e
Libyan side. Menes, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to
the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the
river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain
ranges.

"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 atte