The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives. The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared: they exist in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. The few which we do possess barely go back beyond the IIIrd dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of the Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the Step-Pyramid where this same Pharaoh rests.[*] * The stele of Sehel has enabled us to verify the fact that the preamble [a string of titles] to the inscription of the king, buried in the Step-Pyramid, is identical with that of King Zosiri: it was, therefore, Zosiri who constructed, or arranged for the construction of this monument as his tomb. The Step-Pyramid of Saqqara was opened in 1819, at the expense of the Prussian General Minutoli, who was the first to give a brief description of the interior, illustrated by plans and drawings.