Memphis and its Necropolis – the Pyramid Fields from Giza to Dahshur
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How it came to be
Memphis stood on the west bank of the Nile where the river opens into the Delta, and tradition holds that it was founded around 3000 BC as the capital of a unified Egypt. Legend says King Menes diverted the river with dikes to build it. It was the royal city throughout the Old Kingdom and home to the temple of Ptah, god of creation.
In the desert west of the city, from Giza to Dahshur, lie more than 38 pyramids and over 9,000 rock-cut tombs. The Step Pyramid that the 3rd-Dynasty king Djoser built at Saqqara is considered the first pyramid and the first monumental stone building. Around 2580–2560 BC Khufu raised the Great Pyramid at Giza.
Memphis served as a capital again and again until the Ptolemaic period, but after the Arabs founded Fustat in the 7th century it became a quarry for the new city and disappeared. UNESCO listed the site in 1979.
Travellers who came here
- 1828-10
1828-10 · Memphis (Mit Rahina)He examined the colossus uncovered by Caviglia, about 34½ feet long and lying face down, and from its face and inscriptions identified it as Ramesses II.
1828-10 · SaqqaraHe camped in tents from 4 October. Most decorated tombs had been looted, but in one he recorded a row of birds and five kinds of gazelle carved with their names in hieroglyphs.
1828-10 · GizaOn 7 October seven camels and twenty donkeys carried the party across the desert. He camped by the pyramids for three days, copying reliefs in nearby tombs, and wrote that the pyramids seem to lose height as one approaches them.
- 1867-10
He went to Cairo by rail on 4 October and on the 5th rode donkeys across the Nile to Giza. He climbed the Pyramid of Cheops, went inside it, and saw the Sphinx.
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