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[[File: Lower_Egypt.png|300px250px|thumbnail|left| Map Depicting Ancient Memphis in Relation to Other Important Sites in Lower Egypt]]__NOTOC__Ancient Egyptian Memphis was perhaps the most important city in in the Nile Valley, but it is also , unfortunately, owing to high water tables and a dense population, one of the least excavated ancient Egyptian cities. Memphis served as Egypt’s political capital throughout most of pharaonic history, with the exception of Thebes being the capital in the Eleventh, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth dynasties and List/Iti-Tawy acting the political center in the Twelfth Dynasty, demonstrating that Memphis was among the most enduring and significant cities in the ancient world.

Memphis’s ascent to power happened quite quickly, probably taking place in the First Dynasty not long after the Upper and Lower Egypt were unified around 3100 BC. The kings continued to be buried in the Upper Egyptian city of Abydos, but the bureaucrats migrated north and by the end of the First Dynasty Memphis was the seat of political power in Egypt. As Memphis grew in political prominence, it also became an important religious center. Memphis became the center of the creator god, Ptah, and was also believed to have been where the creation myth is known as the “Memphite Theology” originated. The population migration into Memphis, combined with its growing religious importance, ultimately led to it becoming the largest royal necropolis in the world. The kings of the Old Kingdom used the region as their burial ground, which made it <i>the</i> place for nobles and other important Egyptians to be buried throughout pharaonic history.

Abydos was the religious center of the cult of Osiris, the god of the dead, and it was also where all of the kings of the First Dynasty and the last two kings of the Second Dynasty were interred. <ref> Arnold, Dieter. “Royal Cult Complexes of the Old and Middle Kingdoms.” In <i> Temples of Ancient Egypt.</i> Edited by Byron Shaffer. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 40</ref> These early kings were buried in brick chambers that were set in large pits. A solid block, known as a <i>mastaba</i>, was then placed over the tomb. The early kings certainly had a strong spiritual connection to Abydos, but they were pragmatic enough to know that its location was not conducive to maintaining a stable state. Abydos was too far from the popular Delta and was not much of a city itself, which meant that the early pharaohs had to look north for a new home. So, sometime in the First Dynasty , the capital moved north to Memphis, which was located at the south end of the Delta and close to what many consider the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt.

The details by which Memphis became the political capital of Egypt are somewhat cloudy. There are no extant Egyptian written sources that document when or why Memphis was built, so scholars are left to rely on a combination of Greek/classical sources and archeology. The first century BC Greek historian, Diodorus, claims that the eighth king of Egypt’s First Dynasty built Memphis. Although the eighth king is believed by Egyptologists to have been Qa’a, Diodorus referred to the ruler as “Uchoreus.” A little more than 100 years before Diodorus wrote his history, the third -century Hellenized Egyptian priest, Manetho, wrote an account of Memphis’s origins.

“The priests told me that it was Min, the first king of Egypt, who raised the dam which created Memphis. The river used to flow along the base of the sandy hills on the Libyan border, and this monarch, by damming it up at the bend about a hundred furlongs south of Memphis, drain the original channel and diverted it to a new one half-way halfway between the two lines of the hills.” <ref> Herodotus. <i>The Histories.</i> Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. (London: Penguin, 2003), Book II, 99</ref>

“Then Horus stood over the land. He is the uniter of this land, proclaimed in the great name: Ta-tenen, South-of-his-Wall, Lor of Eternity. The sprouted the two Great Magicians upon his head. He is Horus who arose as king of Upper and Lower Egypt, who united the Two Lands in the Nome of the Wall, the place in which the Two Lands were united. Reed and papyrus were placed on the double door of the House of Ptah. That means Horus and Seth, pacified and united. They fraternized so as to cease quarreling in whatever place they might be, being united in the House of Ptah." <ref> Lichtheim, Miriam, ed. <i> Ancient Egyptian Literature</i>. Volume 1, The Old and Middle Kingdoms. (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), pgsp. 53</ref>

In addition to Memphis being the home of Ptah and his cult, it also served as the largest collective necropolis in the world. Stretching from Giza in the north, the Memphite necropolis included the sites of Abusir, Saqqara, Dashur, and several smaller sites. The Great Pyramids, the sun temples of the Fifth Dynasty, the Serapeum, and the many animal necropolises of the Late Period are also part of this vast city of the dead. The practice of burying the dead on the west bank of the Nile River across from Memphis began in the Second Dynasty, <ref> Lehner, pgs. 78-82</ref> and with the exception of the Twelfth Dynasty and the New Kingdom, most of Egypt’s kings, nobles, and important people were interred in this region. Modern people may see Memphis as a place of death, but since the Egyptians believed in eternal life, they would have viewed the Memphite necropolis much differently.

Few cities in the ancient world, especially the Bronze Age Near East, were as important as Memphis, Egypt. For centuries, Memphis served as Egypt’s political capital and was also a religious center. Memphis rose to prominence after one or more king kings built the city in the First Dynasty, and then it became an important religious center as the center of the Ptah cult and the largest collective necropolis in the ancient world. Memphis successfully fought off challenges by Lisht and Thebes and only fell in importance after the Greeks arrived and built Alexandria.