wanted on the other side, in order to be a
water-bulwark against an Asiatic invader. The founder, therefore, before
building his city, undertook a gigantic work. He raised a great
embankment across the natural course of the river; and, forcing it from
its bed, made it enter a new channel and run midway down the valley, or,
if anything, rather towards its eastern side. He thus obtained the
bulwark against invasion that he required, and he had an ample site for
his capital between the new channel of the stream and the foot of the
western hills.

It is undoubtedly strange to hear of such a work being constructed at
the very dawn of history, by a population that was just becoming a
people. But in Egypt precocity is the rule--a Minerva starts full-grown
from the head of Jove. The pyramids themselves cannot be placed very
long after the supposed reign of Menes; and the engineering skill
implied in the pyramids is simply of a piece with that attributed to the
founder of Memphis.

In ancient times a city was nothing without a temple; and the capital
city of the most religious people in the world could not by any
possibility lack that centre of civic life which its chief temple always
was to every ancient town. Philosophy must settle the question how it
came to pass that religious ideas were in ancient times so universally
prevalent and so strongly pronounced. History is only bound to note the
fact. Coeval, then, with the foundation of the city of Menes was,
according to the tradition, the erection of a great temple to
Phthah--"the Revealer," the Divine artificer, by whom the world and man
were created, and the hidden thought of the remote Supreme Being was
made manifest to His creatures, Phthah's temple lay within the town, and
was originally a _naos_ or "cell," a single building probably not unlike
that between the Sphinx's paws at Ghizeh, situated within a _temenos_,
or "sacred enclosure," watered from the river, and no doubt planted with
trees. Like the medieval cathedrals, the building grew with the lapse
of centuries, great kings continually adding new structures to the main
edifice, and enriching it with statuary and painting. Herodotus saw it
in its full glory, and calls it "a vast edifice, very worthy of
commemoration." Abd-el-Latif saw it in its decline, and notes the beauty
of its remains: "the great monolithic shrine of breccia verde, nine
cubits high, eight long, and seven broad, the doors which swung on
hinges o