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
Nakada, 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 Nakada belonged. In the
second volume of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt
_(L'Age des Metaux et le Tombeau Royale de Negadeh)_, he described
the antiquities of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he
wrote.
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