[Illustration:  384.jpg TOMB OF MERSEKHA, SHOWING WOODEN FLOOR]

The structure of the interior of the tomb of Mersekha is at present uncertain.  Only in the corner by the entrance was the wooden flooring preserved; several beams (one now in Cairo Museum) and much broken wood was found loose in the rubbish.  The entrance is nine feet wide, and was blocked by loose bricks, flush with wall face, as seen in the photograph.  Another looser walling farther out, also seen in the photograph, is probably that of plunderers to hold back the sand.

The tomb of King Qa, which is the last of the first dynasty, shows a more developed stage than the others.  Chambers for offerings are built on each side of the entrance passage, and this passage is turned to the north, as in the mastabas of the third dynasty and in the pyramids.  The whole of the building is hasty and defective.

[Illustration:  385.jpg PLAN OF TOMB OF QA, CIRCA 4500 B.C.]

The bricks were mostly used too new, probably less than a week after being made.  Hence the walls have seriously collapsed in most of the lesser chambers; only the one great chamber was built of firm and well-dried bricks.  In the small chambers along the east side the long wall between chambers 10 and 5 has crushed out at the base, and spread against the pottery in the grave 5, and against the wooden box in grave 2.  Hence the objects must have been placed in those graves within a few days of the building of the wall, before the mud bricks were hard enough to carry even four feet height of wall.  The burials of the domestics must therefore have taken place all at once, immediately after the king’s tomb was built, and hence they must have been sacrificed at the funeral.  The pottery placed in the chambers is all figured in position on the plan.

[Illustration:  386.jpg STYLE OF KING QA]

Only three steles were found in the grave of Qa, but these were larger than those of the earlier graves.  One of them, No. 48, is the longest and most important inscription that has come down to us from the first dynasty.  This lay in a chamber on the west side of the tomb.  In the preparation of the stele, the block of stone had been ground all over and edges rounded.  On its surface the hieroglyphs were then sketched in red ink, and were finally drawn in black, the ground being then roughly hammered out.  There the work stopped, and the final scraping and dressing of the figures was never accomplished.  The reading of the signs is therefore difficult, but enough is seen to show that the keeper of the tomb bore the name of Sabef.  He had two titles which are now illegible, and was also “Overseer of the Sed Festival.”  This scanty information goes to show how little the official titles were changed between the days of the first dynasty and the time of the building of the pyramids.  The stele of the king Qa was found lying over chamber; it is like that found by M. Amelineau, carved in black quartzose stone.  Near it, on the south, were dozens of large pieces of fine alabaster bowls.