We will take one as an example. This is the tablet No.
32,650 of the British Museum, illustrated by Prof. Petrie, _Royal Tombs_
i (Egypt Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16. This is the record of
a single year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower
Egypt. On it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance
before the god Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This
religious dance was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we
find hieroglyphic (ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight
the Northerners and of the capture of a fortified town called An. The
capture of the town is indicated by a broken line of fortification,
half-encircling the name, and the hoe with which the emblematic hawks
on the slate reliefs already described are armed; this signifies the
opening and breaking down of the wall.
On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt,
Hemaka, mentioned; also "the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of
the Libyans," and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace
and a king's carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words
"the king's carpenter made this record." All these little tablets are
then the records of single years of a king's life, and others like them,
preserved no doubt in royal archives, formed the base of regular annals,
which were occasionally carved upon stone.
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