Ballas and Neggadeh and those found by Amélineau in Abydos. He
discovered, not far from the necropolis, excavated by Petrie, the tomb
of a king which, on the one hand, contained pottery and tablets like
those found by Petrie, and on the other, objects entirely like those
found by Amélineau. Thus it was proved that both Petrie's tombs and
those of Amélineau belonged to the same period, and, indeed, the
oldest period, of Egyptian history, before the third dynasty. They
were older than the most ancient objects which we had thought that we
possessed. But it was still impossible to date them exactly.

At this point, an epoch-making discovery of Dr. Sethe, privat-docent
at the University of Berlin, placed the whole matter at a single
stroke on a comparatively sure foundation. He pointed out that the
inscriptions on a few unassuming potsherds from Abydos contained not
only Banner names of old kings, but also their ordinary names. These
names were not inclosed, as later, in cartouches, and even contained
many unusual spellings; but they were still too clear to be
misunderstood. Sethe succeeded in identifying the names of the fifth,
the sixth and the seventh kings of the first Manethonian dynasty,
called by the Greek authors Usaphais, Miebais and Semempses. Thus it
became extremely probable that all these newly discovered objects were
from the first dynasty, but still not absolutely certain; for the
three names occurred only on fragments of vases, and absolutely
nothing was known of how these fragments were found. The proof that
they belonged to the other objects was wanting. A very skeptical
investigator might still have said that the other objects were older,
that the potsherds had only fallen accidentally into ruined tombs of
an older period; or he might have said quite the contrary, that the
potsherds were older than the tombs.