3. At Mem|)his was the reputed burial-place of Isis (Diod. Sic. i, 22) ; it had also a temple to that " m\Tiad- named" divinity, which Herodotus (ii, 176) describes as " a vast structure, well worthy of notice," but inferior to that consecrated to her iu Busiris, a chief city of her worship (ii, 59).
Herodotus describes "a beautiful and richly -orna- mented enclosure," situated upon the south side of the temple of Ptah, which was sacred to Proteus, a native Jlemphitic king. Within this enclosure there was a temple to "the foreign Venus" (Astarte?), concerning which the historian narrates a myth connected with the Grecian Helen. In this enclosure was "the Tyrian camp" (ii, 112). A temple of Ra or Phre, the Sun, and a temple of the Cabiri, complete the enumeration of the sacred buildings of Memphis.
4. The necropolis of IMemphis has escaped the de- struction that has obliterated almost all traces of the city, partly from its being beyond the convenient reach of the inhabitants of the IVIoslem capitals, partly from the unrivalled massive solidity of its chief edifices. This necropolis, consisting of pyramids, was on a scale of gran- deur corresponding with the city itself. The "city of the pyramids" is a title of Memphis in the hieroglyph- ics upon the monuments. The great field or plain of the pyramids lies wholly upon the western bank of the Nile, and extends from Abu-Koesh, a little to the north- west of Cairo, to JMeydftm, about forty miles to the south, and thence in a south-westerly direction about twenty-five miles farther, to the pyramids of Howara and of Biahmil in the Payum. Lepsius regards the " pyramid fields of Memphis" as a most important testi- mony to the civilization of Egypt {Letters, Bohn. p. 25; also Chronolof/ie der A er/i/pter, vol. i). These royal pyr- amids, with tile subterranean halls of Apis, and numer- ous tombs of public oflicers erected on tlic plain or ex- cavated in the adjacent hills, gave to Jlemjihis the pre-eminence which it enjoyed as " the haven of the blessed."
The pyramids that belong to Memphis extend along the low edge f)f the Libyan range, and form four groups —those of El-<ibizeh, Abu-Sir, Sakkarah, and Dahshilr — all so named from a neighboring town or village. The principal pyramids of EMihizeh— those called the First or (Jreal. Second, and Third— are respectively the tombs of Khufu or Shufu, the Cheops of Herodotus and Supliis I of Manetho, of the 4th dynasty; of Khafra or Shafra, Cephren (Herod.), of the 5th? and of Mcnkaura, ^Mycer- inus or Mencheres of the 4th. The (ireat Pyramid has a base measuring 733 feet square, and a perpemiicular height of 456 feet, having lost about twenty-five feet of its original height, which must have been at least 480 feet (Mr. Lane, in ^Irs. Poole's Kiifjlifhiromdn in Kffypt, ii, 121, 125). It is of solid stone, except a low core of rock, and a very small space allowed for chambers and passages leading to them. The Second Pyramid is not far inferior to this in size. Next in order come the two stone pyramids of DahshAr. The rest are much smaller. In the Dahshur group are two built of crude brick, the only examples in the Menipbitic necropolis. The whole number that can now be traced is upwards of thirty, but Lepsius supposes that anciently there were about sixty, including those south of Dahshur, the last of which are as far as the Faiyum, about sixty miles above the site
MEMPHIS
15
MEMUCAN
of Memphis by the course of the river. The principal p\-ramids in the Memphitic necropolis are twenty in number, the pyramid of Abil-Koesh, the three chief pyramids of El-Ghizeh, the three of AbCl-Slr, the nine of Sakkarah, and the four of Dahshur. The "pyra- mids" built by Venephes near Cocliome may have been in the groups of Abii-Sir, for the part of the necropolis where the Serapsum lay was called in Egyptian kem- K.v or K\-KEM,also KEM or KEJii,as Brugsch has shown, remarking on its probable identity with Cochome (((< sup. i, 240, Nos. 1121, 1122, 1123, tab. xliii).
The pyramids were tombs of kings, and possibly of members of royal families. Ai-ound them were the tombs of subjects, of which the oldest were probably in general contemporaneous with the king who raised each pyramid. The private tombs were either built upon the rock or excavated, wherever it presented a suitable face in which a grotto could be cut, and in either case the mummies were deposited in chambers at the foot of deep pits. Sometimes these pits were not guarded by the upper structure or grotto, though probably they were then originally protected by crude brick walls. A curi- ous inquiry is suggested by the circumstance that the Egyptians localized in the neighborhood of Memphis those terrestrial scenes which tliey supposed to symbol- ize the geography of the hidden world, and that in these the Greeks found the first ideas of their own poetical form of the more precise belief of the older race, of the Acherusian Lake, the Ferry, Charon, and the "Meads of Asphodel," but this captivating subject cannot be here pursued (see Brugsch, i, 240, 241, 242). See Pyra- mids.
V. Biblical Notices.— The references to Memphis in the Bible are wholly of the period of the kings. Many have thought that the land of Goshen lay not very far from this city, and that the Pharaohs who protected the Israelites, as well as their oppressors, ruled at Memphis. The indications of Scripture seem, however, to point to the valley through which ran the canal of the Red Sea, the Wadi-t-Tumeyhit of the present inhabitants of Egypt, as the old land of Goshen, and to Zoan, or Tanis, as the capital of the oppressors, if not also of the Phara- ohs who protected the Israelites. A careful examina- tion of the narrative of the events that preceded the Exodus seems indeed to put any city not in the eastern- most portion of the Delta wholly out of the question. See Goshen.