mother of Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of
the sacred Apis of Memphis, her name signifying "Possessing the right of
Apis." According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first
Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the
royal right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the
Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser
Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt
Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang
in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet
high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are
excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet
below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times,
but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging
to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht's tomb is
similar. In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a
giant seven feet high.

[Illustration: 082.jpg THE TOMB OF KING TJESER AT BÊT KHALLÂF. About
3700 B.C.]

It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early
period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have
been Sa-nekht.

Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the
other at Sakkâra, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous
Step-Pyramid. Since Sa-nekht seems really to have been buried at Bêt
Khal-laf, probably Tjeser was, too, and the Step-Pyramid may have been
his secondary or sham tomb, erected in the necropolis of Memphis as a
compliment to Seker, the Northern god of the dead, just as Aha had his