancient literary accounts of the beginnings of Egyptian history; for it was but natural to suppose that the name of the man who unified Egypt and founded Memphis would endure in the mouths of the people. But with regard to his successors no such supposition seemed probable, until the time of Sneferu and the pyramid-builders.

This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all the kings of the lists as historical en bloc, simply because the Egyptians had registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and Ata were as historical as Mena.

Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be such entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought; the names of several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are correctly given in the later lists, and those of others were simply misread, e.g. that of Semti of the same dynasty, misread “Hesepti” by the list-makers. On the other hand, Mena himself has become a somewhat doubtful quantity. The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt have been recovered for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see when the list-makers of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were wrong, and can distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is really historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been wrong, but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near the mark, and the general number and arrangement of their kings seems correct; so that we can still go to them for assistance in the arrangement of the names which are communicated to us by the newly discovered monuments. Manetho’s help, too, need never be despised because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct our investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.

More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries communicated to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the preceding chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the work of M. de Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as well as of the predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, which proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name of Aha, “the Fighter.” The walls of this tomb are crenelated like those of the early Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners, already referred to. M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between the Neolithic antiquities and those of the later archaic period of Egyptian civilization, to which the tomb at Nakâda belonged. In the second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt (L’Age des Métaux et lé Tombeau Royale de Négadeh), he described the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he wrote. Antiquities of the same primitive period and even of an earlier date had been discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has already been said, at Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But though Prof. Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the god Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the “New Race” antiquities from Ballas and Tûkh, also to misdate several of the primitive antiquities—the lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now, in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.

It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already described) of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of what we know with regard to the history of the first three dynasties. At Abydos Prof. Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site having already been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M. Amélineau. The excavations of M. Amélineau were, however, perhaps not conducted strictly on scientific lines, and his results have been insufficiently published with very few photographs, so that with the best will in the world we are unable to give M. Amélineau the full credit which is, no doubt, due to him for his work. The system of Prof. Petrie’s publications has been often, and with justice, criticized, but he at least tells us every year what he has been doing, and gives us photographs of everything he has found. For this reason the epoch-making discoveries at Abydos have been coupled chiefly with the name of Prof. Petrie, while that of M. Amélineau is rarely heard in connection with them. As a matter of fact, however, M. Amélineau first excavated the necropolis of the early kings at Abydos, and discovered most of the tombs afterwards worked over by Prof. Petrie and Mr. Mace. Yet most of the important scientific results are due to the later explorers, who were the first to attempt a classification of them, though we must add that this classification has not been entirely accepted by the scientific world.

The necropolis of the earliest kings of Egypt is situated in the great bay in the hills which lies behind Abydos, to the southwest of the main necropolis. Here, at holy Abydos, where every pious Egyptian wished to rest after death, the bodies of the most ancient kings were buried. It is said by Manetho that the original seat of their dominion was This, a town in the vicinity of Abydos, now represented by the modern Grîrga, which lies a few miles distant from its site (el-Birba). This may be a fact, but we have as yet obtained no confirmation of it. It may well be that the attribution of a Thinite origin to the Ist and IId Dynasties was due simply to the fact that the kings of these dynasties were buried at Abydos, which lay within the Thinite nome. Manetho knew that they were buried at Abydos, and so jumped to the conclusion that they lived there also, and called them “Thinites.”

Their real place of origin must have been Hierakonpolis, where the pre-dynastic kingdom of the South had its seat. The Hid Dynasty was no doubt of Memphite origin, as Manetho says. It is certain that the seat of the government of the IVth Dynasty was at Memphis, where the pyramid-building kings were buried, and we know that the sepulchres of two Hid Dynasty kings, at least, were situated in the necropolis of Memphis (Sakkâra-Mêdûm). So that probably the seat of government was transferred from Hierakonpolis to Memphis by the first king of the Hid Dynasty. Thenceforward the kings were buried in the Memphite necropolis.

The two great nécropoles of Memphis and Abydos were originally the seats of the worship of the two Egyptian gods of the dead, Seker and Khentamenti, both of whom were afterwards identified with the Busirite god Osiris. Abydos was also the centre of the worship of Anubis, an animal-deity of the dead, the jackal who prowls round the tombs at night. Anubis and Osiris-Khentamenti, “He who is in the West,” were associated in the minds of the Egyptians as the protecting deities of Abydos. The worship of these gods as the chief Southern deities of the dead, and the preeminence of the necropolis of Abydos in the South, no doubt date back before the time of the Ist Dynasty, so that it would not surprise us were burials of kings of the predynastic Hierakonpolite kingdom discovered at Abydos. Prof. Petrie indeed claims to have discovered actual royal relics of that period at Abydos, but this seems to be one of the least certain of his conclusions. We cannot definitely state that the names “Ro,” “Ka,” and “Sma” (if they are names at all, which is doubtful) belong to early kings of Hierakonpolis who were buried at Abydos. It may be so, but further confirmation is desirable before we accept it as a fact; and as yet such confirmation has not been forthcoming. The oldest kings, who were certainly buried at Abydos, seem to have been the first rulers of the united kingdom of the North and South, Aha and his successors. N’armer is not represented. It may be that he was not buried at Abydos, but in the necropolis of Hierakonpolis. This would point to the kings of the South not having been buried at Abydos until after the unification of the kingdom.

That Aha possessed a tomb at Abydos as well as another at Nakâda seems peculiar, but it is a phenomenon not unknown in Egypt. Several kings, whose bodies were actually buried elsewhere, had second tombs at Abydos, in order that they might possess last resting-places near the tomb of Osiris, although they might not prefer to use them. Usertsen (or Senusret) III is a case in point. He was really buried in a pyramid at Illahun, up in the North, but he had a great rock tomb cut for him in the cliffs at Abydos, which he never occupied, and probably had never intended to occupy. We find exactly the same thing far back at the beginning of Egyptian history, when Aha possessed not only a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, but also a tomb-chamber in the great necropolis of Abydos. It may be that other kings of the earliest period also had second sepulchres elsewhere. It is noteworthy that in none of the early tombs at Abydos were found any bodies which might be considered those of the kings themselves. M. Amélineau discovered bodies of attendants or slaves (who were in all probability purposely strangled and buried around the royal chamber in order that they should attend the king in the next world), but no royalties. Prof. Petrie found the arm of a female mummy, who may have been of royal blood, though there is nothing to show that she was. And the quaint plait and fringe of false hair, which were also found, need not have belonged to a royal mummy. It is therefore quite possible that these tombs at Abydos were not the actual last resting-places of the earliest kings, who may really have been buried at Hierakonpolis or elsewhere, as Aha was. Messrs. Newberry and Gtarstang, in their Short History of Egypt, suppose that Aha was actually buried at Abydos, and that the great tomb with objects bearing his name, found by M. de Morgan at Nakâda, is really not his, but belonged to a royal princess named Neit-hetep, whose name is found in conjunction with his at Abydos and Nakâda. But the argument is equally valid turned round the other way: the Nakâda tomb might just as well be Aha’s and the Abydos one Neit-hetep’s. Neit-hetep, who is supposed by Messrs. Newberry and Garstang to have been Narmer’s daughter and Aha’s wife, was evidently closely connected with Aha, and she may have been buried with him at Nakâda and commemorated with him at Abydos.* It is probable that the XIXth Dynasty list-makers and Manetho considered the Abydos tombs to have been the real graves of the kings, but it is by no means impossible that they were wrong.

* A princess named Bener-ab (“Sweet-heart”), who may have

been Aha’s daughter, was actually buried beside his tomb at

Abydos.

This view of the royal tombs at Abydos tallies to a great extent with that of M. Naville, who has energetically maintained the view that M. Amélineau and Prof. Petrie have not discovered the real tombs of the early kings, but only their contemporary commemorative “tombs” at Abydos. The only real tomb of the Ist Dynasty, therefore, as yet discovered is that of Aha at Nakâda, found by M. de Morgan. The fact that attendant slaves were buried around the Abydos tombs is no bar to the view that the tombs were only the monuments, not the real graves, of the kings. The royal ghosts would naturally visit their commemorative chambers at Abydos, in order to be in the company of the great Osiris, and ghostly servants would be as necessary to their Majesties at Abydos as elsewhere.

It must not be thought that this revised opinion of the Abydos tombs detracts in the slightest degree from the importance of the discovery of M. Amélineau and its subsequent and more detailed investigation by Prof. Petrie. These monuments are as valuable for historical purposes as the real tombs themselves. The actual bodies of these primeval kings themselves we are never likely to find. The tomb of Aha at Nakâda had been completely rifled in ancient times.

The commemorative tombs of the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos lie southwest of the great necropolis, far within the bay in the hills. Their present aspect is that of a wilderness of sand hillocks, covered with masses of fragments of red pottery, from which the site has obtained the modern Arab name of Umm el-Ga’ab, “Mother of Pots.” It is impossible to move a step in any direction without crushing some of these potsherds under the heel. They are chiefly the remains of the countless little vases of rough red pottery, which were dedicated here as ex-votos by the pious, between the XIXth and XXVIth Dynasties, to the memory of the ancient kings and of the great god Osiris, whose tomb, as we shall see, was supposed to have been situated here also.

Intermingled with these later fragments are pieces of the original Ist Dynasty vases, which were filled with wine and provisions and were placed in the tombs, for the refreshment and delectation of the royal ghosts when they should visit their houses at Abydos. These were thrown out and broken when the tombs were violated. Here and there one sees a dip in the sand, out of which rise four walls of great bricks, forming a rectangular chamber, half-filled with sand. This is one of the royal tomb-chambers of the Ist Dynasty. That of King Den is illustrated above. A straight staircase descends into it from the ground-level above. In several of the tombs the original flooring of wooden beams is still preserved. Den’s is the most magnificent of all, for it has a floor of granite blocks; we know of no other instance of stone being used for building in this early age. Almost every tomb has been burnt at some period unknown. The brick walls are burnt red, and many of the alabaster vases are almost calcined. This was probably the work of some unknown enemy.

The wide complicated tombs have around the main chamber a series of smaller rooms, which were used to store what was considered necessary for the use of the royal ghost. Of these necessaries the most interesting to us are the slaves, who were, as there is little reason to doubt, purposely killed and buried round the royal chamber so that their spirits should be on the spot when the dead king came to Abydos; thus they would be always ready to serve him with the food and other things which had been stored in the tomb with them and placed under their charge. There were stacks of great vases of wine, corn, and other food; these were covered up with masses of fat to preserve the contents, and they were corked with a pottery stopper, which was protected by a conical clay sealing, stamped with the impress of the royal cylinder-seal. There were bins of corn, joints of oxen, pottery dishes, copper pans, and other things which might be useful for the ghostly cuisine of the tomb. There were numberless small objects, used, no doubt, by the dead monarch during life, which he would be pleased to see again in the next world—carved ivory boxes, little slabs for grinding eye-paint, golden buttons, model tools, model vases with gold tops, ivory and pottery figurines, and other objets d’art; the golden royal seal of judgment of King Den in its ivory casket, and so forth. There were memorials of the royal victories in peace and war, little ivory plaques with inscriptions commemorating the founding of new buildings, the institution of new religious festivals in honour of the gods, the bringing of the captives of the royal bow and spear to the palace, the discomfiture of the peoples of the North-land.

All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.

The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners of the time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people of childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his kingship he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. But yet how could one really die? Shadows, dreams, all kinds of phenomena which the primitive mind could not explain, induced the belief that, though the outer man might rot, there was an inner man which could not die and still lived on. The idea of total death was unthinkable. And where should this inner man still live on but in the tomb to which the outer man was consigned? And here, doubtless it was believed, in the house to which the body was consigned, the ghost lived on. And as each ghost had his house with the body, so no doubt all ghosts could communicate with one another from tomb to tomb; and so there grew up the belief in a tomb-world, a subterranean Egypt of tombs, in which the dead Egyptians still lived and had their being. Later on the boat of the sun, in which the god of light crossed the heavens by day, was thought to pass through this dead world between his setting and his rising, accompanied by the souls of the righteous. But of this belief we find no trace yet in the ideas of the Ist Dynasty. All we can see is that the sahus, or bodies of the dead, were supposed to reside in awful majesty in the tomb, while the ghosts could pass from tomb to tomb through the mazes of the underworld. Over this dread realm of dead men presided a dead god, Osiris of Abydos; and so the necropolis of Abydos was the necropolis of the underworld, to which all ghosts who were not its rightful citizens would come from afar to pay their court to their ruler. Thus the man of substance would have a monumental tablet put up to himself in this necropolis as a sort of pied-à-terre, even if he could not be buried there; for the king, who, for reasons chiefly connected with local patriotism, was buried near the city of his earthly abode, a second tomb would be erected, a stately mansion in the city of Osiris, in which his ghost could reside when it pleased him to come to Abydos.

Now none could live without food, and men living under the earth needed it as much as men living on the earth. The royal tomb was thus provided with an enormous amount of earthly food for the use of the royal ghost, and with other things as well, as we have seen. The same provision had also to be made for the royal resting-place at Abydos. And in both cases royal slaves were needed to take care of all this provision, and to serve the ghost of the king, whether in his real tomb at Nakâda, or elsewhere, or in his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve ghosts, so that of the slaves ghosts had to be made. That was easily done; they died when their master died and followed him to the tomb. No doubt it seemed perfectly natural to all concerned, to the slaves as much as to anybody else. But it shows the child’s idea of the value of life. An animate thing was hardly distinguished at this period from an inanimate thing. The most ancient Egyptians buried slaves with their kings as naturally as they buried jars of wine and bins of corn with them. Both were buried with a definite object. The slaves had to die before they were buried, but then so had the king himself. They all had to die sometime or other. And the actual killing of them was no worse than killing a dog, no worse even than “killing” golden buttons and ivory boxes. For, when the buttons and boxes were buried with the king, they were just as much dead as the slaves. Of the sanctity of human life as distinct from other life, there was probably no idea at all. The royal ghost needed ghostly servants, and they were provided as a matter of course.

But as civilization progressed, the ideas of the Egyptians changed on these points, and in the later ages of the ancient world they were probably the most humane of the peoples, far more so than the Greeks, in fact. The cultured Hellenes murdered their prisoners of war without hesitation. Who has not been troubled in mind by the execution of Mkias and Demosthenes after the surrender of the Athenian army at Syracuse? When we compare this with Grant’s refusal even to take Lee’s sword at Appomattox, we see how we have progressed in these matters; while Gylippus and the Syracusans were as much children as the Ist Dynasty Egyptians. But the Egyptians of Gylippus’s time had probably advanced much further than the Greeks in the direction of rational manhood. When Amasis had his rival Apries in his power, he did not put him to death, but kept him as his coadjutor on the throne. Apries fled from him, allied himself with Greek pirates, and advanced against his generous rival. After his defeat and murder at Momemphis, Amasis gave him a splendid burial. When we compare this generosity to a beaten foe with the savagery of the Assyrians, for instance, we see how far the later Egyptians had progressed in the paths of humanity.

The ancient custom of killing slaves was first discontinued at the death of the lesser chieftains, but we find a possible survival of it in the case of a king, even as late as the time of the XIth Dynasty; for at Thebes, in the precinct of the funerary temple of King Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep and round the central pyramid which commemorated his memory, were buried a number of the ladies of his harîm. They were all buried at one and the same time, and there can be little doubt that they were all killed and buried round the king, in order to be with him in the next world. Now with each of these ladies, who had been turned into ghosts, was buried a little waxen human figure placed in a little model coffin. This was to replace her own slave. She who went to accompany the king in the next world had to have her own attendant also. But, not being royal, a real slave was not killed for her; she only took with her a waxen figure, which by means of charms and incantations would, when she called upon it, turn into a real slave, and say, “Here am I,” and do whatever work might be required of her. The actual killing and burial of the slaves had in all cases except that of the king been long “commuted,” so to speak, into a burial with the dead person of ushabtis, or “Answerers,” little figures like those described above, made more usually of stone, and inscribed with the name of the deceased. They were called “Answerers” because they answered the call of their dead master or mistress, and by magic power became ghostly servants. Later on they were made of wood and glazed faïence, as well as stone. By this means the greater humanity of a later age sought a relief from the primitive disregard of the death of others.

Anthropologically interesting as are the results of the excavations at Umm el-Gra’ab, they are no less historically important. There is no need here to weary the reader with the details of scientific controversy; it will suffice to set before him as succinctly and clearly as possible the net results of the work which has been done.

Messrs. Amélineau and Petrie have found the secondary tombs and have identified the names of the following primeval kings of Egypt. We arrange them in their apparent historical order.

1. Aha Men (?).

2. Narmer (or Betjumer) Sma (?).

3. Tjer (or Khent). Besh.

4. Tja Ati.

5. Den Semti.

6. Atjab Merpeba.

7. Semerkha Nekht.

8. Qâ Sen.

9. Khâsekhem (Khâsekhemui)

10. Hetepsekhemui.

11. Räneb.

12. Neneter.

13. Sekhemab Perabsen.

Two or three other names are ascribed by Prof. Petrie to the Hierakonpolite dynasty of Upper Egypt, which, as it occurs before the time of Mena and the Ist Dynasty, he calls “Dynasty 0.” Dynasty 0, however, is no dynasty, and in any case we should prefer to call the “predynastic” dynasty “Dynasty I.” The names of “Dynasty minus One,” however, remain problematical, and for the present it would seem safer to suspend judgment as to the place of the supposed royal names “Ro” and “Ka”(Men-kaf), which Prof. Petrie supposes to have been those of two of the kings of Upper Egypt who reigned before Mena. The king “Sma”(“Uniter”) is possibly identical with Aha or Narmer, more probably the latter. It is not necessary to detail the process by which Egyptologists have sought to identify these thirteen kings with the successors of Mena in the lists of kings and the Ist and IId Dynasties of Manetho. The work has been very successful, though not perhaps quite so completely accomplished as Prof. Petrie himself inclines to believe. The first identification was made by Prof. Sethe, of Gottingen, who pointed out that the names Semti and Merpeba on a vase-fragment found by M. Amélineau were in reality those of the kings Hesepti and Merbap of the lists, the Ousaphaïs and Miebis of Manetho. The perfectly certain identifications are these:—

5. Den Semti = Hesepti, Ousaphaïs, Ist Dynasty.

6. Atjab Merpeba = Merbap, Miebis, Ist Dynasty.

7. Semerkha Nekht= Shemsu or Semsem (?), Semempres, Ist Dynasty.

8. Qâ Sen = Qebh, Bienehhes, Ist Dynasty.

9. Khâsekhemui Besh = Betju-mer (?), Boethos, IId Dynasty.

10. Neneter = Bineneter, Binothris, IId Dynasty.

Six of the Abydos kings have thus been identified with names in the lists and in Manetho; that is to say, we now know the real names of six of the earliest Egyptian monarchs, whose appellations are given us under mutilated forms by the later list-makers. Prof. Petrie further identifies (4) Tja Ati with Ateth, (3) Tjer with Teta, and (1) Aha with Mena. Mena, Teta, Ateth, Ata, Hesepti, Merbap, Shemsu (?), and Qebh are the names of the 1st Dynasty as given in the lists. The equivalent of Ata Prof. Petrie finds in the name “Merneit,” which is found at Umm el-Ga’ab. But there is no proof whatever that Merneit was a king; he was much more probably a prince or other great personage of the reign of Den, who was buried with the kings. Prof. Petrie accepts the identification of the personal name of Aha as “Men,” and so makes him the only equivalent of Mena. But this reading of the name is still doubtful. Arguing that Aha must be Mena, and having all the rest of the kings of the Ist Dynasty identified with the names in the lists, Prof. Petrie is compelled to exclude Narmer from the dynasty, and to relegate him to “Dynasty 0,” before the time of Mena. It is quite possible, however, that Narmer was the successor, not the predecessor, of Mena. He was certainly either the one or the other, as the style of art in his time was exactly the same as that in the time of Aha. The “Scorpion,” too, whose name is found at Hierakonpolis, certainly dates to the same time as Narmer and Aha, for the style of his work is the same. And it may well be that he is not to be counted as a separate king, belonging to “Dynasty 0 “(or “Dynasty -I”) at all, but as identical with Narmer, just as “Sma” may also be. We thus find that the two kings who left the most developed remains at Hierakonpolis are the two whose monuments at Abydos are the oldest of all on that site. That is to say, the kings whose monuments record the conquest of the North belong to the period of transition from the old Hierakonpolite dominion of Upper Egypt to the new kingdom of all Egypt. They, in fact, represent the “Mena” or Menés of tradition. It may be that Aha bore the personal name of Men, which would thus be the original of Mena, but this is uncertain. In any case both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist Dynasty, with the result that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in the lists.

Nor is this improbable. Manetho’s list is evidently based upon old Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of Abydos and Sakkâra were based. These old lists were made under the XIXth Dynasty, when an interest in the oldest kings seems to have been awakened, and the ruling monarchs erected temples at Abydos in their honour. This phenomenon can only have been due to a discovery of Umm el-Ga’ab and its treasures, the tombs of which were recognized as the burial-places (real or secondary) of the kings before the pyramid-builders. Seti I. and his son Ramses then worshipped the kings of Umm el-Ga’ab, with their names set before them in the order, number, and spelling in which the scribes considered they ought to be inscribed. It is highly probable that the number known at that time was not quite correct. We know that the spelling of the names was very much garbled (to take one example only, the signs for Sen were read as one sign Qebh), so that one or two kings may have been omitted or displaced. This may be the case with Narmer, or, as his name ought possibly to be read, Betjumer. His monuments show by their style that he belongs to the very beginning of the Ist Dynasty. No name in the Ist Dynasty list corresponds to his. But one of the lists gives for the first king of the IId Dynasty (the successor of “Qebh” = Sen) a name which may also be read Betjumer, spelt syllabically this time, not ideographically. On this account Prof. Naville wishes to regard the Hierakonpolite monuments of Narmer as belonging to the IId Dynasty, but, as we have seen, they are among the most archaic known, and certainly must belong to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. It is therefore probable that Khasekhemui Besh and Narmer (Betjumer?) were confused by this list-maker, and the name Betjumer was given to the first king of the IId Dynasty, who was probably in reality Khasekhemui. The resemblance of Betju to Besh may have contributed to this confusion.

So Narmer (or Betjumer) found his way out of his proper place at the beginning of the 1st Dynasty. Whether Aha was also called “Men” or not, it seems evident that he and Narmer were jointly the originals of the legendary Mena. Narmer, who possibly also bore the name of Sma, “the Uniter,” conquered the North. Aha, “the Fighter,” also ruled both South and North at the same period. Khasekhemui, too, conquered the North, but the style of his monuments shows such an advance upon that of the days of Aha and Narmer that it seems best to make him the successor of Sen (or “Qebh “), and, explaining the transference of the name Betjumer to the beginning of the IId Dynasty as due to a confusion with Khasekhemui’s personal name Besh, to make Khasekhemui the founder of the IId Dynasty. The beginning of a new dynasty may well have been marked by a reassertion of the new royal power over Lower Egypt, which may have lapsed somewhat under the rule of the later kings of the Ist Dynasty.

Semti is certainly the “Hesepti” of the lists, and Tja Ati is probably “Ateth.” “Ata” is thus unidentified. Prof. Petrie makes him = Merneit, but, as has already been said, there is no proof that the tomb of Merneit is that of a king. “Teta” may be Tjer or Khent, but of this there is no proof. It is most probable that the names “Teta,” “Ateth,” and “Ata” are all founded on Ati, the personal name of Tja. The king Tjer is then not represented in the lists, and “Mena” is a compound of the two oldest Abydos kings, Narmer (Betjumer) Sma (?) and Aha Men (?).

These are the bare historical results that have been attained with regard to the names, identity, and order of the kings. The smaller memorials that have been found with them, especially the ivory plaques, have told us of events that took place during their reigns; but, with the exception of the constantly recurring references to the conquest of the North, there is little that can be considered of historical interest or importance. We will take one as an example. This is the tablet No. 32,650 of the British Museum, illustrated by Prof. Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16. This is the record of a single year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An. The capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of fortification, half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs already described are armed; this signifies the opening and breaking down of the wall.

On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt, Hemaka, mentioned; also “the Hawk (i.e. the king) seizes the seat of the Libyans,” and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a king’s carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words “the king’s carpenter made this record.” All these little tablets are then the records of single years of a king’s life, and others like them, preserved no doubt in royal archives, formed the base of regular annals, which were occasionally carved upon stone. We have an example of one of these in the “Stele of Palermo,” a fragment of black granite, inscribed with the annals of the kings up to the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the monument itself was made. It is a matter for intense regret that the greater portion of this priceless historical monument has disappeared, leaving us but a piece out of the centre, with part of the records of only six kings before Snefru. Of these six the name of only one, Neneter, of the lid Dynasty, whose name is also found at Abydos, is mentioned. The only important historical event of Neneter’s reign seems to have occurred in his thirteenth year, when the towns or palaces of Ha (“North”) and Shem-Râ (“The Sun proceeds”) were founded. Nothing but the institution and celebration of religious festivals is recorded in the sixteen yearly entries preserved to us out of a reign of thirty-five years. The annual height of the Nile is given, and the occasions of numbering the people are recorded (every second year): nothing else. Manetho tells us that in the reign of Binothris, who is Neneter, it was decreed that women could hold royal honours and privileges. This first concession of women’s rights is not mentioned on the strictly official “Palermo Stele.”

More regrettable than aught else is the absence from the “Palermo Stele” of that part of the original monument which gave the annals of the earliest kings. At any rate, in the lines of annals which still exist above that which contains the chronicle of the reign of Neneter no entry can be definitely identified as belonging to the reigns of Aha or Narmer. In a line below there is a mention of the “birth of Khâsekhemui,” apparently a festival in honour of the birth of that king celebrated in the same way as the reputed birthday of a god. This shows the great honour in which Khâsekhemui was held, and perhaps it was he who really finally settled the question of the unification of North and South and consolidated the work of the earlier kings.

As far as we can tell, then, Aha and Narmer were the first conquerors of the North, the unifiers of the kingdom, and the originals of the legendary Mena. In their time the kingdom’s centre of gravity was still in the South, and Narmer (who is probably identical with “the Scorpion”) dedicated the memorials of his deeds in the temple of Hierakonpolis. It may be that the legend of the founding of Memphis in the time of “Menés” is nearly correct (as we shall see, historically, the foundation may have been due to Merpeba), but we have the authority of Manetho for the fact that the first two dynasties were “Thinite” (that is, Upper Egyptian), and that Memphis did not become the capital till the time of the Hid Dynasty. With this statement the evidence of the monuments fully agrees. The earliest royal tombs in the pyramid-field of Memphis date from the time of the Hid Dynasty, so that it is evident that the kings had then taken up their abode in the Northern capital. We find that soon after the time of Khâsekhemui the king Perabsen was especially connected with Lower Egypt. His personal name is unknown to us (though he may be the “Uatjnes” of the lists), but we do know that he had two banner-names, Sekhem-ab and Perabsen. The first is his hawk or Horus-name, the second his Set-name; that is to say, while he bore the first name as King of Upper Egypt under the special patronage of Horus, the hawk-god of the Upper Country, he bore the second as King of Lower Egypt, under the patronage of Set, the deity of the Delta, whose fetish animal appears above this name instead of the hawk. This shows how definitely Perabsen wished to appear as legitimate King of Lower as well as Upper Egypt. In later times the Theban kings of the XIIth Dynasty, when they devoted themselves to winning the allegiance of the Northerners by living near Memphis rather than at Thebes, seem to have been imitating the successors of Khâsekhemui.

Moreover, we now find various evidences of increasing connection with the North. A princess named Ne-maat-hap, who seems to have been the mother of Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of the sacred Apis of Memphis, her name signifying “Possessing the right of Apis.” According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the royal right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times, but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht’s tomb is similar. In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a giant seven feet high.