The temple of Ptah, the Creator, gave to Memphis its sacred name. This was Hâ-ka-Ptah, “the house of the double (or spiritual appearance) of Ptah,” in which Dr. Brugsch sees the original of the Greek Aigyptos.
But the glories of the temple of Ptah have long since passed away. The worship of its god ceased for ever when Theodosius, the Roman Emperor, closed its gates, and forbade any other religion save the Christian to be henceforth publicly professed in the empire. Soon afterwards came the Mohammedan conquest of Egypt. Memphis was deserted; and the sculptured stones of the ancient shrine served to build the palaces and mosques of the new lords of the country. Fostât and Cairo were built out of the spoils of the temple of Ptah. But the work of destruction took long to accomplish. As late as the twelfth century, the Arabic writer ’Abd el-Latîf describes the marvellous relics of the past which still existed on the site of Memphis. Colossal statues, the bases of gigantic columns, a chapel formed of a single block of stone and called “the green chamber”—such were some of the wonders of ancient art which the traveller was forced to admire.
The history of Egypt, as we have seen, begins with the record of an engineering feat of the highest magnitude. It is a fitting commencement for the history of a country which has been wrested by man from the waters of the Nile, and whose existence even now is dependent on the successful efforts of the engineer. Beyond this single record, the history of Menes and his immediate successors is virtually a blank. No dated monuments of the first dynasty have as yet been discovered. It may be, as many Egyptologists think, that the Sphinx is older than Menes himself; but if so, that strange image, carved out of a rock which may once have jutted into the stream of the Nile, still keeps the mystery of its origin locked up in its breast. We know that it was already there in the days of Khephrên of the fourth dynasty; but beyond that we know nothing.
Of the second dynasty a dated record still survives. Almost the first gift received by the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was the lintel-stone of an ancient Egyptian tomb, brought from Saqqârah, the necropolis of Memphis, by Dr. Greaves at the end of the seventeenth century. When, more than a century later, the hieroglyphics upon it came to be read, it was found that it had belonged to the sepulchre of a certain Sheri who had been the “prophet” of the two Pharaohs Send and Per-ab-sen. Of Per-ab-sen no other record remains, but the name of Send had long been known as that of a king of the second dynasty.