The transference of the royal power to Memphis under the Hid Dynasty
naturally led to a great increase of Egyptian activity in the Northern
lands. We read in Manetho of a great Libyan war in the reign of
Neche-rophes, and both Sa-nekht and Tjeser seem to have finally
established Egyptian authority in the Sinaitic peninsula, where their
rock-inscriptions have been found.
In 1904 Prof. Petrie was despatched to Sinai by the Egypt Exploration
Fund, in order finally to record the inscriptions of the early kings
in the Wadi Maghara, which had been lately very much damaged by the
operations of the turquoise-miners. It seems almost incredible that
ignorance and vandalism should still be so rampant in the twentieth
century that the most important historical monuments are not safe from
desecration in order to obtain a few turquoises, but it is so. Prof.
Petrie's expedition did not start a day too soon, and at the suggestion
of Sir William Garstin, the adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, the
majority of the inscriptions have been removed to the Cairo Museum for
safety and preservation. Among the new inscriptions discovered is one of
Sa-nekht, which is now in the British Museum. Tjeser and Sa-nekht were
not the first Egyptian kings to visit Sinai. Already, in the days of the
1st Dynasty, Semerkha had entered that land and inscribed his name upon
the rocks.
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