“Then Menes, the first who was king, having enclosed a space of ground with dikes, founded that town which is still called Memphis:  he then made a lake around it to the north and west, fed by the river; the city he bounded on the east by the Nile.”  The history of Memphis, such as it can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the tradition current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus.

It appears, indeed, that at the outset the site on which it subsequently arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbu-hazu—­the white wall—­which was dependent on Heliopolis and in which Phtah possessed a sanctuary.  After the “white wall” was separated from the Heliopolitan principality to form a nome by itself it assumed a certain importance, and furnished, so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the Thinite.  Its prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sovereigns of the V and VI dynasties fixed on it for their residence; one of them, Papi I, there founded for himself and for his “double” after him, a new town, which he called Minnofiru, from his tomb.  Minnofiru, which is the correct pronunciation and the origin of Memphis, probably signified “the good refuge,” the haven of the good, the burying-place where the blessed dead came to rest beside Osiris.

The people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not fall in with their taste for romantic tales.  They rather despised, as a rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names:  if no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any scruples in inventing one.  The Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies, who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a Princess Memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous Uchoreus; those of preceding ages before the name had become altered thought to find in Minnofiru or “Mini Nofir,” or “Menes the Good,” the reputed founder of the capital of the Delta.  Menes the Good, divested of his epithet, is none other than Menes, the first king of all Egypt, and he owes his existence to a popular attempt at etymology.

The legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the construction of the city, must have originated at a time when Memphis was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government, at latest about the end of the Memphite period.  It must have been an old tradition at the time of the Theban dynasties, since they admitted unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the northern city so marked a superiority over their own country.  When the hero was once created and firmly established in his position, there was little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him as a paragon and an ideal sovereign.