And this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities--a few huge rubbish-heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name! One looks round and tries in vain to realize the lost splendors of the place. Where is the Memphis that King Mena came from Thinis to found--the Memphis of Ouenephes, and Khufa, and Khafra, and all the early kings who built their pyramid-tombs in the adjacent desert? Where is the Memphis of Herodotus, of Strabo, of Abd-el-Latîf? Where are those stately ruins which, even in the middle ages, extended over a space estimated at “half a day’s journey in every direction”? One can hardly believe that a great city ever flourished on this spot, or understand how it should have been effaced so utterly. Yet here it stood--here where the grass is green, and the palms are growing, and the Arabs build their hovels on the verge of the inundation. The great colossus marks the site of the main entrance to the Temple of Ptah. It lies where it fell, and no man has moved it. That tranquil sheet of palm-fringed back-water, beyond which we see the village of Mitrâhîneh and catch a distant glimpse of the pyramids of Ghîzeh, occupies the basin of a vast artificial lake excavated by Mena. The very name of Memphis survives in the dialect of the fellah, who calls the place of the mounds Tell Monf[20]--just as Sakkârah fossilizes the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Memphite Osiris. No capital in the world dates so far back as this or kept its place in history so long. Founded four thousand years before our era, it beheld the rise and fall of thirty-one dynasties; it survived the rule of the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman; it was, even in its decadence, second only to Alexandria in population and extent; and it continued to be inhabited up to the time of the Arab invasion. It then became the quarry from which Fostât (old Cairo) was built; and as the new city rose on the eastern bank the people of Memphis quickly abandoned their ancient capital to desolation and decay. Still a vast field of ruins remained. Abd-el-Latîf, writing at the commencement of the thirteenth century, speaks with enthusiasm of the colossal statues and lions, the enormous pedestals, the archways formed of only three stones, the bas-reliefs and other wonders that were yet to be seen upon the spot. Marco Polo, if his wandering tastes had led him to the Nile, might have found some of the palaces and temples of Memphis still standing; and Sandys, who in A.D. 1610 went at least as far south of Cairo as Kafr el Iyat, says that “up the river for twenty miles space there was nothing but ruines.” Since then, however, the very “ruines” have vanished; the palms have had time to grow; and modern Cairo has doubtless absorbed all the building material that remained from the middle ages.