The very situation of this famous ancient city of Egypt had long been a
subject of learned dispute, till it was accurately ascertained by the
French expedition to Egypt. Numerous heaps of rubbish, of blocks of
granite covered with hieroglyphics and sculptures, of colossal
fragments, scattered over a space three or four leagues in
circumference, marks its site, a few miles south of Metarea or
Heliopolis, at a village called Moniet-Rahinet. According to Herodotus,
the foundation of Memphis was ascribed to Menes, the first king of
Egypt. It was a large, rich, and splendid city, and the second capital
of Egypt. Among its buildings were several magnificent temples, as those
of Phtha, Osiris, Serapis, etc.; its palaces were also remarkable. In
Strabo's time, it was next to Alexandria in size and population.
Edrisi, who visited Memphis in the 12th century, thus describes its
remains then existing: "Notwithstanding the vast extent of this city,
the remote period at which it was built, the attempts made by various
nations to destroy it and to obliterate every trace of it, by removing
the materials of which it was constructed, combined with the decay of
4,000 years, there are yet in it works so wonderful as to confound the
reflecting, and such as the most eloquent could not adequately
describe." Among the works specified by him, are a monolithic temple of
granite, thirteen and a half feet high, twelve long, and seven broad,
entirely covered, within and without, with inscriptions; and colossal
statues of great beauty, one of which was forty-five feet high, carved
out of a single block of red granite. These ruins then extended about
nine miles in every direction.