a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah.  The actual god of “the White Wall” was undoubtedly confused vith the dead god of the necropolis, whose name was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), “the Coffined.”  The original form of this deity was a mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very probable that he was imported from the South, like the second Phtah, at the time of the conquest, when the great Northern necropolis began to grow up as a duplicate of that at Abydos.  Later on we find Seker confused with the ancient dwarf-god, and it is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall.

It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kara takes its title.  Sakkara marks the central point of the great Memphite necropolis, as it is the nearest point of the western desert to Memphis.  Northwards the necropolis extended to Griza and Abu Roash, southwards, to Daslmr; even the necropoles of Lisht and Medum may be regarded as appanages of Sakkara.  At Sakkara itself Tjeser of the IIId Dynasty had a pyramid, which, as we have seen, was probably not his real tomb (which was the great mastaba at Bet Khallaf), but a secondary or sham tomb corresponding to the “tombs” of the earliest kings at Umm el-Ga’ab in the necropolis of Abydos.  Many later kings, however, especially of the Vith Dynasty, were actually buried at Sakkara.  Their tombs have all been thoroughly described by their discoverer, Prof.  Maspero, in his history.  The last king of the Hid Dynasty, Snefru, was buried away down south at Medum, in splendid isolation, but he may also have had a second pyramid at Sakkara or Abu Roash.

The kings of the IVth Dynasty were the greatest of the pyramid builders, and to them belong the huge edifices of Griza.  The Vth Dynasty favoured Abusir, between Ciza and Sakkara; the Vith, as we have said, preferred Sakkara itself.  With them the end of the Old Kingdom and of Memphite dominion was reached; the sceptre fell from the hands of the Memphite kings and was taken up by the princes of Herakleopolis (Ahnasyet el-Medina, near Beni Suef, south of the Eayyum) and Thebes.  Where the Herakleopolite kings were buried we do not know; probably somewhere in the local necropolis of the Gebel es-Sedment, between Ahnasya and the Fayyum.  The first Thebans (the XIth Dynasty) were certainly buried at Thebes, but when the Herakleopolites had finally disappeared, and all Egypt was again united under one strong sceptre, the Theban kings seem to have been drawn northwards.  They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the Fayyum, and between it and Memphis.  Here, in the royal fortress-palace of Itht-taui, “Controlling the Two Lands,”