The art of hieroglyphic writing was already fully established, and though the hieroglyphics are archaic in form, they are quite intelligible. In many of the tombs are found small ivory plaques, “made by the king’s carpenter.” These are inscribed, each with the records of the events of a single year; so that we have evidence of a regular system of chronicling. The British Museum possesses the lid of the ivory box in which King Semti kept his Great Seal--“The Golden Seal of Judgment of King Den”--so that manifestly official documents were in existence, and had to be authenticated by the royal seal. Of art, nothing on a large scale has survived; but the artist who carved the little ivory statuette of a king (perhaps Semti) wearing the White Crown, and clothed in a long parti-coloured robe, was already, within his limits, a master; and Professor Petrie says of the statuette of Kha-sekhem of the IInd Dynasty, found at Hierakonpolis, “the art of these figures shows a complete mastery of sculpture, the face being more delicately modelled than almost any later work.” Altogether we must conceive of the Court of the earliest Dynastic Kings of Egypt as being organised on a high plane of luxury, and indeed of comparative refinement. There is little that can be called barbaric, save the possible survival of the custom of slaying the king’s favourites to accompany him in his journey through the Underworld. The results of this exploration of the resting-places of the first buried royalties of Egypt may not in themselves be imposing, when compared with the bewildering wealth of some of the later royal interments; but their importance is not to be measured by mere quantity or richness in the precious metals, but by the fact that they have given to us a revelation of a whole period of human activity which was previously hidden beneath the mists of antiquity. Viewed in this light it becomes apparent that these poor fragments from the tombs of Abydos have a value far exceeding that of many much more gorgeous finds, and scarcely surpassed by the discoveries of any period. They stand, in this respect, on the same level with the revelation of the Minoan civilisation at Knossos, or that of the city-states of Sumer at Lagash. The search for the buried royalties of Egypt next brings us into touch with the great age of the Pyramid-builders, beginning with Zeser and Seneferu, and extending, with gradually diminishing splendour, down to the last relics of the XIIth Dynasty--a period which has already been dealt with in detail. It is followed by the dark period which witnessed the incursion and supremacy of the Hyksos kings, and the War of Independence--a troubled period from which few relics have survived, though the account of the robbery of the tomb of King Sebek-em-saf of the XIIIth Dynasty, with which our chapter began, shows that the kings of even these dark days were laid to rest with at least something of the ancient splendour of Egyptian royalty.