the Northern capital. We find that soon
after the time of Khasekhemui the king Perabsen was especially connected
with Lower Egypt. His personal name is unknown to us (though he may
be the "Uatjnes" of the lists), but we do know that he had two
banner-names, Sekhem-ab and Perabsen. The first is his hawk or
Horus-name, the second his Set-name; that is to say, while he bore the
first name as King of Upper Egypt under the special patronage of Horus,
the hawk-god of the Upper Country, he bore the second as King of Lower
Egypt, under the patronage of Set, the deity of the Delta, whose fetish
animal appears above this name instead of the hawk. This shows how
definitely Perabsen wished to appear as legitimate King of Lower as well
as Upper Egypt. In later times the Theban kings of the XIIth Dynasty,
when they devoted themselves to winning the allegiance of the
Northerners by living near Memphis rather than at Thebes, seem to have
been imitating the successors of Khasekhemui.

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 Bet
Khallaf, 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 BET KHALLAF. 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.

Tj