Memphis & Saqqara
30 km Southwest of Central Cairo
Open daily 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

The ruins of Memphis give but a little idea of the glory of the world's first imperial city. It is believed that the city was founded around 3100 BC by Menes, who united the southern and northern regions of Egypt and was the first pharaoh to wear the double crown of Upper and lower Egypt. At the spot where the Nile valley met the Nile delta, Menes founded his new capital, which came be one of the most renowned cities of the ancient world.
 

Anciently the city was named Ineb-Hedj; Memphis is the Greek translation for it's present name: Menfe. What is presently known of Memphis is less a result of the city's own historical records than of its necropolises and references to it in inscriptions from other regions in Egypt.

Much of the structures of ancient Memphis have been eaten away by the valley's damp soil. Today, Memphis is a pleasant open-air museum of scattered relics of the city's history. A limestone Colossus of Ramses II, more than ten meters high, housed in a concrete pavilion, together with a sphinx carved from a single block of alabaster four and a half meters high and eight meters long are most of what remains of the city's monuments. Both statues are believed to have stood in front of the temple of Ptah, the principle pagan god worshipped in Memphis, which was the city's most impressive building but is now long destroyed. The museum garden also houses more statues of Ramses II, the sarcophagus of Amenhotep and the alabaster beds on which the sacred Apis bulls were mummified before being placed in the Serapeum at Saqqara.

Since the founding of Memphis, Saqqara has served as one of the necropolises, or burial grounds, for kings and nobles. Stretching for 8 kilometers, Saqqara is the largest royal burial ground in Egypt: deceased pharaohs and family members where transported from Memphis to be enshrined in the necropolis which was believed to be protected by the god Soqar, hence its name.

Saqqara is most famous for the Step Pyramid of King Zoser's (also 'Djoser') of the 3rd dynasty, who chose Saqqara as the site for his funerary complex, which was the first ever constructed of stone. Zoser's Step Pyramid is the oldest standing large stone structure in the world and the oldest of Egypt's pyramids. The Step Pyramid (and funerary complex) was designed by the architect Imhotep, who was later worshiped as a god for his exceptional work.

The ruling monarchs of later dynasties built limestone-cased, rubble filled pyramids, and inside them they inscribed the earliest of the pyramid texts. Their nobles constructed huge mastabas near their rulers, and at Saqqara they commissioned some of the finest Old Kingdom drawings. A number of small pyramids and tombs of these kings and nobles are still standing in Saqqara.

If you are looking for a place which provides excellent insight into ancient Egypt, with less of a crowd and a bit of peace and quiet, visit Memphis and Saqqara.