Memphis and Aswan

This morning we went to the open air museum in Memphis about 15 miles south of Cairo. Not to bore you but Memphis was the capital (or co-capital with Thebes and later Alexandria) throughout the ancient period; that is, it was the administrative center for more than 2,500 years. It has totally disappeared. Although Alexander the Great was crowned Pharaoh in Memphis, his successors diminished the use of Memphis as a political capital in favor of Alexandria. The stones of the temples were used as a quarry to build Fustat (Old Cairo) and Cairo and the rest of the buildings were made of mud brick. In any event beginning in the Christian period and continuing through Muslim times, the city was almost entirely abandoned and this process was exacerbated by the changing course of the Nile which is now quite a distance from the site of Memphis. Memphis is no more!

There is precious little there other than some statuary. The two most famous pieces are a large alabaster Sphinx and a colossal statute of Rameses II (Rameses the Great). The Rameses was found buried under sand and is now presented lying down so visitors can see it from above in a structure built to house it. It appears to me to be roughly the size of Thomas Jefferson in his memorial in Washington. Big.

We flew to Aswan and are staying in a hotel on Elephantine Island. To those of you who are familiar with the Brooklyn Museum collection, I need say no more about an important (and almost unbelievable because of the date) connection. To those of you who have no idea what I mean, check out Elephantine Papyri in Wikipedia (or better yet buy the Brooklyn Museum monograph); you will be astonished. I am sure this bit of arcane history will not be covered on the tour but nevertheless…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantine_papyri

The link may be different in the US