the new discoveries communicated
to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts
concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the
preceding chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the
work of M. de Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as
well as of the predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at
Nakada, which proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name
of Aha, "the Fighter." The walls of this tomb are crenelated like
those of the early Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners,
already referred to. M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between
the Neolithic antiquities and those of the later archaic period of
Egyptian civilization, to which the tomb at Nakada belonged. In the
second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt
_(L'Age des Metaux et le Tombeau Royale de Negadeh)_, he described
the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he
wrote. Antiquities of the same primitive period and even of an earlier
date had been discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has already been
said, at Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But though Prof.
Petrie correctly diagnosed the age of the great statues of the god
Min which he found, he was led, by his misdating of the "New Race"
antiquities from Ballas and Tukh, also to misdate several of the
primitive antiquities,--the lions and hawks, for instance, found at
Koptos, he placed in the period between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties;
whereas they can now, in the light of further discoveries at Abydos, be
seen to date to the earlier part of the Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer
and Aha.

It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already
described) of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of
what we know with regard to the history of the first three dynasties.
At Abydos Prof. Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site
having already been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M.
Amelineau. The excavations of M. Amelineau were, however, perhaps
not conducted strictly on scientific lines, and his results have been
insufficiently published with very few photographs, so that with the
best will in the world we are unable to give M. Amelineau the full
credit which is, no doubt, due to him for his work. The system of Prof.
Petrie