Memphis is the ancient capital of the 1st «dynasty» or province of Lower Egypt, Mennof-Ra, which the Greeks called Memphis and which Herodotus claims was founded by Menes who united the two parts of Egypt. Of Memphis there remains today almost nothing except a few ruins. The prophesy of Jeremiah that «Memphis shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant» (Jeremiah XLVI, 19) has been well and truly fulfilled. Nevertheless Memphis had known centuries of great splendour culminating in the Vlth Memphis
Founded, according to the Greek historian Herodotus, by Menes — the legendary king credited with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt — Memphis served as the capital of Egypt’s 1st Dynasty and remained one of the country’s most important cities for centuries. Its ancient name, Mennefer, later became “Memphis” in Greek, and the city reached particular splendor during the 6th Dynasty as the principal center of worship for the god Ptah.
Little remains of the city’s former grandeur today. As the biblical prophet Jeremiah foretold, “Memphis shall be waste and desolate, without inhabitant” (Jeremiah 46:19) — a prophecy that, in a literal sense, came true. In its prime, however, Memphis was a genuinely cosmopolitan center: home to chariot factories supplying Egypt’s military, the fortified citadel of “the White Walls” founded by the architect Imhotep, and people of many nations, races, and religions who lived and worked within it. Ramses II himself, in an inscription at Abu Simbel, described enlarging Ptah’s temple at Memphis “with much work, with gold and with precious stones.”
What Remains Today
Though the city itself has largely vanished, Memphis’s open-air museum holds two remarkable survivors: a colossal fallen statue of Ramses II, so large visitors view it from an elevated walkway built around it, and a striking alabaster Sphinx, weathered smooth by millennia but still unmistakably regal.
Visiting Memphis
Memphis is typically visited alongside Saqqara and Dahshur as part of a day trip exploring Egypt’s earliest pyramid-building history, just south of Cairo.
