In very early times Abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political rank to Thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired.  The city occupied a long and narrow strip between the canal and the first slopes of the Libyan mountains.  A brick fortress defended it from the incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the dead reared its naked walls.  Here Anhuri, having passed from life to death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentit, the chief of that western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth.

It is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what political combinations this Sun of the Night came to be identified with Osiris of Mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote antiquity; it had become an established fact long before the most ancient sacred books were compiled.  Osiris Khontamentit grew rapidly in popular favor, and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of pilgrims.  The Great Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and happiness.  It was called Uit, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after it had become an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the “cleft,” the gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed toward it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other world.

At the time of the New Year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all parts of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of Khontamentit.  Abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god the only god, whose worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them all with an equal devotion.

Did this sort of moral conquest give rise, later on, to a belief in a material conquest by the princes of Thinis and Abydos, or is there an historical foundation for the tradition which ascribes to them the establishment of a single monarchy?  It is the Thinite Menes, whom the Theban annalists point out as the ancestor of the glorious Pharaohs of the XVIII dynasty:  it is he also who is inscribed in the Memphite chronicles, followed by Manetho, at the head of their lists of human kings, and all Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal ruler.

It is true that a chief of Thinis may well have borne such a name, and may have accomplished feats which rendered him famous; but on closer examination his pretensions to reality disappear, and his personality is reduced to a cipher.

“This Menes, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with dikes.  For the river formerly followed the sand-hills for some distance on the Libyan side.  Menes, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain ranges.