DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14564#0031
MEMPHIS.
>5
CHAPTER II.
MEMPHIS.
No one of the great cities of the old world has so utterly
disappeared as Memphis. Her rival Thebes has yet four
splendid temples to attest the greatness which Homer
sang. Babylon and Nineveh are still marked by vast
mounds, the sepulchres of their treasures. Athens
nestles, as of yore, beneath her ancient citadel of rock.
Rome has endured for six-and-twenty centuries the
storms of changing fortune, and is growing once more.
Jerusalem, long shrunken within her first limits of near
three thousand years ago, is again enlarging herself. But
no temple or town attests the former wealth of Memphis,
or preserves a fragment of her once abounding life.
There is neither sacred building, nor palace, nor a trace
of common houses, nothing to show where the long
ramparts rose, or where the White Wall, the ancient
citadel, defended the capital. The mighty city, which
>5
CHAPTER II.
MEMPHIS.
No one of the great cities of the old world has so utterly
disappeared as Memphis. Her rival Thebes has yet four
splendid temples to attest the greatness which Homer
sang. Babylon and Nineveh are still marked by vast
mounds, the sepulchres of their treasures. Athens
nestles, as of yore, beneath her ancient citadel of rock.
Rome has endured for six-and-twenty centuries the
storms of changing fortune, and is growing once more.
Jerusalem, long shrunken within her first limits of near
three thousand years ago, is again enlarging herself. But
no temple or town attests the former wealth of Memphis,
or preserves a fragment of her once abounding life.
There is neither sacred building, nor palace, nor a trace
of common houses, nothing to show where the long
ramparts rose, or where the White Wall, the ancient
citadel, defended the capital. The mighty city, which