Although Manetho credits the founding of Memphis to Menes, the city doesn’t appear to have functioned as a royal capital until the Second Dynasty. This is also when the kings of Egypt began to build their tombs at Saqqara, approximately 2 miles northwest of Memphis, instead of at Abydos. There is much else about the Second Dynasty that remains completely unknown, such as the number of kings who reigned during the period, or even the order of their reigns. Although the total length of the Second Dynasty has been estimated at around 121 years, this is according to Toby Wilkinson, just an “educated guess.”¹Wilkinson 1999, 70

The story goes something like this: Osiris and Seth were two brothers who reigned during the period referred to by Manetho as the “age of the gods.” Osiris ruled Egypt and Seth everything outside of Egypt. Rivalry between the two brothers ended with Seth murdering Osiris. According to one version of the story, Seth dismembered Osiris and scattered his body parts across Egypt. Isis, the wife of Osiris, and Nepthys, his sister, assumed the form of birds and flew across Egypt looking for the body parts of the dead and dismembered king! Once they had reassembled them, Isis used her powerful magic to reanimate the body of the dead king. With her beating wings she revived the king just long enough to conceive a child by him, whom she bore and named Horus. Seth pursued Isis and the child into the papyrus thickets of the Nile where the two remained hidden until Horus grew to become a man. The story picks up again with the The Contentions of Horus and Seth, written in the 12th century BC, which reads like John Wick meets a bawdy B-roll script. Horus would ultimately prevail and ascends to the throne of Egypt while his father, Osiris, descended to the underworld where he reigned as king. Every pharaoh was thereupon declared to be a Horus in this life, and an Osiris after death.

As noted previously, later generations of Egyptians identified the tomb of Djer with the tomb of Osiris. T he mountains of broken pottery that litter the ground near his tomb gave the place its name Umm el-Qa’ab (“Mother of Pots”). They are all that remains of the offerings brought there during the annual festivals associated with this god. It was customary during these gatherings for Egyptians to sleep in the cemetery in order to receive a dream from Osiris. A similar ritual is mentioned in Isaiah when the prophet admonishes the people of Judah for offering sacrifices to ghosts in the “valley of the dead,” an undoubted reference to the Valley of Hinnom next to Jerusalem where the dead were buried.[/mfn]Lewis 1989, 273[/mfn]

Another passage refers to the related practice of sleeping in tombs and eating pig’s flesh.

It is noteworthy that, according to Herodotus, the Egyptians only sacrificed pigs to Osiris and the Moon. Thus the reference in Isaiah to eating pigs flesh in tombs at night probably reflects an Egyptian custom. A closer look at these passages reveals that the recipient of these sacrifices was “Moloch” (Hebrew mlk “king”). Moloch was, like Osiris, the king of the underworld.

Seth and Horus

It may be wondered why Seth-Peribsen would adopt as his patron deity an agent of chaos and death! But of course, there is more to it than that, for if Seth-Peribsen was the first to adopt Seth as his dynastic deity, he would not be the last. Other pharaohs took Seth names, most notably Seti I. In this case, the adoption of a Seth name by the pharaoh was a response to Asiatic influence. The storm gods of the Asiatics were all named Seth (Sutekh) and a temple to Seth was constructed at Avaris (later Pi-Ramses) in the delta region where Asiatic influence was most strongly felt. A similar dynamic may have been at work during the Second Dynasty but too little is known of the period to say for sure.

A Great Leap Forward

Unlike the other kings of the Second Dynasty, Peribsen did not construct his tomb at Saqqara but returned instead to the traditional burial ground at Abydos. Sir Flinders Petrie excavated the tomb of Peribsen but found very little in it except clay seal impressions made with a cylinder seal. It was an important discovery nonetheless since the seal impressions constitute the first evidence for the use of hieroglyphics to form complete sentences. One of them reads:

Prior to the reign of Seth-Peribsen, writing in Egypt was limited to short inscriptions that conveyed simple information such as personal names or place names. It isn’t until the reign of Seth-Peribsen that we begin to find writing used to record continuous speech. No development in Egypt, before or after, will have a greater impact on the course of Egyptian history than this one.