Of this celebrated city, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, was not less than seven leagues in circumference, and contained a multitude of beautiful temples, not one stone remains to tell the history; even the site on which it stood being disputed. "Is it not astonishing," says Savary, "that the site of the ancient metropolis of Egypt, a city containing magnificent temples and palaces, which art laboured to render eternal, should at present be a subject of dispute among the learned? Pliny removes the difficulty of past doubts--the three grand pyramids, seen by the watermen from all parts, stand on a barren and rocky hill, between Memphis and Delta, one league from the Nile, two from Memphis, and near the village of Busiris." Rennell, however, says, that Memf is on the site of Memphis; since Abulfeda describes it as being a _short_ day's journey from Cairo: Memf being only fourteen road miles from that city. M. Maillet says, "The most probable opinion is, that this superb city was built at the entrance of the town of mummies, at the north of which the pyramids are placed: the prodigious ruins which present themselves in this spot will serve for a long time as proofs of the greatness of that city, of which they are remains, and the incontestible evidences of its true position." Again, he says, that "out of so many superb monuments, &c., there remain only at present some shapeless ruins of broken columns of ruined obelisks, and some other buildings fallen to decay, which one still discovers at the bottom of the lake, when the increase of the Nile is too small to furnish it with its usual supply of water. This circumstance has twice happened during my seventeen years' consulship, particularly in the year 1677, when the surface of the lake sank between eight and nine feet, and discovered at the bottom of this vast reservoir a kind of city, which excited the admiration of every one. This lake can never be dried up, or drawn off again as before; because they have neglected to keep up the canal which served to drain off the water. There are, also, some heaps of ruins in the plain of three leagues in width, that separates the northern from the southern pyramids, and in which this ancient city extended from the borders of the lake towards the Nile eastward. These are the faint traces of so much magnificence."