establishment of a single monarchy? It is the Thinite Menes, whom the
Theban annalists point out as the ancestor of the glorious Pharaohs of
the XVIII dynasty: it is he also who is inscribed in the Memphite
chronicles, followed by Manetho, at the head of their lists of human
kings, and all Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal
ruler.

It is true that a chief of Thinis may well have borne such a name, and
may have accomplished feats which rendered him famous; but on closer
examination his pretensions to reality disappear, and his personality is
reduced to a cipher.

"This Menes, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with dikes.
For the river formerly followed the sand-hills for some distance on the
Libyan side. Menes, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to
the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the
river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain
ranges.

"Then Menes, the first who was king, having enclosed a space of ground
with dikes, founded that town which is still called Memphis: he then
made a lake around it to the north and west, fed by the river; the city
he bounded on the east by the Nile." The history of Memphis, such as it
can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the
tradition current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus.

It appears, indeed, that at the outset the site on which it subsequently
arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbu-hazu--the white wall--which
was dependent on Heliopolis and in which Phtah possessed a sanctuary.
After the "white wall" was separated from the Heliopolitan principality