One of the remarkable anomalies of Egyptian History is that the source material for the study of one of the country's principal settlements sites and one of the greatest cities of antiquity-Memphis-is comparatively scarce. The Memphite cemeteries, however, have yielded up masses of material, particularly for the Archaic Period and the Old Kingdom. In the New Kingdom, with which we are concerned in this volume, Memphis was a city of immense administrative and cultural importance, as well as being the seat of the royal court, and there seems little reason to doubt that many of the great officials and courtiers of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and to some extent the Twentieth Dynasties were buried in Saqqara, the Memphite necropolis.
