evelopment of the priestly art. Secular art might develop as it
liked, though the crystallizing influence of the ecclesiastical canon is
always evident here also. But henceforward it was an impiety, which only
an Akhunaten could commit, to depict a king or a god on the walls of a
temple otherwise (except so far as, the portrait was concerned) than as
he had been depicted in the time of the Vth Dynasty.

Other buildings have been excavated by the Germans at Abusir, notably
the usual town of mastaba-tombs belonging to the chief dignitaries of
the reign, which is always found at the foot of a royal pyramid of this
period. Another building of the highest interest, belonging to the same
age, was also excavated, and its true character was determined. This is
a building at a place called er-Righa or Abu Ghuraib, "Father of Crows,"
between Abusir and Giza. It was formerly supposed to be a pyramid, but
the German excavations have shown that it is really a temple of the
Sun-god Ra of Heliopolis, specially venerated by the kings of the Vth
Dynasty, who were of Heliopolitan origin. The great pyramid-builders of
the IVth Dynasty seem to have been the last true Memphites. At the end
of the reign of Shepseskaf, the last monarch of the dynasty, the sceptre
passed to a Heliopolitan family. The following VIth Dynasty may again
have been Memphite, but this is uncertain. The capital continued to be
Memphis, and from the beginning of the Hid Dynasty to the end of the Old
Kingdom and the rise of Herakle-opolis and Thebes, Memphis remained the
chief city of Egypt.

The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-god above all
other gods, and they were the first to call themselves "Sons of the
Sun," a title retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent
history. It was Ne-user-Ra who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib,
on the edge of the desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two
immediate predecessors at Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of
1900, it is seen to consist of an artificial mound, with a great court
in front to the eastward. On the mound was erected a truncated obelisk,
the stone emblem of the Sun-god. The worshippers in the court below
looked towards the Sun's stone erected upon its mound in the west,
the quarter of the sun's setting; for the Sun-god of Heliopolis was
primarily the setting sun, Tum-Ra, not Ra Harmachis, the rising sun,
whose emblem is the Great Sphinx at Giza, which looks towards the