* El. Petrie, The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty, part i.
p. 14.
** The "luminous double" or the "double of his luminary" is
doubtless that luminous spectre which haunted the tombs and
even the houses of the living during the night, and which I
have mentioned, supra, p. 160.
*** Petrie found the skeletons of two dwarfs, probably the
very two to whom the two stelae (Nos. 36, 37) in the tomb of
Semempses were raised. Was one of these dwarfs one of the
Danga of Puanît who were sought after by the Pharaohs of
the Memphite dynasties?
**** This was the ceremony called by the Egyptians "The
Festival of the Foundation "—habu sadu.
The offerings themselves were such as we meet with in burials of a subsequent age—bread, cakes, meat, and poultry of various sorts—indeed, everything we find mentioned in the lists inscribed in the tombs of the later dynasties, particularly the jars of wine and liquors, on the clay bungs of which are still legible the impression of the signet bearing the name of the sovereign for whose use they were sealed. Besides stuffs and mats, the furniture comprised chairs, beds, stools, an enormous number of vases, some in coarse pottery for common use, others in choice stone such as diorite, granite, or rock crystal very finely worked, on the fragments of all of which may be read cut in outline the names and preamble of the Pharaoh to whom the object belonged. The ceremonial of the funerary offering and its significance was already fully developed at this early period; this can be gathered by the very nature of the objects buried with the deceased, by their number, quantity, and by the manner in which they were arranged. Like their successors in the Egypt of later times, these ancient kings expected to continue their material existence within the tomb, and they took precautions that life there should be as comfortable as circumstances should permit. Access to the tomb was sometimes gained by a sloping passage or staircase; this made it possible to see if everything within was in a satisfactory condition. After the dead had been enclosed in his chamber, and five or six feet of sand had been spread over the beams which formed its roof, the position of the tomb was shown merely by a scarcely perceptible rise in the soil of the necropolis, and its site would soon have been forgotten, if its easternmost limits had not been marked by two large stelae on which were carefully engraved one of the appellations of the king—that of his double, or his Horus name.[*]
* For the Horus name of the Pharaohs, see vol. ïi., pp. 23-
25.
It was on this spot, upon an altar placed between the two stelæ, that the commemorative ceremonies were celebrated, and the provisions renewed on certain days fixed by the religious law. Groups of private tombs were scattered around,—the resting-places of the chief officers of the sovereign, the departed Pharaoh being thus surrounded in death by the same courtiers as those who had attended him during his earthly existence.
The princes, whose names and titles have been revealed to us by the inscriptions on these tombs, have not by any means been all classified as yet, the prevailing custom at that period having been to designate them by their Horus names, but rarely by their proper names, which latter is the only one which figures in the official lists which we possess of the Egyptian kings. A few texts, more explicit than the rest, enable us to identify three of them with the Usaphais, the Miebis, and the Semempses of Manetho—the fifth, sixth, and seventh kings of the Ist dynasty.[*] The fact that they are buried in the necropolis of Abydos apparently justifies the opinion of the Egyptian chroniclers that they were natives of Thinis. Is the Menés who usually figures at their head[**] also a Thinite prince?
* The credit is due to Sethe of having attributed their
ordinary names to several of the kings of the Ist dynasty
with Horus names only which were found by Amélineau, and
these identifications have been accepted by all
Egyptologists. Pétrie discovered quite recently on some
fragments of vases the Horus names of these same princes,
together with their ordinary names. The Usaphais, the
Miebis, and the Semempses of Manetho are now satisfactorily
identified with three of the Pharaohs discovered by
Amélineau and by Pétrie.
** In the time of Seti I. and Ramses II. he heads the list
of the Table of Abydos. Under Ramses II. his statue was
carried in procession, preceding all the other royal
statues. Finally, the "Royal Papyrus" of Turin,
written in the time of Ramses I., begins the entire series
of the human Pharaohs with his name.
Several scholars believe that his ordinary name, Mini, is to be read on an ivory tablet engraved for a sovereign whose Horus name—Ahauîti, the warlike—is known to us from several documents, and whose tomb also has been discovered, but at Nagadeh. It is a great rectangular structure of bricks 165 feet long and 84 broad, the external walls of which were originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which score the façade of Chaldæan buildings, but the Nagadeh tomjb has a second brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one, and thus hides the primitive decoration of the monument. The building contains twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently constituted the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped around these, serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his provisions at will. Did the king buried within indeed bear the name of Menés,[*] and if such was the case, how are we to reconcile the tradition of his Thinite origin with the existence of his far-off tomb in the neighbourhood of Thebes?
* The sign Manu, which appears on the ivory tablet found
in this tomb, has been interpreted as a king's name, and
consequently inferred to be Menés. This reading has been
disputed on various sides, and the point remains, therefore,
a contested one until further discovery.
Objects bearing his Horus name have been found at Omm-el-Gaâb, and it is evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in this necropolis. If, indeed, Menés was really his personal name, there is no reason against his being the Menés of tradition, he whom the Pharaohs of the glorious Theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of their purely human ancestors. Whether he was really the first king who reigned over the whole of Egypt, or whether he had been preceded by other sovereigns whose monuments we may find in some site still unexplored, is a matter for conjecture. That princes had exercised authority in various parts of the country is still uncertain, but that the Egyptian historians did not know them, seems to prove that they had left no written records of their names. At any rate, a Menés lived who reigned at the outset of history, and doubtless before long the Nile valley, when more carefully explored, will yield us monuments recording his actions and determining his date. The civilization of the Egypt of his time was ruder than that with which we have hitherto been familiar on its soil, but even at that early period it was almost as complete. It had its industries and its arts, of which the cemeteries furnish us daily with the most varied examples: weaving, modelling in clay, wood-carving, the incising of ivory, gold, and the hardest stone were all carried on; the ground was cultivated with hoe and plough; tombs were built showing us the model of what the houses and palaces must have been; the country had its army, its administrators, its priests, its nobles, its writing, and its system of epigraphy differs so little from that to which we are accustomed in later ages, that we can decipher it with no great difficulty. Frankly speaking, all that we know at present of the first of the Pharaohs beyond the mere fact of his existence is practically nil, and the stories related of him by the writers of classical times are mere legends arranged to suit the fancy of the compiler. "This Menés, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with dykes. For the river formerly followed the sandhills for some distance on the Libyan side. Menés, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges. Then Menés, the first who was king, having enclosed a firm space of ground with dykes, there founded that town which is still called Memphis; he then made a lake round it, to the north and west, fed by the river, the city being bounded on the east by the Nile."[*]
* The dyke supposed to have been made by Menés is evidently
that of Qosheîsh, which now protects the province of Gîzeh,
and regulates the inundation in its neighbourhood.