to its present level the destruction of the dyke would have meant the
return of the Nile to its former path. North of the dyke English
engineers have found that the alluvial soil bears witness to
interference with the natural course of the river of a far-reaching
kind, and its long straight course resembles that of a canal rather than
of the naturally winding stream of the Nile.

On the embankment thus won from the waters Menes built his capital,
which bore the two names of Men-nefer or Memphis, "the Beautiful Place,"
and Hâ-ka-Ptah or Ægyptos, "the Temple of the Double of Ptah." On the
north side of it, in fact, stood the temple of Ptah, the local god, the
scanty remains of which are still visited by the tourist. In front of
the shrine was the sacred lake across which, on days of festival, the
image of the god was ferried, and which now serves as a village pond.

Menes was followed by six dynasties of kings, who reigned in all 1478
years. The tombs of the two first dynasties have been found at Abydos.
Menes himself was buried on the edge of the desert near Negada, about
twenty miles to the north of Thebes. His sepulchre was built in
rectangular form, of crude bricks, and filled with numerous chambers, in
the innermost and largest of which the corpse of the king was laid. Then
wood was heaped about the walls and the whole set on fire, so that the
royal body and the objects that were buried with it were half consumed
by the heat. The mode of burial was peculiar to Babylonia. Here, in an
alluvial plain, where stone was not procurable, and where the cemeteries
of the dead adjoined the houses of the living, brick was needful instead
of stone, and sanitary considerations made cremation necessary. But in
the desert of Egypt, at the foot of rocky cliffs, such customs were out
of place; their existence can be explained only by their importation
from abroad. The use of seal-cylinders of Babylonian pattern, and of