DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0080
G2 A THOUSAND MUMS UP THIS NILE.
conclave, half solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats
browsing round, and the little Arab children hiding
behind them.
Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite
colossus—not the fellow to that which we saw first, bnt a
smaller one—-also face downward.
And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities
■—a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken
statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain
to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the
Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found—
the Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and
all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the
adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of
Strabo, of Abd-el-Latif ? Where are those stately ruins
which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space
estimated at "half a day's journey in every direction"?
One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished
on this spot, or understand how it should have been
effaced so utterly, Yet here it stood—here where the
grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the
Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inunda-
tion. The great colossus marks the site of the main
entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and
no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-
fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of
Mitrahineh and catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of
Ghizch, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake exca-
vated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in
the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the
mounds Tell Monf*—just as Sakkarah fossilizes the name
of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Mem-
phi te Osiris.
No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept
it place in history so long. Founded four thousand years
before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one
dynasties ; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek,
and the Eoman ; it was, even in its decadence, second only
* Tell: Arabic for mound. Many of the mounds preserve the
ancient names of the cities they entomb ; as Tell Basta (Bubastis);
Koin Ombo (Ombos); etc., etc. Tell and Kum are synonymous
terms.
conclave, half solemn, half ludicrous, with the goats
browsing round, and the little Arab children hiding
behind them.
Near this, in another pool, lies another red-granite
colossus—not the fellow to that which we saw first, bnt a
smaller one—-also face downward.
And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities
■—a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken
statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain
to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the
Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found—
the Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and
all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the
adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of
Strabo, of Abd-el-Latif ? Where are those stately ruins
which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space
estimated at "half a day's journey in every direction"?
One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished
on this spot, or understand how it should have been
effaced so utterly, Yet here it stood—here where the
grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the
Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inunda-
tion. The great colossus marks the site of the main
entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and
no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-
fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of
Mitrahineh and catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of
Ghizch, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake exca-
vated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in
the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the
mounds Tell Monf*—just as Sakkarah fossilizes the name
of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Mem-
phi te Osiris.
No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept
it place in history so long. Founded four thousand years
before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one
dynasties ; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek,
and the Eoman ; it was, even in its decadence, second only
* Tell: Arabic for mound. Many of the mounds preserve the
ancient names of the cities they entomb ; as Tell Basta (Bubastis);
Koin Ombo (Ombos); etc., etc. Tell and Kum are synonymous
terms.