e tomb also has
been discovered, but at Nagadeh. It is a great rectangular structure
of bricks 165 feet long and 84 broad, the external walls of which were
originally ornamented by deep polygonal grooves, resembling those which
score the facade of Chaldaean buildings, but the Nagadeh tomjb has a
second brick wall which fills up all the hollows left in the first one,
and thus hides the primitive decoration of the monument. The building
contains twenty-one chambers, five of which in the centre apparently
constituted the dwelling of the deceased, while the others, grouped
around these, serve as storehouses from whence he could draw his
provisions at will. Did the king buried within indeed bear the name
of Menes,[*] and if such was the case, how are we to reconcile the
tradition of his Thinite origin with the existence of his far-off tomb
in the neighbourhood of Thebes?

* The sign _Manu_, which appears on the ivory tablet found
in this tomb, has been interpreted as a king's name, and
consequently inferred to be Menes. This reading has been
disputed on various sides, and the point remains, therefore,
a contested one until further discovery.

Objects bearing his Horus name have been found at Omm-el-Gaab, and it is
evident that he belonged to the same age as the sovereigns interred in
this necropolis. If, indeed, Menes was really his personal name, there
is no reason against his being the Menes of tradition, he whom the
Pharaohs of the glorious Theban dynasties regarded as the earliest of
their purely human ancestors. Whether he was really the first king who
reigned over the whole of Egypt, or whether he had been preceded
by other sovereigns whose monuments we may find in some site still
unexplored, is a matter for conjecture. That princes had exercised
authority in various parts of the country is still uncertain, but that
the Egyptian historians did not know them, seems to prove that they had
left no written records of their names. At any rate, a Menes lived who
reigned at the outset of history, and doubtless before long the Nile
valley, when more carefully explored, will yield us monuments recording
his actions and determining his date. The civilization of the Egypt of
his time was ruder than that with which we have hitherto been familiar
on its soil, but even at that early period it was almost as complete.
It had its industries and its arts, of which the cemeteries furnish
us daily with the most