Part 3 (1/2)

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. Amelineau 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. Qa Sen.

9. Khasekhem (Khasekhemui)

10. Hetepsekhemui.

11. Raneb.

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. Amelineau were in reality those of the kings Hesepti and Merbap of the lists, the Ousaphas and Miebis of Manetho. The perfectly certain identifications are these:--

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

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

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

8. Qa Sen = Qebh, _Bienehhes_, Ist Dynasty.

9. Khasekhemui 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 Menes 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 a.s.signed to the Ist Dynasty, with the result that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in the lists.