A city located near modern Sammanud in the central Delta just across the river from Busiris, a cultic center for Isis and several other gods. During the 700's and 600's it formed an autonomous principality under Egyptian rule. In later days it became famous as the home of Manetho, an Egyptian priest living in Ptolemaic times whose History of Egypt (fragments of which survive via extensive quotations and reviews by other ancient authors) provides the basic structure underlying Egyptological studies even today. He is sometimes regarded as having produced anti-semitic material - technically accurate in that his extensive and highly critical coverage of the Hyksos invasion 1300 years before his time was widely repeated and distributed.