polis became the
chief focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the
rich plains and the marshes of the Delta. Its colleges of priests had
collected, condensed, and arranged the principal myths of the local
religions; the Ennead to which it gave conception would never have
obtained the popularity which we must acknowledge it had, if its princes
had not exercised, for at least some period, an actual suzerainty over
the neighbouring plains. It was around Heliopolis that the kingdom of
Lower Egypt was organized; everything there bore traces of Heliopolitan
theories--the protocol of the kings, their supposed descent from Ra, and
the enthusiastic worship which they offered to the sun. The Delta, owing
to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited for government from
one centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow, tortuous, and stretching
like a thin strip on either bank of the river, did not lend itself to so
complete a unity. It, too, represented a single kingdom, having the reed
and the lotus for its emblems; but its component parts were more loosely
united, its religion was less systematized, and it lacked a well-placed
city to serve as a political and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained
schools of theologians who certainly played an important part in the
development of myths and dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was
never widely felt. In the south, Siut disputed their supremacy, and
Heracleopolis stopped their road to the north. These three cities
thwarted and neutralized one another, and not one of them ever succeeded
in obtaining a lasting authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two
kingdoms had its own natural advantages and its system of government,
which gave to it a particular character, and stamped it, as it were,
with a distinct personality down to its latest days. The kingdom
of Upper Egypt was more powerful, richer, better populated, and was
governed apparently by more active and enterprising rulers. It is to
one of the latter, Mini or Menes of Thinis, that tradition ascribes
the honour of having fused the two Egypts into a single empire, and of
having inaugurated the reign of the human dynasties. Thinis figured in
the historic period as one of the least of Egyptian cities. It barely
maintained an existence on the left bank of the Nile, if not on the
exact spot now occupied by Girgeh, at least only a short distance from
it.[*]

* The site of Thinis is not yet satisfactorily ide