There was more than one Pa-Usar or Temple of Osiris in Lower Egypt. Next to that in the Busirite nome, the most famous was that of the Ur-Mer or the bull Mnêvis, in the environs of Heliopolis. This latter Herodotos would have seen when he paid his visit to the city of the Sun-god, and this too was near Memphis, where the Karians lived.
There was yet another Busiris a little to the north of Memphis itself. According to Pliny, its inhabitants made their living by climbing the pyramids for the amusement of strangers, like the Bedouin of Gizeh to-day. Its name has been preserved in the village and pyramids of Abusir. But neither the Busiris of Memphis nor the Busiris of Heliopolis was “in the centre of the Delta,” and it would seem that in this instance also Herodotos is either quoting from other travellers or is mixing their experiences with his own. With the Busiris of Memphis and the Busiris of Heliopolis he was doubtless acquainted: with the Busiris of the middle Delta we must conclude he was not. Hence his scanty notice of the festival that was celebrated there; hence also his reference to the Karian settlers in Memphis and their religious ceremonies. We must remember that Herodotos was not the first Greek tourist in Egypt, and that he too had his _Murray_ and his _Baedeker_ like the tourist of to-day.
We have followed Herodotos in his travels through the Delta, have seen him make his way from Kanôpos and Naukratis to Memphis and back again to Pelusium, and it is now time to accompany him through Memphis itself and the Fayyûm. There are no longer any uncertain sites to identify; from Memphis southward all is clear and determined.
To the visitor the interest of Memphis centred in its temple of Ptah. It was round the temple that the city had grown up, and as the city had been the capital of the older dynasties, so the temple had been their royal chapel. When the supremacy passed from Memphis to Thebes, it passed also from Ptah the god of Memphis to Amon the god of Thebes.
It is the great temple of Ptah, accordingly, about which Herodotos has most to tell us. Other localities in Memphis, such as the citadel and the palace, the Karian quarter, or “the Tyrian Camp” with its shrine of Ashtoreth, are noticed only incidentally. But the great temple and its monuments are described as fully as was possible for an “impure” foreigner, who was not permitted to enter its inner courts and who was unacquainted with the Egyptian language.