Memphis: Ancient Capital of Egypt and Its Ruins at Mit Rahina

Memphis was the first capital of unified Egypt, founded according to tradition around 3100 BC at the apex of the Nile Delta. For three thousand years it was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, the home of the creator god Ptah and the administrative heart of the pyramid age. Its scattered ruins at Mit Rahina, south of Cairo, are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Foundation and names

Herodotus, writing in the 5th century BC, reported an Egyptian tradition that Menes founded the city after diverting the Nile with a dyke to create dry land. Whatever the truth of the story, the site made strategic sense: it controlled the narrow valley of Upper Egypt and the wide Delta of Lower Egypt, the two halves joined in the unification of Egypt.

The city’s early name was Ineb-hedj, “White Walls”, perhaps from a whitewashed royal enclosure. In the later Old Kingdom it took the name Men-nefer, “enduring and beautiful”, after the nearby pyramid of King Pepi I; the Greeks turned this into Memphis. The temple of Ptah was called Hut-ka-Ptah, “the enclosure of the spirit of Ptah”, and through the Greek form Aigyptos this probably gave the country its modern name, Egypt.

Capital of the Old Kingdom

During the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom (about 3100 to 2180 BC) Memphis was the seat of the royal court and government. Its cemeteries stretched for some 30 km along the desert edge, from Abu Rawash and Giza through Abusir and Saqqara to Dahshur. The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara and the Great Pyramid of Giza were both built for kings who ruled from Memphis.

The earliest city itself has not been found. The Nile has shifted eastwards over the centuries, and the remains of the Old Kingdom town lie buried beneath metres of silt and the modern water table.

City of Ptah and the Apis bull

Memphis was the cult centre of Ptah, god of craftsmen, worshipped with the lioness goddess Sekhmet and their son Nefertem. A text known as the Memphite Theology, copied on the Shabaka Stone in the British Museum around 700 BC under King Shabaka, presents Ptah as the creator who brought the world into being through thought and speech.

The city was also home to the Apis bull, a living sacred bull regarded as an image of Ptah. When an Apis died it was embalmed on huge stone tables in Memphis and buried in the underground galleries of the Serapeum of Saqqara.

Later history

Although Thebes became the religious and often the political capital in the Middle and New Kingdoms, Memphis remained a great administrative, military and trading city. Ramesses II (reigned about 1279 to 1213 BC) added temples and colossal statues, and his son Khaemwaset served as high priest of Ptah.

Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian conquerors all took Memphis as the key to Egypt. The Ptolemaic kings were crowned there, and the priestly decree of 196 BC inscribed on the Rosetta Stone was issued at Memphis. The founding of Alexandria in 331 BC drew trade and government to the coast, and after the Arab conquest of 639-642 the new capital at Fustat and later Cairo were partly built with stone taken from the ruins.

The ruins at Mit Rahina

Today Memphis is a landscape of palm groves, villages and low mounds. Its open-air museum shelters a colossal limestone statue of Ramesses II, about 10 metres long as it lies, discovered in 1820. Nearby stands a calcite sphinx about 8 metres long, probably of the New Kingdom. A second colossus of Ramesses II was moved to central Cairo in 1955 and now stands in the Grand Egyptian Museum.

Excavations by Flinders Petrie between 1908 and 1913 and the Survey of Memphis by the Egypt Exploration Society since 1981 have mapped the temple of Ptah, palaces and the shifting course of the river. In 1979 Memphis and its necropolis were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Timeline

• c. 3100 BC: Memphis founded, by tradition under Menes.
• c. 2670 BC: Djoser builds the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, west of the city.
• c. 2300 BC: The name Men-nefer, from Pepi I’s pyramid, comes into use.
• c. 1250 BC: Ramesses II erects colossal statues at the temple of Ptah.
• 332 BC: Alexander the Great takes Egypt; Memphis welcomes him.
• 196 BC: The Memphis decree later known from the Rosetta Stone is issued.
• 1820: The fallen colossus of Ramesses II is discovered.
• 1979: Memphis and its necropolis become a World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Memphis was where the Egyptian state was run in its formative centuries, and its necropolis holds the most famous pyramids on Earth. Even its name lives on in the word Egypt, a reminder of how central this city was to the identity of the ancient kingdom.