Drawing on archaeological findings and an unusual combination of Greek and Egyptian evidence, Dorothy Thompson examines the economic life and multicultural society of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis in the era between Alexander and Augustus. Now thoroughly revised and updated, this masterful account is essential reading for anyone interested in ancient Egypt or the Hellenistic world. The relationship of the native population with the Greek-speaking immigrants is illustrated in Thompson's analysis of the position of Memphite priests within the Ptolemaic state. Egyptians continued to control mummification and the cult of the dead; the undertakers of the Memphite necropolis were barely touched by things Greek. The cult of the living Apis bull also remained primarily Egyptian; yet on death the bull, deified as Osorapis, became Sarapis for the Greeks. Within this god's sacred enclosure, the Sarapieion, is found a strange amalgam of Greek and Egyptian cultures.

The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt, from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. Authoritative yet accessible, and covering a wide range of topics, it is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers alike.

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.