an ancient city, and the royal residence of the kings in the Higher Egypt; distant from the Delta to the south 15 miles, according to Pliny. Called also Moph, and Noph, in scripture.

Though this city is now so completely ruined, that authors greatly disagree concerning its situation; yet Strabo informs us that in his time it was the most magnificent in Egypt, next to Alexandria. It was called the capital of the country; and there was an entire temple of Osiris, where the Apis or sacred ox was kept and worshipped. In the same place was an apartment of the mother of the ox; a very magnificent temple of Vulcan; a large circus or space for fighting bulls; and a great colossus in the middle of the city, which was thrown down. There was likewise a temple of Venus, and a Serapium in a very sandy place, where the wind heaps up hills of sand very dangerous to travellers; together with a number of sphinxes, the heads of some of them only being visible, the others covered up to the middle of their body. The same author likewise informs us, that in the front of the city there were many lakes; and that it contained a number of palaces, at that time in ruins. These buildings, he said, formerly stood upon an eminence; they lay along the side of the hill, stretching down to the lakes and groves, 40 stadia from the city. There was likewise a mountain in the neighbourhood, on which were a great number of pyramids, with the sepulchres of the kings, among which were three remarkable, and two of them accounted wonders of the world. From this description, Mr Bruce concludes that the celebrated capital of Egypt stood in the place where the villages of Metrahenny are now situated; in opposition to Dr Shaw's opinion, who thinks it was situated at Geeza or Gifa.

M. Savary has also shown, that Gifa was not the situation of the ancient Memphis. This flood, he says, on the western bank of the Nile, on the spot where the village of Memph now stands, which still preserves the name. Large heaps of rubbish are still to be seen there; but the Arabs have transported to Cairo the columns and remarkable stones, which they have disposed, without taste and without order, in their mosques and public buildings. This city extended as far as Saccara; and was almost wholly encompassed by lakes, part of which are still subsiding. It was necessary to cross them to convey the dead to the sepulchre of their fathers. The tombs, hewn out of the rock, were closed up with stones of a proportionable size, and covered with sand. These bodies embalmed with so much care, preserved with so much respect, are torn from the monuments they repose in, and sold without decency to strangers by the inhabitants of Saccara. This place is called the plain of mummies. There too we find the well of the birds, into which one descends by means of a rope. It leads to subterranean galleries, filled with earthen vases containing the sacred birds. They are rarely met with entire, because the Arabs break them in hopes of finding idols of gold. They do not conduct travellers into the places where they have found more precious articles. They even close them up carefully, referring to themselves some secret passages by which they defend. In a journey into Egypt made by the duke Menander de Chaulnes, he advanced very far into these winding labyrinths, sometimes crawling, and sometimes scrambling on his knees. Informed by Mr Edward Worley Montague, who has carefully visited Egypt, he arrived at one of those passages which had an opening shut up from without by branches of the date tree interwoven, and covered with sand. He remarked there some hieroglyphics in relief, executed in the highest perfection. But the Arabs refused every offer he made them to permit him to take drawings of them, or to mould them, in order to preserve their form. The duke de Chaulnes is of opinion that these hieroglyphics, sculptured with so much art that the objects they represent may be discovered at the first sight, might possibly furnish the key of the others, whose contours are simply expressed, and form a sort of alphabet of this unintelligible language. Several pyramids are distinguishable along the mountains which bound Saccara on the west, the greatest part of which appear as lofty as those of Gifa. See PYRAMIDS.