The long neglected site of Memphis is under study by the Russian Institute for Egyptology in Cairo. Jill Kamil talks to the project director The Russian Institute for Egyptology in Cairo (RIEC) is working at a huge, almost flat ruin field beside the modern village of Mit Rahina, its concession in the area of ancient Memphis. The site consists of three parts: Kom Tuman, Kom Dawbabi and Tell Aziziya. The area is clearly bordered by the village on the west and south, and by palm groves on the northern and eastern edges. "We started work in November 2001, with the geologists in our team first setting out to trace the path of the Nile as it shifted to the east over the millennia from early dynastic times to the Hellenistic period," says Alexi Krol, research fellow of the centre for Egyptology studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "They found that when the Nile reached the elevation known as the palace of Apries, near the village of Mit Rahina, it split into two parts and flowed round it so that an island was formed in the time of Amasis, the Saite Pharaoh who ruled between 570 and 526 BC. At that time the elevation most probably looked somewhat like Sité in Paris or Gezira in Cairo." The once heavily populated city of Memphis, capital of Egypt for a thousand years and an important religious and commercial centre throughout its history, has suffered the ravages of war, fanaticism and time. Its monuments have been torn down, usurped, pillaged, and used as building material. Whatever remained has long been buried beneath the alluvial soil that started to build up in mediaeval times. Each year the Nile flood poured over the land after the Mamlukes (originally slaves trained for service in the Sultan's bodyguard) neglected waterways, canals and dykes during their rule of Egypt. Layer upon layer of soil, between layer upon layer of habitation, led to the remaining ruins of the ancient city being almost totally submerged. Where once stood a mighty metropolis, villagers cultivate date-palm groves and grow crops in the enriched earth. Only the palace of Apries, a type of platform reinforced by mud-brick cells or divisions that were filled with debris, broken pottery, stone chips and domestic rubbish, remained visible. It was topped by a huge structure attributed to Apries, based on crude cartouches bearing his name on segments of limestone columns and palm capitals that lie scattered on the top. Despite the importance of the site and its continued occupation for thousands of years, only a small part of the central city has ever been excavated -- not more than 12 per cent, in fact. The first comprehensive study was made by Flinders Petrie in 1908-1913. This was followed by several excavations between 1940 and 1956 by the (then) Egyptian Antiquities Service, while the University of Pennsylvania worked at the site in 1954-1955. After that, excavations were sporadic and short- lived. The Survey of Memphis, an Egypt Exploration Society project under the directorship of David Jeffreys, began an initial field survey in 1981-1982, its long-term goal being to draw up a stratified map of ancient Memphis, giving, where possible, ground plans of various structures at different stages of history. Work carried out at the site of Tel Rabia during the 1994-1995 season traced the original wall surrounding Memphis. Between 1982 and 1986, a survey was made of the standing remains of the embalming house of the sacred bulls by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University under field directors Angela Milward and Michael Jones. They cleared the site, found the remains of the oldest of buildings as yet identified -- mud brick structures that may be linked with the inscribed blocks bearing the names of the 21st-Dynasty Pharaoh Sheshonk I and the 26th-Dynasty rulers Necho II and Amasis. The site was meant to be developed into a tourist attraction, but never was. As elsewhere over the area that once marked ancient Memphis, neglect and pillage has been the norm, along with uncontrolled looting. From the very start of the Russian exploration the team ran into trouble, and the subsequent drama took several months of what Krol calls "hot negotiation" and "diplomacy" to resolve. "It was a territorial conflict," he says. "What happened was that, almost simultaneously, a Russian and a Portuguese mission applied for permission to explore the same area under different names. We applied for exploration of Kom Tuman, while the Portuguese asked for a concession of Tel Aziz, the name by which the same area is known to locals. Both concessions were granted. "It was finally decided that the Portuguese concession would extend over the palace of Apries and close surroundings, and that the Russian concession would extend over the rest of the area. In order to identify their territory and screen it off from disturbance, the Portuguese mission erected an iron fence. It cut across a path which traditionally linked parts of the village of Mit Rahina, and it took the local dwellers several months to restore their right of way. Now only pieces of rusty armature remind one of the former border; it was a lesson learned in how not to protect an area," Krol commented. "It is a difficult thing to do -- define and protect an area," he says. "In our case we called on the local inspector of the SCA for extra night guards, and with the help of police and these ghaffirs (guards) we not only put a stop to looting but also to the haphazard deposit of refuse on the archaeological field. Believe me, some parts of the tell looked like a battlefield; it reminded me of a recently-abandoned training ground not far from a site in the Crimea where I once excavated." The core of the Russian team at first consisted of geophysicists from the Moscow State University and comprised 10 specialists in the different branches of geology: geologists, geophysicists, seismologists, palaeogeographers and a specialist in GPS navigation. "We set out to answer several crucial questions, such as how thick was the settlement strata, at what depth was the water table, and most important of all, how much of the earliest settlement had been swept away from the action of the shifting river. The results obtained by the geologists were rewarding. We have at least 12 metres of different cultural strata, and the underground water table lies at a depth of three metres from the surface. That means that for several years we will not need to use a pump during excavation." Krol is fascinated by the history of Memphis: "When Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great and Alexandria was founded, Memphis was not eclipsed by the new capital," he says. "It retained its importance as an economic, political and cultural centre. Under the Ptolemies the city covered some 50 squared kilometres, of which about six lay within the central dykes. The population then could be roughly estimated at 50,000-200,000 people. According to contemporary research, the Ptolemaic palace must have lain close to the palace of Apries, perhaps on Kom Tuman to the west where traces of Ptolemaic buildings were found. "It would be here that the Ptolemies would have been in residence on their visits to Memphis, northwest of the temple of Ptah, where, at least from the reign of Epiphanes in 197 BC, the new Macedonian kings were crowned according to ancient Egyptian rites. Besides a citadel of Apries, the presence of administrative headquarters during the earlier Persian period is suggested by the discovery of Aramaic dockets and seals. If, as suggested both by the Roman geographer Strabo and by our survey of the dykes, this was also the administrative centre of the Ptolemaic city, a clear picture can be formed of what a Ptolemaic polis signified in Egypt. "Beyond the palaces, tapering north for at least a kilometre towards the open and easily watered plains of Aziziya, there stretched the palace gardens. A striking feature of the area, these gardens may be the same as Strabo's grove, through parks and gardens that were probably a feature of Memphis and provided oases of well-watered greenery and shade amid the crowded, dusty streets and living quarters of the city. "After 30 BC when the fleet of Anthony and Cleopatra was sunk at Actium and the Roman empire established its power in Egypt, Memphis still remained important," Krol says. "The Roman garrison was stationed at the city, most probably on Kom Tuman and/or Kom Dawbabi because, on the latter, the remains of reliefs with the depiction of Mithraic cultic scenes were found." These, discovered at the end of the 19th century, were taken to the Egyptian Museum. "Very likely they belong to the Mithras temple situated inside or near the Roman camp since the cult was popular in the Roman army. The city of Memphis was only eclipsed with the foundation of the garrison city of Fustat by the Arabs on the eastern bank of the Nile, and its later development, Al-Qahira." Even an initial and superficial examination of the surface material by the Russian mission "coming from the robber's pits" indicated that the upper layers of the strata date from the Graeco-Roman period. Amphorae shards of all possible types and shapes are scattered over the area. The earliest examples date from the time of the Amasis, when Ionian and Carian mercenaries were moved from the eastern frontier to a new home in Memphis. "Perhaps this move coincided with a change of capital, since Herodotus speaks of Amasis providing a 'guard for himself against the Egyptians', which might well describe the position of a new foreign bodyguard protecting a Saite Pharaoh at the royal palace in Memphis against Egyptians of non-Delta origin," Krol says. Members of the Russian mission are confident that further excavation will reveal the outskirts of the central part of the Ramasside city where stood the Temple of Ptah, which was enlarged and embellished for thousands of years by successive Pharaohs and must once have been a worthy rival to the temple of Amun-Re at Karnak. "By going deeper we hope we will reach the town of the 14th to 17th Dynasties when the northern part of Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos, who subjugated the country for more than a century," Krol says. According to Manetho, the Ptolemaic historian, and other sources, the Hyksos set up their headquarters in Memphis from where they exercised control. In the words of the French scholar Gaston Maspero, ancient Memphis was, to Carians, Lydians, Attic Greeks, Semites, Syrians, Persians and Macedonians, " ...what Cairo has long been for us moderns, the oriental city par excellence, the representation, the living symbol of Egypt". The analogy is apt: Hikaptah, "House of the spirit of Ptah", one of the names of Memphis, gave Egypt its name -- it became Aigyptos in Greek and hence 'Egypt' -- just as, today, the Arabic word for Egypt (Misr) is also the word for Cairo.
