Memphis and its pyramids · Early Dynastic, Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, Third Intermediate, Late Period, Ptolemaic
Ancient name: Mennefer; earlier Inbu-hedj, "the White Walls"
Egypt's capital for much of its history and the city of the god Ptah.
Later Egyptians said that Menes, the first king, founded the city at the meeting point of Upper and Lower Egypt, the "Balance of the Two Lands". Its early name was Inbu-hedj, "the White Walls". The later name Mennefer ("enduring and beautiful") came from the pyramid town of Pepi I at nearby Saqqara, and the Greeks made it Memphis.
Memphis was the seat of government in the Old Kingdom and stayed one of Egypt's great cities through the New Kingdom and after, even when the kings lived elsewhere. Its largest temple was the house of Ptah. One name for that temple, ḥwt-kꜣ-ptḥ ("the mansion of the ka of Ptah"), is probably where the Greek name Aigyptos, "Egypt", comes from.
Almost all of the city lies under fields, palm groves and the modern village; its mud-brick houses melted back into the floodplain, and its stone was carried off. The pyramids and tombs of Giza, Saqqara and Dahshur, on the desert edge to the west, are its cemeteries.
In the open-air museum at Mit Rahina lie a limestone colossus of Ramesses II, about 10 m long, and a large calcite sphinx whose king is not named (scholars debate whether it shows Amenhotep II or another 18th Dynasty ruler). A second colossus of Ramesses from the site stood in a Cairo square from 1955 and now stands in the Grand Egyptian Museum.
2 short, well-known texts from Memphis, each with its transliteration (the Egyptian sounds in Latin letters) and a translation. Tap Sign by sign to see what each sign is and how it is read. Royal names are drawn in their cartouches.
Where: On the temple remains and on statues and stelae from Memphis.
Spelled with three sound signs, p, t and ḥ, and the seated-god sign. Memphis was the city of Ptah, and the Memphite account of creation said he made the world by thinking it in his heart and speaking it with his tongue (when that text was composed is debated).
Reading: The standard spelling; the Wikipedia article "Ptah".
Where: Carved on the shoulder, chest and belt of the fallen colossus in the Mit Rahina museum.
Kings carved their two cartouche names on their statues, like a signature. Ra's sun disk is written first out of honor; the seated goddess with a feather is Maat, "truth and right order".
Reading: The standard reading (Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar (3rd ed., 1957), Excursus A on the royal titulary); the Wikipedia article "Ramesses II".
Dates follow Shaw, ed., The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2000); before 664 BC they are approximate. Readings are the standard ones in the sources named under each inscription; translations are Teddy Rook Book's own. The hieroglyphs are drawn in the site's font, TRB Hieroglyphs, so their shapes are simplified; where an inscription's arrangement or signs can't be shown faithfully, the card says so.