Anthropologically interesting as are the results of the excavations at Umm el-Gra’ab, they are no less historically important.  There is no need here to weary the reader with the details of scientific controversy; it will suffice to set before him as succinctly and clearly as possible the net results of the work which has been done.

Messrs. Amelineau and Petrie have found the secondary tombs and have identified the names of the following primeval kings of Egypt.  We arrange them in their apparent historical order.

1.  Aha Men (?).

2.  Narmer (or Betjumer) Sma (?).

3.  Tjer (or Khent).  Besh.

4.  Tja Ati.

5.  Den Semti.

6.  Atjab Merpeba.

7.  Semerkha Nekht.

8.  Qa Sen.

9.  Khasekhem (Khasekhemui)

10.  Hetepsekhemui.

11.  Raeneb.

12.  Neneter.

13.  Sekhemab Perabsen.

Two or three other names are ascribed by Prof.  Petrie to the Hierakonpolite dynasty of Upper Egypt, which, as it occurs before the time of Mena and the Ist Dynasty, he calls “Dynasty 0.”  Dynasty 0, however, is no dynasty, and in any case we should prefer to call the “predynastic” dynasty “Dynasty I.”  The names of “Dynasty minus One,” however, remain problematical, and for the present it would seem safer to suspend judgment as to the place of the supposed royal names “Ro” and “Ka"(Men-kaf), which Prof.  Petrie supposes to have been those of two of the kings of Upper Egypt who reigned before Mena.  The king “Sma"("Uniter”) is possibly identical with Aha or Narmer, more probably the latter.  It is not necessary to detail the process by which Egyptologists have sought to identify these thirteen kings with the successors of Mena in the lists of kings and the Ist and IId Dynasties of Manetho.  The work has been very successful, though not perhaps quite so completely accomplished as Prof.  Petrie himself inclines to believe.  The first identification was made by Prof.  Sethe, of Gottingen, who pointed out that the names Semti and Merpeba on a vase-fragment found by M. Amelineau were in reality those of the kings Hesepti and Merbap of the lists, the Ousaphais and Miebis of Manetho.  The perfectly certain identifications are these:—­

5.  Den Semti = Hesepti, Ousaphais, Ist Dynasty.

6.  Atjab Merpeba = Merbap, Miebis, Ist Dynasty.

7.  Semerkha Nekht= Shemsu or Semsem (?), Semempres, Ist Dynasty.

8.  Qa Sen = Qebh, Bienehhes, Ist Dynasty.

9.  Khasekhemui Besh = Betju-mer (?), Boethos, IId Dynasty.

10.  Neneter = Bineneter, Binothris, IId Dynasty.