* “The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty,” Parts I.-II. 
     (Eighteenth and Twenty-first Memoirs of the Egypt
     Exploration Fund), London, 1900-1902.

     ** See Volume I., page 322, et seq.

Mena is the first king on the fragmentary list of Manetho, and the general accuracy of Manetho was supported by the accounts of Herodotus and other ancient writers.  For several centuries these accounts were accepted as the basis of authentic history.  With the rise of the science of Egyptology, however, search began to be made for some corroboration of the actual existence of Mena, and this was found in the inscriptions of a temple wall at Abydos, which places Mena at the head of the first dynasty; and, allowing for differences of language, the records of Manetho relating to the earlier dynasty were established.  Mena was therefore accepted as the first king of the first dynasty up to the very end of the nineteenth century.

As a result of Professor Petrie ’s recent investigations, however, he has been enabled to carry back the line of the early kings for three or four generations.

The royal tombs at Abydos lie closely together in a compact group on a site raised slightly above the level of the surrounding plain, so that the tombs could never be flooded.  Each of the royal tombs is a large square pit, lined with brickwork.  Close around it, on its own level, or higher up, there are generally small chambers in rows, in which were buried the domestics of the king.  Each reign adopted some variety in the mode of burial, but they all follow the type of the prehistoric burials, more or less developed.  The plain square pit, like those in which the predynastic people were buried, is here the essential of the tomb.  It is surrounded in the earlier examples of Zer or Zet by small chambers opening from it.  By Merneit these chambers were built separately around it.  By Den an entrance passage was added, and by Qa the entrance was turned to the north.  At this stage we are left within reach of the early passage-mastabas and pyramids.  Substituting a stone lining and roof for bricks and wood, and placing the small tombs of domestics farther away, we reach the type of the mas-taba-pyramid of Snofrui, and so lead on to the pyramid series of the Old Kingdom.

[Illustration:  361.jpg PLAN OF THE ROYAL TOMBS AS ABYDOS]

The careful manner with which all details of a burial were supervised under the first dynasty enables the modern Egyptologist, by a skilful piecing together of evidence, to reconstruct an almost perfect picture of the life of Egypt at the dawn of civilisation.  One of our most valuable sources of information is due to the fact that, in building the walls of the royal tombs, there were deposited in certain parts within the walls objects now technically known as deposits.  We do not know whether, in selecting these objects, the ancient Egyptian had regard to what he considered their intrinsic value, or whether, as was most probable, it was some religious motive that prompted his action.  Often the objects thus deposited come under the designation of pottery, although the vases were sometimes shaped of stone and not of clay.  Within such vases all kinds of objects were preserved.  The jar or vase was closed with a lump of clay, either flat or conical, and the clay was impressed, while wet, with a seal.