[Illustration: 086.jpg FALSE DOOR OF THE TOMB OF TETA, about 3600 B.C.]

We must not omit to note an interesting point in connection with the
royal tombs at Abydos, In that of King Khent or Tjer (the reading of
the ideograph is doubtful) M. Amélineau found a large bed or bier of
granite, with a figure of the god Osiris lying in state sculptured in
high relief upon it. This led him to jump to the conclusion that he
had found the tomb of the god Osiris himself, and that a skull he found
close by was the veritable cranium of the primeval folk-hero, who,
according to the euhemerist theory, was the deified original of the god.
The true explanation is given by Dr. Wallis Budge in his _History of
Egypt_, i, p. 19. It is a fact that the tomb of Tjer was regarded by
the Egyptians of the XIXth Dynasty as the veritable tomb of Osiris.
They thought they had discovered it, just as M. Amélineau did. When the
ancient royal tombs of Umm el-Ga'ab were rediscovered and identified at
the beginning of the XIXth Dynasty, and Seti I built the great temple of
Abydos to the divine ancestors in honour of the discovery, embellishing
it with a relief of himself and his son Ramses making offerings to the
names of his predecessors (the "Tablet of Abydos "), the name of King
Khent or Tjer (which is perhaps the really correct original form) was
read by the royal scribes as "Khent" and hastily identified with the
first part of the name of the god _Khent-amenti_ Osiris, the lord of
Abydos. The tomb was thus regarded as the tomb of Osiris himself, and
it was furnished with a great stone figure of the god lying on his bier,
attended by the two hawks of Isis and Nephthys; ever after the site was
visited by crowds of pilgrims, who left at Umm el-Ga'ab the thousands of
little votive vases whose fragments have given the place its name of the
"Mother of Pots." This is the explanation of the discovery of the "Tomb
of Osiris." We have not found what M. Amélineau seems rather naively to
have thought possible, a confirmation of the ancient view that Osiris