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Memphis, Heliopolis, and Thebes represent the three chief forms of the older Egyptian worship, i.e. of Ptah at Memphis, of Atum or Tumu (the Sun) at Heliopolis, and Amen-Ra at Thebes.

Memphis perhaps was founded by Merpeba, the sixth king of the First Dynasty, who was combined with Mena the first king (King and Hall, pp. 91-3). Its age was proverbial in Egypt. Even when, under the ‘new Kingdom’, Thebes became the capital, M. was a second capital. Its ruins were largely used for building Cairo, about fourteen miles to the south of which town it lies, on the left bank of the Nile, under the rubbish heaps of Bedrashēn.

Thebes. The usual Egyptian name of the town was Nu, ‘the town’ i.e. of Amen-Ra (cf. Hebrew No, Jer. xlvi. 25, and NoAmon, Nahum iii. 8); the Greek name is from the less common Apet. Thebes first became a royal residence under the eleventh Dynasty. It remained important till the seventh century B.C., when it was sacked by the Assyrians; from this it never recovered. Its most important temple was that of Amen-Ra at Karnak; H. (c. 143 nn.) calls it a temple of Zeus.

Heliopolis. Its sacred name was House of Ra, i.e. the Sun-God; it is the Hebrew On. Its ruins are near Matarieh, which is six miles NNE. of Cairo, and about four miles E. of the Nile; when H. speaks (9. 1) of the ἀνάπλοος from Heliopolis to Thebes, he is writing loosely. Heliopolis was important as a religious, and not as a political, centre. H. rightly speaks of its inhabitants as ‘most skilled in tradition’ (λογιώτατοι); from it were said to have come the teachers of Pythagoras, Solon, and Plato. Strabo (806) describes it as a seat of learning, though in his day it was only a show-place.

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