Memphis

The ground here is soft and dark underfoot. It is Nile mud, packed down by centuries of flooding. Palm trees rise on every side, and their fronds rattle in the slightest wind. Somewhere nearby a donkey cart creaks along a village lane. A rooster calls. It is hard to believe that you are standing on the site of one of the oldest capitals on Earth.

This is Memphis. For much of ancient Egyptian history, it was the political and religious heart of the country. Today the site sits beside the modern village of Mit Rahina, a short drive south of Cairo. The great pyramid field of Saqqara lies on the desert edge to the west. That was no accident. Saqqara was the cemetery of this city. The living worked down here in the green valley, and the dead were buried up on the dry plateau above.

The city's beginnings sit somewhere between history and legend. Ancient tradition credits a king called Menes with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt and founding a new capital at this spot. The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the fifth century before Christ, repeated a story that Menes changed the course of the Nile to make room for the city. Historians treat these tales with care. What is clear is that a capital stood here from the very start of the pharaonic state, more than five thousand years ago.

The early Egyptians called the place Ineb-hedj, which means White Walls. The name probably comes from whitewashed walls around a royal fortress or palace. Later, the city took its name from a nearby royal pyramid, called Men-nefer, meaning something like enduring and beautiful. Greek visitors turned Men-nefer into Memphis. Here is the first surprise. A name from this patch of mud and palms travelled across the world, and it now belongs to a city on the Mississippi River in the United States as well.

The second surprise is even bigger. The chief god of Memphis was Ptah, a creator god and the patron of craftsmen. His great temple here was known as Hut-ka-Ptah, the house of the spirit of Ptah. Many scholars believe that the Greeks heard this name and shaped it into Aigyptos. From Aigyptos came the word Egypt. So the name of an entire country may come from one temple that once stood within walking distance of where you are now.

So where is that temple? This is the hard truth of Memphis. Very little of the great city survives above ground. The Nile flooded this plain every year, and layers of silt buried the old streets. Later, when new capitals rose further north, builders came here for ready-cut stone. Much of Memphis was carried away to build medieval Cairo. What remains is scattered, partly buried, and often under the fields and houses of the village.

The heart of today's visit is a small open-air museum. Inside a long covered building lies the reason most people come. It is a colossal limestone statue of Ramesses the Second, one of Egypt's most powerful pharaohs. The statue lies on its back, because its lower legs and base are lost. Even so, it fills the hall. Walk the upper gallery and look down. From above, you see the full scale of the king, stretched out like a giant asleep.

Get close to the face. The carving is fine and calm. Look for the royal headcloth, the curled false beard, and the cartouches carved on the shoulder, chest, and belt. A cartouche is an oval ring that holds a king's name in hieroglyphs. Ramesses liked to put his name everywhere. He even recarved older monuments to claim them as his own. At Memphis, his statues once stood before the temple of Ptah, facing the people who came to worship.

Out in the garden, the second star waits in the sunlight. It is a large sphinx carved from calcite, a pale, honey-coloured stone that Egyptians often called alabaster. It has a lion's body and a king's head. No inscription names its owner with certainty, so experts still debate which pharaoh it shows. In strong sun the stone seems almost to glow. Notice the weathering on one side, where water and time have softened the surface.

Around the sphinx, other pieces lie in the grass and along the paths. There are column fragments, smaller statues, carved blocks, and stone coffins. Some are well labelled, and some are not. Take your time here. Many visitors rush from the colossus to the sphinx and leave. But these smaller stones give a better sense of what Memphis was — a crowded city of temples, workshops, and royal buildings, now reduced to a scatter of fine fragments.

Another part of the site belongs to a sacred animal. The people of Memphis believed that the god Ptah could appear on earth as a living bull, called the Apis bull. When an Apis bull died, priests mummified it with royal care. The remains of an embalming house survive here, with huge calcite tables where the bull's body was prepared. The mummified bulls were then carried up to Saqqara and buried in vast underground galleries known today as the Serapeum.

Memphis kept its importance long after the great pyramid age. Egyptian kings were crowned here for many centuries. Later rulers, including the Greek-speaking Ptolemies, still honoured the temple of Ptah. A priestly decree issued at Memphis in the second century before Christ was copied onto a stone slab in three scripts. Centuries later, that slab was found in the Nile Delta. Today we call it the Rosetta Stone, and it helped scholars finally read hieroglyphs.

Slowly, though, the city faded. Alexandria on the coast took over as the great centre of power and trade. Later, Arab rulers founded new capitals near modern Cairo. Memphis became fields, villages, and quarries for old stone. Archaeologists still work here, and new finds still appear beneath the farmland. Part of the ancient city may lie only a short distance below the soil you are standing on.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment among the palms. Listen to the village around you — the voices, the engines, the birds. People have lived on this ground for more than five thousand years, without a break. The kings and temples are mostly gone, but daily life never left. As you walk back to the road, look west toward the desert edge. On a clear day you may see the pyramids of Saqqara, still watching over their lost city.