A Qualitative Test of a Unified Model of Seyfert Galaxies with BeppoSAX

The broad band 0.1-200 keV spectra of a sample of 5 Seyfert 2 galaxies (NGC 7172, Mkn 3, NGC 2110, NGC 4507 and NGC 7674) have been measured within the first year of the $BeppoSAX$ Core program. All sources have been detected up to \~ 100 keV and their spectral characteristics derived with good accuracy. Although the results obtained from the detailed analysis of individual sources indicate some ``source-by-source'' differences, we show in the following that all spectra are consistent, at least qualitatively, with what expected from a ``0th-order'' version of unified models. Indeed, a simple test on these data indicates that these Seyfert 2 galaxies are on average intrinsically very similar to Seyfert 1 galaxies (i.e., steep at E>10 keV) and that the main difference can be ascribed to a different amount of absorbing matter along the line of sight (i.e. different inclinations of our line of sight with respect to a putative molecular torus or different thicknesses of the tori).