THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE NEAR EAST FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE BATTLE OF SALAMIS. CHAPTER III. ARCHAIC EGYPT

The Neolithic Egyptian was buried, usually in a curled-up position with his head resting upon his knees, lying upon his left side, in a very shallow grave, usually oval in shape. With him were buried his pots, his flint knives, his kohl palette, and his reed mat, so that he might pass fully equipped into the next world. These graves are not found isolated, but are always grouped together in necropoles, often consisting of many hundred graves. Between one grave and its neighbour sometimes not more than a few inches of desert sand intervenes. This close packing often led to disturbance in Neolithic times, and it is possible that the many cases of dismemberment of the bodies, usually considered to indicate a regular practice of piecemeal burial, is really to a great extent due to ancient disturbance. Until further evidence is available on this point, it would be as well to hold in abeyance the conclusion that the Neolithic Egyptian constantly separated the limbs of the deceased before burial.

The contracted method of burial survived in Egypt among the poorer classes of the settled population as late as the time of the VIth Dynasty, when even the primitive and half-named tribes of the desert-fringe, corresponding to the Beduins and Ababdeh of today, though still, perhaps, making pottery of the Neolithic fashion, had already adopted the new fashion of burying at length, which after the VIth Dynasty became universal. This custom is first seen at the end of the IIIrd Dynasty in the case of the higher classes only ; and with it had come into fashion the practice of mummification : the Neolithic bodies had merely been dried or smoked. The contracted bodies of the VIth Dynasty were to some extent mummified. Here we have an interesting alteration of primitive custom, almost corresponding to the substitution of cremation for inhumation in prehistoric Europe. That we are to assign it to a change of race is more than doubtful. We have, as we shall see, evidence that an ethnic element, distinct from that of Upper Egypt, existed in Lower Egypt before the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. But there is no doubt that while this foreign element in Northern Egypt contributed not a little to the common culture of dynastic times, the main fabric of archaic Egyptian civilization was developed straight out of the Upper Egyptian culture of the Neolithic period. This fact has been proved beyond dispute by the work of Maciver at Al-Amrah, followed by that of Reisner and Mace at Nag' ed-Der, and in nothing is the continuity of the archaic culture with the neolithic of Upper Egypt shown more clearly than in the development of the graves, which progress uniformly from the oldest shallow oval pit to the characteristic chambers of the Ist Dynasty, and through the staircased graves of the Illrd to the Vth, to the deep pits with chambers of the VIth and the XIth. The gradual change in the form of the tomb was evidently merely a change in fashion, a natural development, and thus also we must regard the gradual change in the mode of treating and laying out the body. Ideas were altering at the time; civilization was advancing, and religious views were by no means yet fixed.

All that is most characteristically Egyptian, especially in the religion and in the writing, is to be found in germ in the Upper Egyptian predynastic period. The gods and their emblems were known to the Neolithic Egyptian, and he used their sacred animals as the symbols of his village and name. The standards of the gods already appear, and in these primitive representations of the divine emblems we see the beginnings of writing. They are the first Egyptian hieroglyphs. Under the Ist Dynasty the writing developed swiftly, answering to the needs of a swiftly developing civilization. But in the hieroglyphs of the Ist Dynasty we cannot see any exotic element that we recognize: the signs are all Egyptian and represent Egyptian objects, and their descent from the simple predynastic ideographs is evident.

The Hypaethral Temple of Philae /David Roberts)

2. The Races of Egypt and the Introduction of Metal

Yet in the religion there was a foreign element, though it does not assert itself vigorously till the time of the IVth and Vth Dynasties. This was the worship of the Sun, and his sacred stones, the forerunners of the obelisks; a cult that is apparently of Semitic, and at any rate of Palestinian, origin. As we find it under the IVth and Vth Dynasties, this worship centred in the important town of Annu, On, or Heliopolis, on the eastern edge of the Delta, next to the lands of the Semites. We can find no trace of Sun-worship in what we can see of the religious beliefs of the Neolithic Egyptians. It is the old veneration of the sacred animals and the weird visions of the Lower World that are so characteristically Egyptian, and undoubtedly go back to the beginning of things in the Nile valley: the Sun-god was an invader from the East. He bore, too, a Semitic name. Further, another god of the North, Ptah, the “opener”, bears from the first a purely Semitic name.

And with this possible Semitic invasion must be connected a most important fact. The language which was written with these characteristically native and Egyptian hieroglyphs was, even as we know it as early as the time of the IVth Dynasty or earlier, strongly affected by Semitic influence. That it is entirely “proto-Semitic” in character may be doubted, but that it contained Semitic elements is certain. The personal pronouns are Semitic in character, and it has been supposed by philologists, though the supposition is not yet universally accepted, that the verbs follow Semitic rules of conjugation. This original Semitic element in the language must be dissociated from later Semitic “contaminations” due to later connexion with the Semites.

We thus see that while archaeology knows of no definite foreign invasion of the Nile valley, and can with justification regard the whole of Egyptian culture as of indigenous growth, a study of Egyptian religion does seem to show a very early Semitic element, and the philologists claim Ancient Egyptian as a more or less Semitic language. Craniological study contributes the important fact that during the early dynastic period the physical type of the Egyptians altered from that of predynastic days, and it seems most natural to suppose that this alteration was due to infiltration of a different population from the North, which would naturally ensue when the two parts of the country were united under one crown. This postulates a separate population in the North.

Now the early representations of Northern Egyptians on the monuments of the Southern king Narmer at Hierakonpolis show them as decidedly Semitic or Semito-Libyan in type. And we find this Semitic type in a Ist-Dynasty representation of a Beduin from the First Cataract. This type is not the same as that of the predynastic Egyptian of the South, who, as we know from skulls and from contemporary representations, was smaller-headed and smaller-featured than the Beduin and the North Egyptian “Semite”, though racially he may have been distantly connected with him. We have then in the South the delicate, small-bearded Upper Egyptian prehistoric race, the makers of the pots and flints we have described, who greatly resembled the Gallas and Somali of farther South, and probably belonged to that “Hamitic” race, which may be akin to the Southern Arabians. Evidently they came from the South. Then we have in Northern Egypt the Semito-Libyans, bridging the gap between the Berbers of North Africa, whose languages are akin both to Semitic and to Ancient Egyptian, and the true Semites. Evidently they came from the East. They brought Sun-worship and the more definitely Semitic elements in the Egyptian language.

Finally, craniological research has shown that there was a third racial element in early Egypt, large-skulled, round-faced, and short-nosed. This element is not apparent, however, in prehistoric times in Upper Egypt: it only gradually spread southwards under the early dynasties. And we have interesting confirmation of the Northern origin of this type in the portrait-statues of the Pharaohs and great men of Memphis from the IVth to the VIth Dynasties, which show the type of the ruling classes in the North as that of the large-skulled people. Now these people were almost European in features, and not in the slightest degree “Semitic”, whether of the strong-nosed Syrian or slight-nosed Arab type. They were not Semites, nor again were they Anatolians, as their noses were not of the Armenian or Hittite style or their skulls of the strongly brachycephalic type of Asia Minor. I regard them as Mediterraneans, akin to the early Cretans, who had been settled in Northern Egypt from time immemorial, and belonged to the North African stock from which perhaps the early Aegeans sprang. This stock will have been at an early period overrun by the Semite-Libyans, but when the Southern or true Nilotic Egyptians conquered the latter and founded the kingdom, the Mediterraneans, naturally more gifted and more civilized than the Semite-Libyans, reasserted themselves in the North, and gradually, owing to their superior intelligence, became more and more dominant in the nation, and their blood naturally diffused itself southward as they amalgamated with the Southern race. If this was so, there can be little doubt that many of the resemblances both in religious cults and in art between early Egyptians and Cretans are due to this North Egyptian race.

The above is a theory which may or may not be correct, but at least endeavours to give some explanation of the facts. We see at any rate that we have to deal with a second element in Northern Egypt by the side of the Semite-Libyans, and that it is this element, and not the Semite-Libyan, that modified the Egyptian race so materially under the early dynasties.

We have still to reconcile the archaeological with the philological and other facts mentioned. It might be urged that archaeology does not altogether reject the possibility of an early Semitic element even in Upper Egypt, so long as the similarities between certain early objects of Egyptian and Babylonian culture remain otherwise unexplained. These objects are the seal-cylinder, the mace-head, and the method of building crenellated brick walls, which were alike in both countries. It has been supposed that the invention of brick itself came to Egypt from Babylonia.

In the first place, these resemblances might be considered to prove, properly speaking, not a Semitic invasion or even connexion at all, but an invasion by or connexion with the Sumerian Babylonians, who were not Semites. Nevertheless, as there were probably Semites in Babylonia before the invasion of the Sumerians, this objection may be waived. The similarity of the crenellated walls of Egypt and Babylonia might be dismissed at once as proving, if anything, Babylonian indebtedness to Egypt rather than the reverse, as the crenellated walls of Telloh, which are compared with Egyptian fortress and mastaba-walls of the first three dynasties, are perhaps a thousand years later in date than these. But it is probable that this custom was in Babylonia as old as in Egypt, where we find crenellated walls represented as characteristic of the cities of the Northerners or Anu, who were probably of proto-Semitic blood. The cylinder cannot be dismissed at all. The fact that from the beginning both Egyptians and Babylonians used the same peculiar method of impressing seals on clay by means of a rolling cylinder, instead of, like other nations, stamping directly upon the clay, was a powerful argument in favour of early connexion. The conclusion that Egypt owed the cylinder to Babylonia derived support from the fact that in Egypt, after about a thousand years of use, the cylinder was practically given up in favour of the direct-stamping scarab or signet-ring, while in Babylonia it remained always in general use: this looked as if the cylinder-seal were in Egypt a foreign importation, an exotic which did not survive on a strange soil. But we have in Egypt more primitive cylinders than those of Babylonia : wooden seal-cylinders of the late predynastic period which are not far removed from the original notched piece of reed, which, according to a most plausible theory, was the original cylinder-seal. The cylinder-seal and the mace-head are the most difficult objects which the antagonists of an early connexion with Babylonia have to deal with. It is difficult to explain their absolute identity in form in both countries by anything but a cultural connexion of some kind. And it is significant that from the first the Egyptians called the seal by the Semitic name of khetm. The invention of brick was probably made independently in Babylonia and in Egypt, as the oldest Babylonian bricks are of a completely different form (plano-convex) from the Egyptian, which are rectangular.

It has been supposed that the knowledge of corn came to Egypt from Babylonia, because wheat grows wild in the province of Irak. But wild wheat has also been found in Palestine,and it seems more probable that it was from Palestine that the knowledge of corn passed on the one side to Babylonia, on the other to Egypt. The knowledge of the grape and of wine-making very probably came in the same way to both countries from Palestine, which may well be the Nysa whence, according to Diodorus, Osiris brought the knowledge of corn and wine to Egypt.

The resemblances of the mace-head, the cylinder-seal, and possibly the crenellated walls may point to some connexion between early Egypt and Babylonia through the medium of the Northern Semito-Libyans, but no more. To these Semites the nation that was to arise after the union of North and South owed elements in its language and its religion, and possibly the introduction of corn, as well as the knowledge of agriculture and viticulture, and probably that of metal, if, as seems likely, Sinai, Syria, and Cyprus were the original focus of the distribution of copper over Europe and the Near East. Copper came gradually into use among the prehistoric Southern Egyptians towards the end of the predynastic age. And they must have obtained their knowledge of it from the Northerners.

We now turn to the question of the origin of the Southern Egyptian race, the predynastic Nilotes whose remains we have described. They can only have come from the South, if they were not absolutely indigenous. Egypt is a tube, which can only be entered at top and bottom. If the Semitic Northerners entered at the top, as they obviously did, the non-Semitic Southerners must have entered at the bottom, from Africa. And it must be admitted that their primitive culture has a decidedly African appearance. Yet they were not negroes or even negroid: their skull-form shows this conclusively. We can only call them Hamites, and class them under this head with the Gallas and other related races of the North-Eastern Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia, to whom they undoubtedly bore a considerable resemblance. If they were not indigenous Nilotes, it is from this quarter that they must have come. And the evidence of their legends indicates that they actually did migrate thence to the Nile valley.

When, a few years ago, it still seemed probable that the impulse of the great development of civilization that produced the Pharaonic kingdom was due to an invasion of Semites from Arabia who were influenced by Babylonian culture, these legends were used to prove that the predynastic people of Upper Egypt were conquered by a Semitic or proto-Semitic people which came from Somaliland and Southern Arabia by way of the Red Sea coast and the Wadi Hammamat, a great depression in the Eastern Desert which leads directly from Kuser on the Red Sea to Koptos on the Nile. Now, however, that it seems more probable that the (undoubted) proto-Semitic element in early Egypt belongs to the conquered North, rather than to the conquering South, and must have entered the Nile valley by way of the isthmus of Suez, and that the early Pharaonic culture was directly descended from that of the predynastic people of the South, who were not conquered by any Semites, either from South or North, but conquered them, these legends may be explained in a different way.

Tradition brings Hathor and the great gods from the “Holy Land”, Ta-neter, which lay south of Egypt. This land appears to be in the neighbourhood of, if not identical with, the country which the Egyptians called Punt, the modern coast of Eritrea and Somaliland, with which the Egyptians of historical times had relations of a somewhat peculiar nature. The Punites are represented on the monuments as almost identical with the Egyptians in features and dress, with a significant exception : they wear the curious plaited beard, turned up at the ends, which is characteristic of the Egyptian representations of their gods, and is never depicted as worn by mortal men, even by kings. But this beard had been worn by the Egyptians at one time; as we see from the archaic monuments, it was worn by them in the period immediately preceding and following the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. Only when dead and become a god could the later Egyptian, whether prince or peasant, be represented as wearing his beard in the peculiar fashion characteristic of his gods, his remote ancestors of the time of the followers of Horus, and his contemporaries in the land of Punt. Now this is a very curious piece of evidence directly connecting the Punites with the invaders of Egypt, and confirming the testimony of the tradition which brought some of the Egyptian gods from this part of the world. It is evident from several facts, notably the circumstance that the name of the land of Punt was usually written without the sign determinative of a foreign people, that the Egyptians regarded themselves as racially connected with the Punites. M. Naville, the distinguished excavator of the great temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Der el-Bahri which contains the representations of her great expedition to Punt, and at the same time the editor of the legends of Horus of Edfu and his followers,—the chief authority, therefore, on this particular subject, which he has made peculiarly his own,—thinks that there was among the Egyptians a “vague and ancient tradition that they originally came from the land of Punt, and that it had been their home before they invaded and conquered the lower valley of the Nile”.

It is then very probable that an invading race originally came from Somaliland to the Nile valley. Ordinarily, one would suppose that they came by way of Abyssinia and the Upper Nile, and another legend points to the same route. This is the story of the followers of the Sky-god Horus, the Mesniu or “Smiths”. According to this legend, as we have it in a Ptolemaic version, at the beginning of history the god Horus of the Two Horizons (Harmachis or Horakhti) was ruling in Nubia, and in the 363rd year of his reign his son Horus of Edfu (Hor-Behudet, the winged sun) led a conquering expedition into Egypt against the aboriginal inhabitants or Ami,who were adherents of his enemy and rival the god Set. The “followers of Horus” (Shemsu-Hor) who formed the army of the Southern Sun-god, were also called Mesniu (“Smiths” or “Metal-workers”), and their spears were tipped with metal. The conquest of Egypt was completed after a terrible struggle. We may doubt the accuracy with which battles are chronicled as having taken place at Tjedmet near Thebes, at Khade-neter near Dendera, at the modern Minieh, Behnesa, and Ahnas in Middle Egypt, and finally on the Asiatic borders of the Delta. The influence of the later sagas of the Expulsion of the Hyksos is evidently at work here, especially in the case of the last item ; but the fight at Khade-neter may be held to be genuine enough, on account of the ancient name, which means “The God’s Slaughter”, i.e. the place where Horus slaughtered the Anu. And the general direction of the conquest, from south to north, is a detail which is sure to be original and correct. Further, it agrees with the legend which brings the company of the Great Gods, led by Hathor, from the south-east into Egypt.

Now the leader of the invaders was the Elder Horus, the Sky-god, whose emblem and sacred animal was the hawk. He was the prototype of all Egyptian Pharaohs: kings did not exist before his time in Egypt: i.e. the supreme kingly dignity was an introduction of the invaders. So he was the especial patron and protector of the King of Egypt, one of whose titles was the Golden Horus, and above whose ka-name the hawk, crowned with the kingly crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, is always represented. The hawk then is the emblem of the king as heir and representative of the deity who was fabled to have led the conquerors who founded the kingdom into the land. The head-centre of the worship of this god was Behdet, in Upper Egypt, the modern Edfu, where the magnificent pylons of his temple, as restored in Ptolemaic days, still stand up in the midst of the town on the western bank of the Nile, a landmark for miles around. Here it was that the worship of the Sky-god, which the invaders brought with them, was first established. Now recent discoveries show us that at El-Kab and Kom al-Ahmar, which face each other across the Nile somewhat north of Edfu, the ancient cities of Nekheb and Nekhen formed the most ancient political centre of Upper Egypt, where the capital of the oldest kingdom of Upper Egypt was first fixed, and this kingdom was, historically, the nucleus of the later Pharaonic realm.

The Horus-legend as we have it is very late in date. The question is, leaving out of account the possible contamination by legends of the expulsion of the Hyksos, how far the older stuff of the story relates to the original immigration of the Southern Egyptians from the South, and how far to the historical conquest of the North and the Semites by the early kings of Hierakonpolis, who founded the united kingdom of Egypt. I think that we can see in the story as we have it a mingled reminiscence of both events, the first invasion from the South and the far later conquest of the North by “Mena” and his predecessors and successors. The predynastic Egyptians came from the South by way of the Upper Nile and Nubia, where, according to the legend, Horus originally reigned. This is at least more probable than that they came by way of the Red Sea coast at the Wadi Hammamat. The easy way from Punt through Ethiopia and Nubia, which legend assigns to them, was open. This, and not the Hammamat route, was the way by which Egyptian caravans and ambassadors passed in the reverse direction to Punt throughout the period of the Old Kingdom, until negro enmity seems to have closed it; when the Hammamat route and a sea-voyage along the coast necessarily replaced it. Finally, in favour of this view is the new discovery that certain Nubian tribes remained in a state of culture closely resembling that of the Neolithic men of Upper Egypt, and clearly of the same origin, even as late as the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty; nay, even to this day pottery of the Neolithic Egyptian type is made in Nubia. The conclusion is that the Nubians were the descendants (in later times much mixed with negroes) of these Southern tribes which remained in Nubia after the greater part of the race had passed into Egypt, where, by contact with the proto-Semitic Northerners, they developed Egyptian civilization, leaving Nubia as a backwater of barbarism.

The later element in the story is, I think, that which describes the campaign of Horus against the “Anu” with the aid of his Mesniu or “Smiths” Horus Set-worshipping here represents the King of Hierakonpolis, the living “Horus”, as Pharaoh was always called, the king being identified with his protecting deity. The Mesniu are his Shemsu or “followers”, his soldiers and retainers, now armed with the metal weapons, the use of which was only learnt by the predynastic Egyptians, presumably from the Northerners, shortly before the time of the Hierakonpolite kings and the conquest of the North: their ancestors of the original immigration from the South were stone-users. The “Anu” are the Semite-Libyans or “proto-Semites” of the North, whom we see on the Hierakonpolite king Narmer striking down on his monuments. A festival of “Striking down the Anu” was regularly celebrated by the Egyptian kings in memory of the conquest.

We thus see that legend agrees with archaeological discovery in bringing the Southern Egyptians from Nubia. In the Nile valley as far north probably as the apex of the Delta, they lived for many centuries till the adoption of metal from their neighbours the Semite-Libyans and Mediterraneans of the Delta gave them, as it did to other peoples, an impulse to culture development which resulted in the formation of a strong civilized central government in the district of Edfu and Hierakonpolis, the “home” territory of the national sky-god Horus, whose symbol was the hawk, and of the king, the living hawk and representative of Horus. Under the leadership of the Hierakonpolite kings, the Southerners now attacked and conquered the Semite-Libyans of the Delta, whose national gods were the Sun, Ra, and the Memphite Ptah, and possibly the Osiris of Dedu, and whose political centre was probably the city of Buto. The conquest was probably effected by the kings Narmer and Aha, the historical originals of the legendary Mena, to whom later legend ascribed the union of the two lands and the founding of the Ist Egyptian Dynasty.

Ceremonial Palette from Hierakonpolis

3. The Kingdoms of the South and North

It is noticeable that in later official and priestly legend the Northern kingdom of Buto seems a mere reduplication of that of the South. Buto, its centre, appears as another twin-city, Pe-Dep, analogous to the southern Nekheb-Nekhen; and as Nekheb was ruled by the southern goddess Nekhebet, so Buto was ruled by the northern snake-goddess Utjoit (Uto). But we may well surmise that all this is a fiction devised out of love of symmetry, and that the original Buto-kingdom was different enough from that of Hjerakonpolis, as we see its Semite-Libyan inhabitants were different from the other Egyptians. The Delta king was not the nsuit, the word that always meant king in Egyptian, but bore a title meaningless in Egyptian, bit, the ideograph of which was the bee, because in Egyptian the bee was called bit. Prof. Petrie has surmised that this royal name was in reality not Egyptian, but was a native word of the presumably half-Libyan half-Semitic original inhabitants of the Delta, taken over by the conquerors, and that it is in reality nothing more or less than the Battos of the Cyrenaeans.

The typical Egyptian nome-system did not exist in the Delta before the conquest. This system of hsaput or nomes (nomi) was indigenous to the south. The ideographic symbols of the nomes, their crests or cognizances, in fact, are always represented, from the beginning to the end of Egyptian history, as erected upon standards, just as the sacred animals are also represented acting in their case as the totem-symbols of the gods. These totem-standards of gods, tribes, and probably (at that day) of individuals also, already existed, as we have seen, in the prehistoric period in Upper Egypt, so that the nome-system no doubt was southern. The Delta nome-names all have an artificial character, which stamps them as introductions from the south: they are the sort of names that immigrants would give in a conquered land. Here we have another indication of the foreign character of the Delta-kingdom.

The fact that the Northern kingdom never entirely lost its separate identity points in the same direction. Though conquered, the North was never absorbed by the South. It was gradually Egyptianized: the ideographic system of the South became its official script, and in this script the names of its gods were written; the gods themselves were absorbed into a common official pantheon with the deities of the South. But still the Northerners preserved their individuality, and this separate individuality was recognized officially from the first. From the beginning the king of South and North (Insibya)was not only the nsuit (insi), but also the biti (bia), : the Southern title, as the conqueror, taking precedence of the conquered. The king was the Snake-Lord of Buto,
as well as the Hawk-Lord of Hierakonpolis.

Another archaic title of the same import is Two Hawks. And the conservatism which retained this memory of the two ancient kingdoms was justified by facts: the Delta has always been distinct from the Upper Country. We are told in a papyrus of the XIXth Dynasty that it was very difficult for a man of the Delta to understand the dialect of a man from Upper Egypt, and at this day the man of Bohera is a very different being from a man of the Sa'id. After the loss of the Asiatic Empire at the end of the rule of the Ramessides of the XXth Dynasty, Egypt returned for a time to the days of the Followers of Horus, for a king ruled in Tanis and a king ruled at Thebes, each independent of the other. A stray centrifugal and particularist force always balanced the centripetal in Egypt, and was sure to triumph in time of weakness and discord. But in days of prosperity and union no prouder title was borne by the Pharaoh than that of Lord of the Two Lands.

Of the actual monarchs of the two kingdoms we know little. The Palermo stele, already mentioned, gives us a list of predynastic kings of Lower Egypt, of which seven are legible: TIU, THESH, Nehab, UATJNAR, Ska, HSEKIU, and Mekhat. These are names of a curiously primitive cast, which would have seemed as odd to a XIXth Dynasty Egyptian as our Hengest and Horsa, Cissa and Aella, do to us. Of the contemporary kings of Upper Egypt we have no knowledge, since the supposed royal names Tjeser, De(?), Ro, and Ka, discovered at Abydos, and assigned to the time of the Followers of Horus, are probably not royal names at all. The first Southern monuments which are certainly to be assigned to historical kings, belong to the beginning of the First Dynasty. There are the remarkable monuments, found at Hierakonpolis (Nekhen), of the earliest known king of both South and North, NARMER, also called the Scorpion. They are ceremonial palettes of slate, probably used for the priest to adorn images of the gods at high festivals. On them we see carved in relief representations of the king's triumph over his enemies of the North, who are represented lying headless in rows before him, while, accompanied by a page bearing his sandals and a vase of drink, he inspects them at his leisure. Other representations on this and other similar palettes of the time show highly symbolical representations of the animals typifying the Upper Egyptian nomes making captive the towns and tribes of Lower Egypt.

Of Aha (the Fighter), we have an important monument in the shape of his tomb at Nakada in the Thebaid; and farther north again, near the holy city of Abydos, a smaller second tomb, or rather funerary chapel, was built for him as a monument on the sacred soil of Abydos. Narmer also perhaps had a similar tomb here, and all the succeeding kings of his dynasty were either actually buried close by, or, as seems more probable, had great cenotaphs erected for them on the holy ground. It is the discovery of these tombs or cenotaphs by M. Amélineau, followed by the work upon them carried out by Messrs. Petrie and Mace, that has given us of late years our remarkable accession of knowledge of the earliest history of Egypt.

The Palermo Stone, the fragment of the Egyptian Royal Annals housed in Palermo, Italy.

The Great Temple of Seti I, Abydos

5. Menes and the Ist Dynasty

Both they and the writers of the almost contemporary official list on a papyrus, now preserved on fragment at Turin, began their line of kings with Mena, the traditional founder of the kingdom, whom we find in Herodotus, in Manetho, and in Diodorus. This is a legendary name. We have not found it at Hierakonpolis, and not certainly at Nakada, where it has been supposed to occur on a tablet as the personal name of Aha. On a newly discovered fragment of the Palermo Stone Ateti seems to be given as the personal name of Aha. On account of its nearness in time to the reigns of these kings, the authority of the Palermo Stone is great; but if it disagrees with contemporary monuments it must of course yield place as evidence to the latter, as even so early as the time of the Vth Dynasty the events of the beginning of the Ist may have become legendary, and the names of its kings have been confused.It is therefore uncertain whether the personal name of Aha was Men or Ateti. The name Ateti occurs third on the lists of Abydos and Turin, second in Manetho, as Athothis. The second and fourth names in the Abydos list, Teta and Ata (the Turin list is in these cases illegible), very probably correspond to the kings Khent Shesti (read Zer by Prof. Petrie), and Tja (Petrie's "Zet"), whose personal names may have been Ta and Ati.But if so, the Abydos list is wrong in placing "Teta" after Mena, and before Ateti, since, whether Aha be Ateti or Mena, there is no doubt that he preceded Khent. The style of his monuments shows this conclusively. Manetho, then, is right in making Athothis the immediate successor of "Menes," and the predecessor of his "Kenkenes" and "Ouenephes.;" If Ati or Tja is "Ata," he follows in the correct order. But here Manetho has got wrong. This "Ouenephes" must be Khent (the "Teta" of the Abydos list); for "Ouenephes" is simply a Greek form of Unnefer ("Good Being"), a common appellation of the god Osiris, and we have seen that the antiquarians of the XIXth Dynasty had identified the tomb of Khent as that of the god Osiris. "Kenkenes" must then be Tja Ati or "Ata" (we cannot trace the origin of the peculiar Manethonian equivalent of his name), placed erroneously before Ouenephes (Khent) For that Tja succeeded Khent is again deduced from the obvious steady development of the art of the period, which from a more primitive stage under Narmer and Aha suddenly developed under Khent and Tja, till we reach the line of the kings Den Semti and Antjab Merpeba, whose works are obviously of far more developed style and therefore of later date than those of Aha and Narmer. With Semti the list (and Manetho, who more or less follows it) first agrees entirely, both in names and order, with the facts. Still, the name of Semti was not properly understood: it was misread as "Hesepti," the original of Manetho's "Ousaphais". That of Merpeba was, however, quite well given as "Merbap" or "Merbapen", and with this king the list of Tunrei at Sakkara begins: he does not mention "Mena." The following names of Semerkhat and Ka Sen have been also misunderstood both by the lists and by Manetho, but the identity of "Shemsu" and "Kebhu" with these two kings is certain, and their order is correct.

Narmer is left unidentified. And who was the original of the legendary Mena? It would seem that "Mena" in reality represents the early conquering monarchs of this dynasty: he is a complete personage of tradition, a sort of Egyptian King Arthur who represents the deeds of the Southern kings who conquered Buto and founded the dual kingdom. Perhaps he represents more especially Narmer, who was the first, as far as we know, to wear the Crown of Lower as well as that of Upper Egypt, and shows us on his monuments at Hierakonpolis how he overthrew the Northerners. Aha, if his personal name was really Men, and not Ateti, may have given his name to the traditional Mena, and contributed to his glory, since he ruled over North and South and called himself the Fighter (Aha); but he was not the actual conqueror of the North. And unknown kings of the South who preceded Narmer and warred against the North before him, also have been included in the composite personage who for the Egyptians of later days was the founder of their kingdom. It is a tempting theory to suppose that a king existed named Sma (Uniter), who came between Narmer and Aha, and was the actual uniter of both kingdoms: but it is by no means certain that this supposed royal name, discovered by Prof. Petrie at Abydos, is (any more than these of "De", "Ro", "Ka", and "Tjeser", also found there) a name at all.

With Narmer we reach the beginnings of Egyptian history. Since he conquered the North, and therefore more or less corresponds to Menes, we must assign him to the Ist Dynasty, and not to the Followers of Horus, the Hierakonpolite kings, who appear in the Turin Papyrus and Manetho as midway between the rule of the gods on earth and that of Menes, and are called by Manetho "the semi-divine ghosts". They were indeed ghosts of faraway tradition, while Narmer was a very real man, as we see from his monuments. At Hierakonpolis were also found relics of an uncertain king, who is supposed to have borne the appellation of "the Scorpion", but there is no proof that this was his name at all, and in view of the identity of style between his work and that of Narmer, we may assume that he is the same as the latter, and that "Scorpion" was considered an appropriate epithet of royalty.

Aha, the successor of Narmer, while also a "fighter", a conquerer of the Nubians (probably north of the First Cataract), and an upholder of Southern rule in the North, seems to have been a more peaceful ruler than Narmer, and the tablets of his reign seem to chronicle the erection of temples, notably one of the northern goddess Neith, whose name is also borne by women of the royal house at this period. This seems to indicate some attempt at conciliating the Northerners.

Of the reigns of Khent and Tja we have interesting artistic remains, which show, as has been said, that in their time art progressed with a sudden bound; a fact which makes it possible for us to assign with certainty the works of Aha and Narmer to the period preceding.

Den Semti (called Udimu Khaskheti by Prof. Sethe) seems to have been an energetic and long-lived monarch. He was the first to call himself by the title of nsuit biti (insibya) "king of Upper and Lower Egypt", and built himself a large tomb at Abydos, with the novel addition of two staircases descending into it, and a floor of granite blocks which must have been brought from Aswan; a result probably of the southern victories of Aha. Besides jar-sealings, many of which commemorate a great official named Hemaka or Hekama, a large number of annalistic tablets, chiefly recording religious acts, were found in his tomb; and in later tradition he was celebrated as a pious and learned king, chapters of the Book of the Dead as well as medical treatises being said to have been "found" (i.e. written) in his time, a statement not unlikely in itself. We see him on one tablet performing a solemn religious dance before the god Osiris. And in his reign we see the earliest known mention of a celebration of the Festival of Sed, or "the End" (lit. "Tail"). It would appear that, like many other primitive peoples, the early Egyptians put a period to the reigns of their kings. When they had reigned for thirty years they either were killed or were deposed, amid solemn festival, in which the king, at least officially dead, was carried in procession in the death-robes and with the crook and flail of Osiris, the Busirite god of the dead. In historical times the king had refused any longer to be either immolated or deposed, and merely celebrated the festival pro forma. It became later a jubilee, the distinction of a long reign; while, in the end, any or every king liked to celebrate it, whether he had reigned thirty years or not, sometimes several times in his reign. We do not know whether the ancient custom still so far survived in Den's time that he had to vacate his throne at the end of his thirty years' reign.

The contemporary monuments of his successor, Antjab merpeba, are comparatively insignificant; but he is noteworthy from the fact that in all probability he was the founder of the city of Memphis. Later tradition, as Herodotus tells us, assigned this great work to "Menes." But it is significant that the royal list of Tunrei at Sakkara, the necropolis of Memphis, places Merpeba at the head of the kings, and knows nothing of "Mena" or of any king before Merpeba. The conclusion that Memphite tradition in the time of the XIXth Dynasty knew of no king before Merpeba, and that he was the "Menes" who founded Memphis, seems a very probable one. Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to the original conquerors of the North, Narmer and Aha, to be easily confounded with "Mena" by the Egyptians of Herodotus' day.

Probably Merpeba merely re-founded Memphis as the official capital of the North in place of Sais or Buto. The god of Memphis, Ptah, bears a Semitic name, "The Opener"; and, as we have seen, he may well, like the sun god Ra (= Or, "light") of Heliopolis, have been a pre-Egyptian deity of the iproto-Semitic Northerners (or Anu?) who was worshipped in a town called "The White Wall", which was afterwards re-founded by Merpeba and in the time of the VIth Dynasty took the name of Men-nefer, the "Memphis" of the Greeks. The building of the great dike of Kosheish, south of Memphis, also ascribed by Herodotus to Menes, may also have been the work of Merpeba. Memphis speedily increased in importance, and under the IIIrd Dynasty, if not already under the IInd, the king's seat and capital of the whole country was transferred thither from Thinis.

The chief monument of Semerkha HUi (or Nekht?), the next king (who was also buried at Abydos), is also the most ancient monument of Egyptian activity outside the Nile-valley. It is a stele of this king, sculptured on the rocks of the Wadi Magharah, in the Sinaitic peninsula, and shows two figures lof the king wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively, followed by a scene of him striking down with a mace a Semitic inhabitant of the peninsula, whom he seizes by the hair: in front of the royal figures comes his chief and commander of the soldiers, carrying a bow and arrows. It is thus evident that even so early as the time of the Ist Dynasty the Egyptian kings sent expeditions to Sinai to procure the turquoise or mafkat which was always prized so highly.

Semerkha Nekht is Manetho's Semempses, a name which probably gives the pronunciation which in his time was attributed to the peculiar ideograph of a man with a stick with which the king's name is written, probably an early form of the sign usually read "Nekht".

His successor, Ka Sen, has been supposed to be Manetho's Bieneches or Ubienthis, but it is more probable that the Manethonian name really belongs to the prince who succeeded Ka according to the Tablet of Sakkara, Biuneter. Ka, however, is undoubtedly the Kebhu who on that tablet comes between Nekht and Biuneter, and appears as the successor of Nekht, also that of Abydos. The alteration of his name from its true form Sen to "Kebh" has been well explained by Prof. Petrie. We possess fine relics from Ka's tomb at Abydos in the diorite stelae which were set up above it, and an ivory object with a representation of a prisoner from the Cataract-country (Satet), which shows the Semitic type of the eastern desert tribes clearly.

With Biuneter or Bieneches, who is a mere name, Manetho brings the Ist Dynasty to an end, and we have no reason to reject his arrangement. Our knowledge of the IInd Dynasty is fragmentary and confused. The outstanding fact of the period is the assertion of the equality of the North and its god Set with the hitherto dominant South.

7. The IInd and IIIrd Dynasties

The re-founding of Memphis by Merpeba marked the beginning of the shifting of the royal power northwards Hetep-sekhemui, Raneb, and Neneter (who are probably the Betju, Kakau, and Baneneter of the lists; the Boethos, Kaiechos, and Binothris of Manetho) probably reigned at Memphis, and Kaiechos is said by Manetho to have instituted the worship of the Apis-bull there. Sekhemab, probably the next king (he cannot be identified in the lists), emphasized his connexion with the North by adopting, in addition to his Horus-name, a Set-name, Perenmaat preceded by a figure of the sacred animal of Set, the god of the North and enemy of Horus. PERABSEN, who probably succeeded him, bore the Set-name only, but was buried (or more probably, had a cenotaph made for him) at Abydos. Later on he was venerated at Sakkara in conjuction with another king of the dynasty, SEND or Senedi ("Terror"), who was sufficiently important for his name to be preserved accurately in the later lists and even by Manetho (as "Sethenes"). He, however, is unknown in the South, and it is probable that he ruled at Memphis. We know nothing of him except that he was venerated there. Several long reigns followed, according to Manetho: then came the founding of a new dynasty by the great Southern conqueror KHASEKHEM or KHASEKHEMUI, whose known relationship to Tjeser, the great king of the IIIrd Dynasty, makes certain his position at the head of that Dynasty, and probable his identification with the "Tjatjai" or "Bebi" of the lists.

His is an important historical figure. He was a Southerner, and held his court in a great fortress-palace of royal burgh on the edge of the desert at Abydos, now known as the Shunet-ez-Zebib. There also, near the sepulchres or cenotaphs of the Ist Dynasty, he built his tomb, which has yielded antiquities much resembling those of the older kings. Like Narmer, whose career he emulated, he regarded Nekhebet, the vulture-goddess of Hierakonpolis, as his special protectress, and in every way revived the traditions of the Southern kingdom, which had become dimmed under the long Northern rule of the IInd Dynasty. He was not, strictly speaking, an usurper, but ostensibly inherited the throne in right of his wife, who bore the name Ne-maat-Hap, "Possessing the Right of Apis", the tutelary deity of Sakkara. Evidently Ne-maat-Hap was the last of the long line of the IInd Dynasty, and married the energetic Southern chief, whose personal name was Besh, though he ascended the throne as Kha-sekhem "Appearance of the Power."

We may doubt, however, that his wooing of Ne-maat-Hap was peaceful. Probably he took her and her right by conquest. On his monuments he tells us of his victories: he claims on a votive statue dedicated at Hierakonpolis to have slain 47,209 of them. This massacre secured his power over the North as well as South; and on a vase also dedicated at Hierakonpolis, in imitation of Narmer, he claims to be a second unifier of the kingdoms, a second Menes. On it we see the vulture of Nekebet offering with her left claw the symbol of the Union of the Two Lands to the king's Horus-name Kha-sekhem, while in her right she holds the royal signet with his personal name Besh: above and behind is inscribed: "In the temple of Nekheb (Hierakonpolis): year of fighting the Northern Enemy". The victory gained, the savage warrior showed political talent of a high order. Apparently he altered his Horus-name to Kha-sekhemui ("Appearance of the Two Powers"), added to his titulary the significant phrase, "He hath opened peace to Horus and Set", thus typifying the renewed union and peace between South and North, and legitimized his position by marrying the Memphite princess, Ne-maat-Hap.

There is no doubt that Khasekhemui was a man of great energy and power. His tomb at Abydos is enormous, and is remarkable as containing the oldest known complete chamber of hewn granite. That he was a clever ruler is shewn by his reconciliation of the two lands, although this had the perhaps unexpected effect of transferring the royal power finally from the victorious South to the conquered North. His fierce and politic reign is a contrast to those of the preceding kings of the dynasty, who seem to have been peaceful monarchs wholly given over to good works. Of the sixteen yearly entries of events preserved to us on the Palermo Stone out of the long reign (at least 35 years) of Neneter, not one refers to war, and only one to a civil act, and this of little importance, the founding of two palaces; the rest record nothing but the institution and celebration of religious festivals. Yet by an irony of fate the name of the undistinguished Neneter was preserved in the official lists till the time of Manetho, while that of Khasekhemui, although his birth-year was solemnly commemorated under the Vth Dynasty, was afterwards wholly forgotten. It is not impossible that his deeds were confused with those of Narmer and "Mena". Certainly none of the five names that follow that of Send or Sethenes in the lists and in Manetho can be identified with his. On the other hand, the name of his son Tjeser survived and was recognized as important till the last. It was correctly preserved in the later lists, and is the Tosorthros of Manetho.

TJESER, who bore the Horus-name KHETNETER, was, like his father, a powerful king. He cut a stele on the rocks of Sinai, and from a late inscription we know that he presented the Nubian territory known in later times as the "Dodekaschoinos", between Aswan and Maharraka, which he had probably conquered, to the gods of the Cataracts. In the necropolis of Memphis he signalized his power, and shows us the speed at which civilization was developing in his day by the erection of, as his tomb, the first pyramid of stone. This is the Step-Pyramid of Sakkara. He also built himself a brick mastaba-tomb in the old style, but of unprecedented size, in the desert at Bet-Khallaf, north of Abydos. One of these tombs must have been built as a concession to the local sentiment of either Lower or Upper Egypt, for we do not know in which he was buried. Sa-nekht, his brother, who probably succeeded him, also built a similar brick tomb at Bet-Khallaf, in which he seems to have been buried. Sa-nekht set up stelae in the Wadi Magharah, but we know no more of him. Manetho follows him with four kings of whom neither the monuments nor the XIXth Dynasty lists know anything: one of them, "Soyphis", is certainly a double of Khufu (Souphis) misplaced. Then comes Manetho's Kerpheres, the historical Neferka or neferkara, who has got misplaced before Sephouris (Snefru), who, as we see from the lists, followed him. Of this king we have a mighty unachieved monument: the huge rock-cut excavation at Zawiyet el-Aryan, south of Gizah, which has been excavated lately by the Service des Antiquités. It is probably, as M. Maspero thinks, the foundation of a pyramid, which, had it been built, would have marked the transition between the "stone house" of Tjeser and the great pyramids of Snefru and Khufu. On the walls of this excavation occurs besides the name of Neferka, that of Ra-neb-[ka], who is perhaps identical with Sa-nekht. The redundant names of the lists and Manetho we may dismiss with probability as either mythical or due to some confusion: we have only five historical kings of the dynasty, which was probably short, concluding with snefru (Sephouris), with whom the age of the great Pyramid-builders begins, and the archaic period of Egyptian civilization ends.

The period of time covered by the first three dynasties probably did not much exceed four hundred years. There were several long reigns in the first two dynasties, notably those of Den and Neneter: the latter is said to have died at the age of ninety-five, while others of these primitive rulers were very long-lived. But on the other hand the Illrd Dynasty probably lasted less than a century, of which Tjeser reigned thirteen years, according to the Turin Papyrus.

8. The Development of Archaic Egyptian Civilization

These four centuries witnessed the development of Egyptian civilization out of comparative barbarism. Under the Pyramid-builders of the IVth and Vth Dynasties we find that the free and unrestrained development of art, culture, and religion comes to a stop, when further progress might have anticipated the triumphs of Greek civilization.

But there had been no halt and no falling back under the early dynasties. Development was steady, sometimes quicker, sometimes slower. We can easily see two periods of greatly accelerated progress, periods in which new ideas appear at every turn, and energetic brains were evidently working freely. The first of these periods may be placed between the reigns of Narmer and Den, and the second in those of Khasekhemui and Tjeser. Probably the first period of acceleration might be extended farther back into the age of the Shemsu-Hor. In the representation of men and animals the art of the first period marks a great advance upon the crude Bushman-like productions of the prehistoric period. This advance we see vigorously pressed during the reigns of the kings of the dynasty. During the reigns of Aha and Narmer the hawk above the "Proclaimer" containing the name of the king's ghost is very oddly fashioned; but in Tja's time an artist arose who could draw a hawk correctly, and the hieroglyph as fixed by him remained the standard throughout Egyptian history. So also it is with the reign of Semerkhat that we first find animals in general well drawn in the regular Egyptian fashion; in the time of Khent, a century before, lions, for instance, were represented in the round in a way which strikes us as strangely un-Egyptian.

It is to this period of transition between Neolithic barbarism and the later culture of the Ist Dynasty that the first great progress of the art of writing must also be assigned. The Egyptians never made any strict distinction between painting or drawing and writing, and the development of their script must be regarded as part of the development of their art.

The isolated pictographic signs by which the primitive Nilote had learnt to denote the names of his tribe or his god, perhaps of himself and of the animals he kept and hunted, had developed by the time of the kingdoms of Hierakonpolis and Buto into an ideographic system of writing, in which it was not possible to express the sound of the word, only the idea. This purely ideographic system is, as we see in the case of the monuments of Narmer, very difficult for us to interpret. To the reign of Den belongs the first inscription which is sufficiently like those of later days for us to be able to translate it in the proper sense of the word. It reads literally: "Big Heads Come Tomb : He Give Reward". Neither article nor prepositions are yet expressed: the ideographic writing is not developed much further than the paintings of a Red Indian wigwam. But already the syllabic system had been invented during the early reigns of the Ist Dynasty; when we find it used to express proper names, for which purpose indeed it was probably devised. In the reign of Den the progress of the writing is marked, and under the later kings of the dynasty we find its character fixed as a partly ideographic, partly alphabeto-syllabic script. Of course it is still archaic in character, many signs being used which soon afterwards were abandoned, and so is difficult to read.

The second period of swift development began at the end of the IInd Dynasty and came to a stop only when under the Vth Egyptian art reached its first apogee, and the first decline set in. It is chiefly marked by the development of architecture and of sculpture, in relief and in the round. Already at the end of the Ist Dynasty a "king's carpenter" had so far progressed beyond the carving of ivory memorial tablets and slate reliefs as to be able to execute in the round the wonderful little ivory figure of a king found by Petrie at Abydos, which is one of the greatest treasures of the British Museum. His head is bent forward (which has caused him to be taken for an old man), and he clasps his variegated robe about him; on his face there is a curious smile, almost a sneer. This was indeed an extraordinary result of the first development: perhaps no Egyptian figure so good of its kind was ever made in later days. But the maker of this could not yet create good larger figures in stone; he was still a carver, not yet a sculptor. This he became in the time of Khasekhemui, when such clumsy figures as the Statue No. 1 at Cairo (probably made under Neneter), developed into such extremely good representations of the human figure as the sitting statuettes of the conqueror which he dedicated at Hierakonpolis, and are now at Cairo and Oxford. Now the conventional representation of a king is already fixed; he no longer wears such an extraordinary robe as that of the ivory figure of the Ist Dynasty, but might be any later Pharaoh, did we not know who he was. But, as we have said, upon the pedestals of these statuettes we find the bodies of his slain enemies sculptured in a remarkable attempt to represent every conceivable attitude of the dead upon a battlefield, which, though crude and often ill-drawn, is nevertheless extremely realistic, and would undoubtedly have horrified an Egyptian sculptor of a few hundred years later, when the conventions of art had become sternly fixed. No doubt the picturesque attitudes of the slain had been greatly admired by the king or his artists, and so they were sketched and afterwards transferred to the immortal stone. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like all ages when peoples and kingdoms are in the making.

The sister art of Architecture naturally found little scope in the early days; we can only chronicle the fact that Den was the first to use hewn stone at all, and that only for a floor. The architectural development also, like that of sculpture, began in the age of Khasekhemui and Tjeser, who, as we have seen, built the first pyramid.

The "small art" of the beginning of Egyptian craftsmanship is often wonderfully fine. Gold, perhaps the oldest of metals to be known to man, was commonly employed, and was first used by the Egyptians to ornament necklaces, as its ideograph, a necklace or collar, shows. We possess the ivory lid of a box, inscribed "Golden Seal of Judgment of King Den"; this must have been a cylinder of gold. Silver was unknown. Copper was used ordinarily for tools and weapons, though the Egyptians were still in the "chalcolithic" stage of culture, and used stone side by side with copper. But the stone weapons of the early dynastic period show a notable falling off from the exquisite workmanship of the purely Neolithic period. Nor is the reason far to seek. The adoption of metal turned all the best skill in the new direction of metal-working. The same phenomenon is noticeable in the case of pottery, which suddenly becomes poor and weak. This was because metal tools had given a new power over hard stones, which were now used for the manufacture of splendid vessels, often of gigantic size, which are among the finest relics of the early dynastic age. Stone vessels of small size now largely took the place of pottery, until the invention of the potter's wheel, somewhere about the time of the IIIrd Dynasty, restored to the potter his rightful place in the hierarchy of artists. But the ceramic artists had already discovered the art of glazing pottery, which, though rarely applied to vases as yet, resulted in the production of beautiful small figures and emblems of glazed clay. The colour was a light blue. True glass was to remain unknown for many centuries yet, but the glazed faience of the Ist Dynasty is equal to any of later times. We find it already well developed in the reign of Aha. Ivory and wood were, as we have seen, well known to the craftsman of this early period; great balks of timber were used for the flooring and roofing of the tombs at Abydos which can hardly have come from anywhere else than Palestine. So that commerce, probably overland across the desert of Suez, with the Semitic world was by no means unknown. By this route was lapis-lazuli imported from the East; turquoise, as we have seen, was already mined in Sinai.

The early Egyptian artists made figures of their gods which hardly differ from those of the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the conventions of religious art were fixed for all time. We have seen the holy animals of Horus, Set, Anubis, Upuaut, and Sebek represented ; and the figures and signs of Osiris, Taueret, Hathor, and Neith show that these deities were all worshipped from the beginning. The more human gods of the Libyan and Semitic Northerners had amalgamated with the theriomorphic deities of the Nubian Southerners; perhaps the "appointment" of the sacred animals of Memphis, Heliopolis, and Mendes "to be gods" in the reign of Kaiechos, refers to a formal amalgamation of this kind.