doubtful quantity. The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt
have been recovered for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see
when the list-makers of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were
wrong, and can distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is
really historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been
wrong, but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near
the mark, and the general number and arrangement of their kings
seems correct; so that we can still go to them for assistance in the
arrangement of the names which are communicated to us by the newly
discovered monuments. Manetho's help, too, need never be despised
because he was a copyist of copyists; we can still use him to direct our
investigations, and his arrangement of dynasties must still remain the
framework of our chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have
been always correct as to the places in which the dynasties originated.

More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries communicated
to us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts
concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the
preceding chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the
work of M. de Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as
well as of the predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at
Nakâda, which proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name
of Aha, "the Fighter." The walls of this tomb are crenelated like
those of the early Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners,
already referred to. M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between
the Neolithic antiquities and those of the later archaic period of
Egyptian civilization, to which the tomb at Nakâda belonged. In the
second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt
_(L'Age des Métaux et lé Tombeau Royale de Négadeh)_, he described