350 
Their History begins with Menes. 
The authentic history of Egypt commences with Menes, or, 
more correctly, Mena, who has achieved for himself a name 
imperishable so long as the world endures. He was born 
at Teni, near Abydos, some little distance from the Nile, 
towards the Libyan mountains. The remembrance of these cities 
- # V 
alone remains, marked by a vast necropolis and splendid 
ruins of many sanctuaries, which are found on the border of 
the desert at the place called Harabat-el-Madfouneh by the 
modern inhabitants of this country.* * * § 
Mena appears to have been a monarch who lived in royal 
luxury and sumptuous splendour. He is said to have been the 
first who regulated the service of the temples and the worship 
of the gods. Perhaps the gratitude of the priesthood has led 
to the exaltation of his name. There is no reason to suppose 
that he was the leader of the immigration into Egypt of the 
nation from its previous quarters in the East. Probably the 
name Mitzraim, preserved in the Arabic Misr, is of still earlier 
date.f It was Mena who founded the capital of the old 
empire, after having changed the course of the river Nile, 
which used to run towards the Libyan chain, and by a gigantic 
dyke| forced it to flow in its present course towards the east. 
The conception and the execution alike raise our admiration, 
and show how far removed from the savage state were the men 
of those early days of Egypt’s history. 
The name given to the city was Men-nofer (“the good 
station”), changed into Memphis afterwards, and still retained 
by faithful tradition in the appellation Tel-monf (the Heap of 
Monf), given to the heap of rubbish marking the place of the 
old city .§ The grand Temple of Ptah was the centre of the 
city, and was still existing in the Middle Ages, in such a state 
as to excite the admiration of the Arab writer Abd-ul-Lalif, in 
the thirteenth century of our era, who thus depicts the scene : — 
“ Notwithstanding the immense extent of this city, and its 
* Brugsch, Hist. d’Egyptc, chap. v. 
f Sanchoniatho calls Isiris (Mitzraim) the brother of Chna (Xva) 
(Canaan), agreeing in this with Genesis x., and calls him the inventor of the 
three letters (rwv rpuov ypapyanav tvptr >)<;), probably of the three modes of 
writing, — the hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. 
+ According to M. Linant, the great dyke of Cocheiche, which is at 
present utilized to allow the waters of the inundation “ to flow into Lower 
Egypt, or into the Nile, as is most needed.” 
§ Noph, or Moph ; in the Bible (see Smith’s Diet., e.g. Hos. ix. G , — North 
shall bury them). “ Its burial-ground, stretching for twenty miles along the 
edge of the Libyan desert, greatly exceeds that of any other Egyptian town. 
