When we resume our story, we find that two great changes have taken place, one in the course of the national history, the other in the burial customs with which we have to deal. The centre of gravity of the Empire has shifted from the area south of the Delta, embracing Saqqara, Memphis, and the Fayum, to the great city from which the Theban princes had been directing the struggle against the Hyksos; and henceforward, throughout all the most brilliant period of Egyptian history, Thebes remains almost exclusively the royal abode, and, particularly for our purpose, the place where the great monarchs of the New Empire were buried in the midst of all their magnificence. Along with this political change has gone another, which has completely revolutionised the funerary customs consecrated by so long usage. The resting-place of a Pharaoh is no longer marked by a “star-y-pointing Pyramid,” with its temple and causeway. The tombs of the great nobles of the Middle Kingdom at Beni Hasan and elsewhere had already been indicating a change in the funerary ideal, and the temple of Mentuhotep at Der el-Bahri, with its combination of pyramid and rock-hewn shrine, may perhaps be looked upon as the compromise between the old ideal and the new. Henceforward the actual tomb and the funerary temple were to be separated by the necessities of the locality in which the first was situated. The Temple was to stand by itself, free in the open plain on the western bank of the Nile; the Tomb was to be hidden from human knowledge, so far as possible, in a wild and desolate valley of the Libyan hills behind the plain and its girdling cliffs. [Illustration: 20. ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS, THEBES.]