side no doubt represent part of the spoil of
the North.

Returning to the great shield or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see
the king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the _Hen-neter_ or
"God's Servant,"* to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which
lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their
feet. The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.

[Illustration: 051.jpg (right)]

Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched on a
harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again refer
to the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the
gate of the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same
conquest of the North.

* In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene,
Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means
"king," and compares the eight-pointed star "used for king
in Babylonia." The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform
script does not mean "king," but "god." The star then ought
to mean "god," and the title "servant of a god," and this
supposition may be correct. _Hen-neter_, "god's servant,"
was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later
days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a god,
the picture of an axe. But in the archaic period, with which
we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian sign may very
well have been used for "god," and the title of Narmer's
sandal-bearer may read _Hen-neter_. He was the slave of the
living god Narmer. All Egyptian kings were regarded as
deities, more or less.

The monuments Khasekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the North
also and slew 47,209 "Northern Enemies." The contorted attitudes of the
dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and were
reproduced on the pedestal of the king's statue found by Mr. Quibell,
which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like
most times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C.
is the date of these various monuments.

[Illustration: 052.jpg OBVERSE OP A SLATE RELIEF.]

Khasekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose that
his conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late
as the time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the
beginning of the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which fir