The Egypt of the Hebrews and Herodotos

by A. H. Sayce

To Menes is ascribed the building of Memphis, the capital of the united kingdom. He is said to have raised the great dyke which Linant de Bellefonds identifies with that of Kosheish near Kafr el-Ayyât, and thereby to have diverted the Nile from its ancient channel under the Libyan plain. On the ground that he thus added to the western bank of the river his new capital was erected.

Memphis is the Greek form of the old Egyptian Men-nefer or “Good Place.” The final r was dropped in Egyptian pronunciation at an early date, and [pg 003] thus arose the Hebrew forms of the name, Moph and Noph, which we find in the Old Testament,[1] while “Memphis” itself—Mimpi in the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria—has the same origin. Another name by which it went in old Egyptian times was Anbu-hez, “the white wall,” from the great wall of brick, covered with white stucco, which surrounded it, and of which traces still remain on the northern side of the old site. Here a fragment of the ancient fortification still rises above the mounds of the city; the wall is many feet thick, and the sun-dried bricks of which it is formed are bonded together with the stems of palms.

In the midst of the mounds is a large and deep depression, which is filled with water during the greater part of the year. It marks the site of the sacred lake, which was attached to every Egyptian temple, and in which the priests bathed themselves and washed the vessels of the sanctuary. Here, not long ago, lay the huge colossus of limestone which represented Ramses ii. of the nineteenth dynasty, and had been presented by the Egyptian Khedive to the British Government. But it was too heavy and unwieldy for modern engineers to carry across the sea, and it was therefore left lying with its face prone in the mud and water of the ancient lake, a prey to [pg 004] the first comer who needed a quarry of stone. It was not until after the English occupation of Egypt that it was lifted out of its ignoble position by Major Bagnold and placed securely in a wooden shed. While it was being raised another colossus of the same Pharaoh, of smaller size but of better workmanship, was discovered, and lifted beyond the reach of the inundation.

The two statues once stood before the temple of the god Ptah, whom the Greeks identified with their own deity Hephæstos, for no better reason than the similarity of name. The temple of Ptah was coeval with the city of Memphis itself. When Menes founded Memphis, he founded the temple at the same time. It was the centre and glory of the city, which was placed under the protection of its god. Pharaoh after Pharaoh adorned and enlarged it, and its priests formed one of the most powerful organisations in the kingdom.

The temple of Ptah, the Creator, gave to Memphis its sacred name. This was Hâ-ka-Ptah, “the house of the double (or spiritual appearance) of Ptah,” in which Dr. Brugsch sees the original of the Greek Aigyptos.

But the glories of the temple of Ptah have long since passed away. The worship of its god ceased for ever when Theodosius, the Roman Emperor, [pg 005] closed its gates, and forbade any other religion save the Christian to be henceforth publicly professed in the empire. Soon afterwards came the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Memphis was deserted; and the sculptured stones of the ancient shrine served to build the palaces and mosques of the new lords of the country. Fostât and Cairo were built out of the spoils of the temple of Ptah. But the work of destruction took long to accomplish. As late as the twelfth century, the Arabic writer 'Abd el-Latîf describes the marvellous relics of the past which still existed on the site of Memphis. Colossal statues, the bases of gigantic columns, a chapel formed of a single block of stone and called “the green chamber”—such were some of the wonders of ancient art which the traveller was forced to admire.

The history of Egypt, as we have seen, begins with the record of an engineering feat of the highest magnitude. It is a fitting commencement for the history of a country which has been wrested by man from the waters of the Nile, and whose existence even now is dependent on the successful efforts of the engineer. Beyond this single record, the history of Menes and his immediate successors is virtually a blank. No dated monuments of the first dynasty have as yet been discovered. It may be, as many Egyptologists think, that the Sphinx is older than [pg 006] Menes himself; but if so, that strange image, carved out of a rock which may once have jutted into the stream of the Nile, still keeps the mystery of its origin locked up in its breast. We know that it was already there in the days of Khephrên of the fourth dynasty; but beyond that we know nothing.

Of the second dynasty a dated record still survives. Almost the first gift received by the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was the lintel-stone of an ancient Egyptian tomb, brought from Saqqârah, the necropolis of Memphis, by Dr. Greaves at the end of the seventeenth century. When, more than a century later, the hieroglyphics upon it came to be read, it was found that it had belonged to the sepulchre of a certain Sheri who had been the “prophet” of the two Pharaohs Send and Per-ab-sen. Of Per-ab-sen no other record remains, but the name of Send had long been known as that of a king of the second dynasty.

The rest of Sheri's tomb, so far as it has been preserved, is now in the Gizeh Museum. Years after the inscription on the fragment at Oxford had been deciphered, the hinder portion of the tomb was discovered by Mariette. Like the lintel-stone in the Ashmolean Museum, it is adorned with sculptures and hieroglyphics. Already, we learn from it, the hieroglyphic system of writing was complete, the [pg 007] characters being used not only to denote ideas and express syllables, but alphabetically as well. The name of Send himself is spelt in the letters of the alphabet. The art of the monument, though not equal to that which prevailed a few generations later, is already advanced, while the texts show that the religion and organisation of the empire were already old. In the age of the second dynasty, at all events, we are far removed from the beginnings of Egyptian civilisation.

With Snefru, the first king of the fourth dynasty, or, according to another reckoning, the last king of the third, we enter upon the monumental history of Egypt. Snefru's monuments are to be found, not only in Egypt, but also in the deserts of Sinai. There the mines of copper and malachite were worked for him, and an Egyptian garrison kept guard upon the Bedouin tribes. In Egypt, as has now been definitely proved by Professor Petrie's excavations, he built the pyramid of Medûm, one of the largest and most striking of the pyramids. Around it were ranged the tombs of his nobles and priests, from which have come some of the most beautiful works of art in the Gizeh Museum.