History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent DiscoveryKing, L. W. (Leonard William)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
King, L. W. (Leonard William)
Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C.; History, Ancient
Moreover, we now find various evidences of increasing connection with
the North. A princess named Ne-maat-hap, who seems to have been the
mother of Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of
the sacred Apis of Memphis, her name signifying “Possessing the right of
Apis.” According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first
Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the
royal right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the
Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser
Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt
Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang
in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet
high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are
excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet
below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times,
but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging
to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht’s tomb is
similar. In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a
giant seven feet high.
[Illustration: 082.jpg THE TOMB OF KING TJESER AT BÊT KHALLÂF. About
3700 B.C.]
It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early
period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have
been Sa-nekht.
Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the
other at Sakkâra, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous
Step-Pyramid. Since Sa-nekht seems really to have been buried at Bêt
Khal-laf, probably Tjeser was, too, and the Step-Pyramid may have been
his secondary or sham tomb, erected in the necropolis of Memphis as a
compliment to Seker, the Northern god of the dead, just as Aha had his
secondary tomb at Abydos in compliment to Khentamenti. Sne-feru, also,
the last king of the Hid Dynasty, seems to have had two tombs. One of
these was the great Pyramid of Mêdûm, which was explored by Prof. Petrie
in 1891, the other was at Dashûr. Near by was the interesting necropolis
already mentioned, in which was discovered evidence of the continuance
of the cramped position of burial and of the absence of mummification
among a certain section of the population even as late as the time of
the IVth Dynasty. This has been taken to imply that the fusion of the
primitive Neolithic and invading sub-Semitic races had not been effected
at that time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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