Abstract
THE discovery at North Sakkara, forty miles south of Cairo, of a tomb which it is thought may prove to be that of Menes, the first king of theFirst Dynasty of Egypt (c. 3300 B.C.), is of exceptional interest, both on account of its historical associations, and also in view of the fact that the tomb of this monarch had been thought to have been discovered many years ago by Sir Flinders Petrie at Abydos. The grounds for this tentative attribution of the tomb now found are the hundred or more clay sealings bearing the name 'Aha', generally identified as that of King Menes, and the fact that no other name appears. The discovery was made by Mr. Walter Emery, who has been engaged in excavation on the site for the past three years. Of all the tombs brought to light here up to the present, this is the largest. It contains five chambers. Its roof had fallen in and it had been plundered ; but according to the reports in The Times of January 7-8, associated with the skeletal remains of two aged individuals was a large number of antiquities, of which the most important are quantities of stone and alabaster jars, many inscribed with the name of the king. The pottery includes shapes not hitherto recorded in Egypt. In addition to slate palettes there are fragments of funerary furniture, among which are the traditional ivory bull's legs of chairs and parts of a wooden bed similar in design to that already known as belonging to Queen Hetepheres of the Fourth Dynasty. A novel feature of the tomb is the coloured reed matting, which was affixed to the clay walls while they werestill wet, forming, it is pointed out, a primitive kind of wall -paper. Many of the sealings bear inscriptions in black ink. Mr. Emery proposes to excavate below the adjoining Third Dynasty tombs in the hope that thediscovery of the burial places of the king's servants will confirm the tentative attribution of the tomb to Menes.
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Archæological Discovery at Sakkara, Egypt. Nature 141, 112 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/141112b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/141112b0