Dr Shaw, to put Geeza and Memphis perfectly upon a footing, says[95], that there were no traces of the city now to be found, from which he imagines it began to decay soon after the building of Alexandria, that the mounds and ramparts which kept the river from it were in process of time neglected, and that Memphis, which he supposes was in the old bed of the river about the time of the Ptolemies, was so far abandoned, that the Nile at last got in upon it, and overflowing its old ruins, great part of the best of which had been carried first to build the city of Alexandria, that the mud covered the rest, so that no body knew what was its true situation. This is the opinion of Dr Pococke, and likewise of M. de Maillet.
The opinion of these two last-mentioned authors, that the ruins and situation of Memphis are now become obscure, is certainly true; the foregoing dispute is a sufficient evidence of this.
But I will not suffer it to be said, that, soon after the building of Alexandria, or in the time of the Ptolemies, this was the case, because Strabo[96] says, that when he was in Egypt, Memphis, next to Alexandria, was the most magnificent city in Egypt.
It was called the Capital[97] of Egypt, and there was entire a temple of Osiris; the Apis (or sacred ox) was kept and worshipped there. There was likewise an apartment for the mother of that ox still standing, a temple of Vulcan of great magnificence, a large [98]circus, or space for fighting bulls; and a great colossus in the front of the city thrown down: there was also a temple of Venus, and a serapium, in a very sandy place, where the wind heaps up hills of moving sand very dangerous to travellers, and a number of [99]sphinxes, (of some only their heads being visible) the others covered up to the middle of their body.
In the [100]front of the city were a number of palaces then in ruins, and likewise lakes. These buildings, he says, stood formerly upon an eminence; they lay along the side of the hill, stretching down to the lakes and the groves, and forty stadia from the city; there was a mountainous height, that had many Pyramids standing upon it, the sepulchres of the kings, among which there are three remarkable, and two the wonders of the world.