The New International Encyclopædia/Memphis (Egypt)

MEM′PHIS. A city of ancient Egypt, situated about 12 miles south of modern Cairo, on the left bank of the Nile (Map: Egypt, E 3). It is said to have been founded by Menes, the first historical King of ancient Egypt, but this is as little probable as the statement in Herodotus that Menes gained the ground for building Memphis by diking off the Nile. King Uchoreus, whom Diodorus calls the founder of Memphis, cannot be identified. It is certain that a city called ‘the White Wall’ stood on the spot from prehistoric times; this name (Leukon Teichos) was still attached to the citadel and the neighboring quarter of Memphis in the Greek epoch. The kings of the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasty built their residences not very far from Memphis, and their pyramids are in the vicinity, but Memphis proper received its name and importance from the second King of the Sixth Dynasty (Pepy or Apopi I.), who built his pyramid and residence not far west of the small ancient city of ‘the White Wall.’ The name of that pyramid, Men-nofer, ‘good abode,’ extended to the whole city, and, corrupted to Menfe, came down to the classical writers. In the seventh century B.C. the Assyrians called the city Mempi; in the Bible the name has been corrupted to Moph and Noph. Memphis, which had a very favorable situation, near the head of the Delta, became the capital of Egypt. In later times, several dynasties preferred other capitals, but Memphis always remained at least the second capital of Egypt, and the second city of the land in wealth and population. The conquests by the Ethiopians, Assyrians, and Persians do not seem to have affected it much, and the writers of the earlier Roman period still describe it as filled with temples and palaces of amazing size and beauty, the Iseum, the Serapeum, and others. The decline of the city was rapid after the Arab conquest (at which time it was still the seat of a Governor), when Fostat (Old Cairo) was erected in the neighborhood. Fostat and subsequently Cairo were built of stones taken from the deserted buildings of Memphis, and thus it came about that the ancient city entirely disappeared. The only remarkable monuments left there at present are the two colossal statues of Rameses II. (originally 42 feet high), lying on the mound near the modern village of Mit-Rahîneh, and marking the entrance to the principal and earliest temple of Memphis, that of Ptah (Greek Hephæstus), and the centre of the ‘White Wall.’ Abd-ul-Latīf, as late as the thirteenth century A.D., found remarkable ruins on the site of old Memphis. The insignificant rubbish-mounds (of Mit-Rahîneh, Bedrashên, Ennagîzîyeh, etc.) extend three or four miles from north to south. The classical writers give very exaggerated accounts of the size of the city. The immense necropolis west of it, including the pyramids and tombs of Saqqara, still bears testimony, however, to the former importance of Memphis. The principal god of the city was Ptah, the ‘master craftsman’ among the gods, who was believed to have formed the world; afterwards the conception of this deity was called Ptah-Sokar (a combination of Ptah and Sokar, the god of the western suburb), embodied in the Apis hull and others. The numerous Phœnician merchants had a quarter of their own with a temple of Astarte. Consult: Description de l'Egypte, vol. v. (Paris, 1820-30); Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien (Berlin, 1849-58); Mariette, Le Sérapéum de Memphis (Paris, 1882); Dümichen, Karte des Stadtgebietes von Memphis (Leipzig, 1895). See also Egypt.