ba of Mel.u, not yet completely excavated. It belongs to a certain Bia." My warm thanks are extended to Zaki Saad, who kindly permitted me to republish these pieces from his excavations. I am also indebted to the Chief Inspector at Sakkarah, Zakaria Ghoneim, who gave me access to the government magazine and who supplied the excellent photographs in Plate XVIII. The hand copies in Figures 1, 3, and 4 are my own, with an attempt at fidelity in the hieroglyphs, but with a very summary presentation of the scenes. A study of the late Old Kingdom mastabas in the Teti Pyramid Cemetery and the Unis Causeway Cemetery impressed me anew with the extraordinary variety of pictorial and literary expression in the monuments of the Sixth Dynasty and its immediate aftermath. That was a period when the old forms were repeated in a new way and when new forms were introduced. Within the accepted pattern of Egyptian expression there was a deliberate search for variety and individuality. To be sure, such restless eccentricity is a mark of the disintegration of a culture, as its pure and hieratic forms lose their cherished rigidity. Nevertheless, one finds it most refreshing, and it does illustrate the flexibility of Egyptian culture. I must leave to others any statement about originality in the art of the Sixth Dynasty and thereafter.3 The inscriptions which are the subject of this article have been taken to illustrate the deliberate