Of these predynastic kingdoms we know very little, except from legendary sources.  The Northerners who were conquered by Aha, Narmer, and Khasekhehiui do not look very much like Egyptians, but rather resemble Semites or Libyans.  On the “Stele of Palermo,” a chronicle of early kings inscribed in the period of the Vth Dynasty, we have a list of early kings of the North,—­Seka, Desau, Tiu, Tesh, Nihab, Uatjantj, Mekhe.  The names are primitive in form.  We know nothing more about them.  Last year Mr. C. T. Currelly attempted to excavate at Buto, in order to find traces of the predynastic kingdom, but owing to the infiltration of water his efforts were unsuccessful.  It is improbable that anything is now left of the most ancient period at that site, as the conditions in the Delta are so very different from those obtaining in Upper Egypt.  There, at Hierakonpolis, and at el-Kab on the opposite bank of the Nile, the sites of the ancient cities Nekhen and Nekheb, the excavators have been very successful.  The work was carried out by Messrs. Quibell and Green, in the years 1891-9.  Prehistoric burials were found on the hills near by, but the larger portion of the antiquities were recovered from the temple-ruins, and date back to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, exactly the time when the kings of Hierakonpolis first conquered the kingdom of Buto and founded the united Egyptian monarchy.

The ancient temple, which was probably one of the earliest seats of Egyptian civilization, was situated on a mound, now known as el-Kom el-ahmar, “the Red Hill,” from its colour.  The chief feature of the most ancient temple seems to have been a circular mound, revetted by a wall of sandstone blocks, which was apparently erected about the end of the predynastic period.  Upon this a shrine was probably erected.  This was the ancient shrine of Nekhen, the cradle of the Egyptian monarchy.  Close by it were found some of the most valuable relics of the earliest Pharaonic age, the great ceremonial mace-heads and vases of Narmer and “the Scorpion,” the shields or “palettes” of the same Narmer, the vases and stelas of Khasekhemui, and, of later date, the splendid copper colossal group of King Pepi I and his son, which is now at Cairo.  Most of the 1st Dynasty objects are preserved in the Ashmo-lean Museum at Oxford, which is one of the best centres for the study of early Egyptian antiquities.  Narmer and Khasekhemui are, as we shall see, two of the first monarchs of all Egypt.  These sculptured and inscribed mace-heads, shields, etc., are monuments dedicated by them in the ancestral shrine at Hierakonpolis as records of their deeds.  Both kings seem to have waged war against the Northerners, the Anu of Heliopolis and the Delta, and on these votive monuments from Hierakonpolis we find hieroglyphed records of the defeat of the Anu, who have very definitely Semitic physiognomies.