DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14564#0035
MEMPHIS.
19
was in her decay when the Arabs poured into the country,
and soon ceased to be a town. She had lived before as
the second city of Egypt through the Roman and the
Greek dominion; she had been taken by the Persian and
the Assyrian and the Ethiopian. We go back to the
dawn of Greek history, farther yet to the Exodus when
Israel became a nation, and still we have not reached the
age of the supremacy of Memphis. Still earlier, before
Abraham, we attain at last the long unmeasured period
of the six great lines of Egyptian kings who ruled at
Memphis, and were buried in the Pyramids that overlook
her obliterated site. The space of time from our days to
the starting-point of Egyptian history we cannot measure.
Authorities differ by some two thousand years. But
numbers make no clear impression. It is far more
striking to note the movements of history, not in Egypt
alone, but outside its limits, and to remember that the
existence of religions, the sway of empires, and the rule
of races, have taken up but fragments of this vast
interval.
Menes, or Mena, the first mortal king, who stands at
the head of our uncounted reckoning of time, leader of
the roll of thirty dynasties which filled the list of Manetho
c 2
19
was in her decay when the Arabs poured into the country,
and soon ceased to be a town. She had lived before as
the second city of Egypt through the Roman and the
Greek dominion; she had been taken by the Persian and
the Assyrian and the Ethiopian. We go back to the
dawn of Greek history, farther yet to the Exodus when
Israel became a nation, and still we have not reached the
age of the supremacy of Memphis. Still earlier, before
Abraham, we attain at last the long unmeasured period
of the six great lines of Egyptian kings who ruled at
Memphis, and were buried in the Pyramids that overlook
her obliterated site. The space of time from our days to
the starting-point of Egyptian history we cannot measure.
Authorities differ by some two thousand years. But
numbers make no clear impression. It is far more
striking to note the movements of history, not in Egypt
alone, but outside its limits, and to remember that the
existence of religions, the sway of empires, and the rule
of races, have taken up but fragments of this vast
interval.
Menes, or Mena, the first mortal king, who stands at
the head of our uncounted reckoning of time, leader of
the roll of thirty dynasties which filled the list of Manetho
c 2