The new city received from its founder the name of Men-nefer—­“the Good Abode.”  It was also known as Ei-Ptah—­“the House of Phthah.”  From the former name came the prevailing appellations—­the “Memphis” of the Greeks and Romans, the “Moph” of the Hebrews, the “Mimpi” of the Assyrians, and the name still given to the ruins, “Tel-Monf.”  It was indeed a “good abode”—­watered by an unfailing stream, navigable from the sea, which at once brought it supplies and afforded it a strong protection, surrounded on three sides by the richest and most productive alluvium, close to quarries of excellent stone, warm in winter, fanned by the cool northern breezes in the summer-time, within easy reach of the sea, yet not so near as to attract the cupidity of pirates.  Few capitals have been more favourably placed.  It was inevitable that when the old town went to ruins, a new one should spring up in its stead.  Memphis still exists, in a certain sense, in the glories of the modern Cairo, which occupies an adjacent site, and is composed largely of the same materials.

The Egyptians knew no more of their first king than that he turned the course of the Nile, founded Memphis, built the nucleus of the great temple of Phthah, and “was devoured by a hippopotamus.”  This last fact is related with all due gravity by Manetho, notwithstanding that the hippopotamus is a graminivorous animal, one that “eats grass like an ox” (Job xi. 15).  Probably the old Egyptian writer whom he followed meant that M’na at last fell a victim to Taourt, the Goddess of Evil, to whom the hippopotamus was sacred, and who was herself figured as a hippopotamus erect.  This would be merely equivalent to relating that he succumbed to death.  Manetho gave him a reign of sixty-two years.

The question is asked by the modern critics, who will take nothing on trust, “Have we in Menes a real Egyptian, a being of flesh and blood, one who truly lived, breathed, fought, built, ruled, and at last died?  Or are we still dealing with a phantom, as much as when we spoke of Seb, and Thoth, and Osiris, and Set, and Horus?” The answer seems to be, that we cannot tell.  The Egyptians believed in Menes as a man; they placed him at the head of their dynastic lists; but they had no contemporary monument to show inscribed with his name.  A name like that of Menes is found at the beginning of things in so many nations, that on that account alone the word would be suspicious; in Greece it is Minos, in Phrygia Manis, in Lydia Manes, in India Menu, in Germany Mannus.  And again, the name of the founder is so like that of the city which he founded, that another suspicion arises—­Have we not here one of the many instances of a personal name made out of a local one, as Nin or Ninus from Nineveh (Ninua), Romulus from Roma, and the like?  Probably we shall do best to acquiesce in the judgment of Dr. Birch:  “Menes must be placed among those founders of monarchies whose personal existence a severe and enlightened criticism doubts or denies.”