Had these attributions been established M. Amélineau’s discoveries, important enough in themselves, would have been absolutely unique in character. But the somewhat acrimonious discussion which followed the announcement of the finds, established the fact that though he had discovered the tomb of one of the earliest kings of Egypt it was the tomb of a man, and not of a god. The Bed of Osiris proved to be a New Empire copy of some more ancient bier placed there by Egyptians who had made the same mistake as the modern explorer, and imagined that they were restoring the actual tomb of the god of the Underworld. The great discovery thus failed to produce the effect which its importance deserved, and rather cast ridicule upon the possibility of retrieving for serious history the period of the earliest dynasties. M. Amélineau shortly afterwards abandoned his uncompleted task, believing that the site was completely worked out, and for a time Abydos remained without any further attempts to unravel its mysteries. In the winter of 1899–1900, however, Professor Flinders Petrie began work on the abandoned site, and the results of his patient and skilful study have been of supreme importance for the reconstruction of this earliest period of the history of the ancient Egyptian kingdom. He not only found in the tombs already discovered a great quantity of valuable material, but added considerably to the number of known tombs, and planned with the utmost care all those which came to light. In the main, these royal tombs of the earliest dynasties proved to conform to a single type, though the variations in size and in the number of apartments are considerable. Generally speaking, there is a large central chamber, dug in the soil, and sometimes approached by a stairway. This chamber, which we may believe to have been the actual royal sepulchre, is lined, and sometimes floored, with wood, though in some instances the flooring is of stone, in one case of granite, the earliest known examples of stonework. Around the central chamber are grouped smaller cells, in which were stored the provision for the use of the dead king in the Underworld, or where the bodies of his favourites who were doomed to accompany him in his dark journey were laid after they had been slain during his funeral rites.