" According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first
Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the
royal right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the
Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser
Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bet
Khallaf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang
in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet
high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are
excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet
below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times,
but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging
to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht's tomb is
similar. In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a
giant seven feet high.
[Illustration: 082.jpg THE TOMB OF KING TJESER AT BET KHALLAF. About
3700 B.C.]
It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early
period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have
been Sa-nekht.
Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the
other at Sakkara, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous
Step-Pyramid.
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