About the same time another riddle was presented to Egyptologists by
the results of the excavations made in Abydos by the French scholar
Amélineau; and another hot discussion was raised. Amélineau had
excavated several large tombs and had also found objects which could
not be arranged in the known development of Egyptian art. The
fortunate discoverer ascribed these to the dynasties of the demigods,
who, according to Egyptian tradition, reigned before the kings; but of
course this idea met with determined opposition, and indeed especially
among his French colleagues. The tomb of Abydos offered, however, on
quiet consideration, more material for establishing its date than
those of Ballas and Neggadeh. In Abydos a number of inscriptions had
been found which, rude as they were, showed that the people buried in
the tombs had known the hieroglyphic system of writing. The occurrence
of so-called "Horus names" in these inscriptions was especially
important. For every old Egyptian king had a long list of names and
titles, and among them a name surmounted by the picture of a hawk
(i.e., Horus), and called on that account the "Horus name." As the
name is, at the same time, written on a sort of standard, it is also
called the "Banner name." Such "Horus" or "Banner names" occur, then,
on the objects found by Amélineau. Accidentally, one of these names
occurs, also, on a statue in the Grizeh Museum which, according to its
style, is one of the oldest statues which the museum possesses. Thus
it became evident that the Abydos objects were, in any case, to be
placed in the earliest period of Egyptian history.

The discussion stood thus when, in the spring of 1897, the fortunate
hand of De Morgan, the former Directeur-général des Services des
antiquités égyptiennes, succeeded by renewed excavations in Neggadeh
in furnishing the connections between the objects found by Petrie in