Memphis: Egypt's first capital, and what is left of it

Where did the city go?

The answer is in the building materials, and it explains the whole visit. Tombs and temples went up in stone, on the desert edge, above the reach of the flood — which is why Saqqara, the burial ground of ancient Memphis, is still there to walk around. The city itself was mudbrick, built low on the floodplain, and it was lived in without a break for a very long time. Mudbrick gets rebuilt on top of itself. Stone gets carried off and reused in later buildings. Silt arrives every year. Villages, fields and roads settle over the top.

So the capital did not fall into picturesque ruin. It dissolved, and then people farmed it. There is no street plan to see, no ruin field, nothing with scale to it. When a guide tells you that you are standing in Egypt's first capital, that is true and it gives you nothing to look at, which is a strange combination to be handed on a hot morning.

Archaeological work continues in this area, and what has been uncovered changes. This page carries no figures on that, because we have no source of our own for them; the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, linked at the foot of this page, is where the announcements land.

What you actually see

A walled garden with gravel paths and trees. Statuary, sarcophagi and carved blocks set out on plinths, in the way things are arranged when they have been brought in from the surrounding fields to somewhere they can be roofed and guarded. A shelter built specifically to house the fallen colossus. The alabaster sphinx outside on open ground. Labelling is thin, and some of the material has no obvious explanation attached to it at all.

It presents as a museum yard rather than an archaeological site, because that is what it is. Understanding that in advance removes most of the disappointment. You are not visiting Memphis. You are visiting the collection of things that outlived Memphis, in the place where they were found.

The colossus is the reason to stop

The fallen colossus of Ramesses II is genuinely fine, and it is worth the detour on its own terms. It lies on its back and it is not complete, and lying down changes everything about how you see it. Colossal Egyptian sculpture is normally something you crane up at from below, foreshortened, at a distance, with the sun behind it. Here the face is level with you and a few paces away. You can see how the mouth is modelled, how the eye is cut, how sharp the edges still are on the belt and the cartouches after everything that has happened to the stone.

That is the one thing Memphis has that nowhere else on the Cairo loop gives you: proximity to work at this scale. If the upper level of the shelter is open when you go, the view down the whole length from above is the one worth queuing a few minutes for. Then go back down and look along it from the feet, which is where the size registers.

It is also, unhelpfully for a photograph, indoors and in mixed light. Most people take one picture from the walkway and leave. Ten minutes of walking round it is a better use of the same time.

The alabaster sphinx

The second thing worth your time, and the one most groups walk straight past on the way back to the coach. It stands outside, and alabaster behaves differently from the limestone of the Giza sphinx: warmer, softer, more translucent at the edges in strong light, and worn smoother by weather. The surface reads as stone that has been handled by the sun rather than cut yesterday.

Walk around it rather than photographing it head-on. The profile is better than the front view, and the way the light comes through the thinner sections at the base is the sort of thing that does not survive into a phone picture. Five minutes, and it is the only alabaster of that size most visitors will ever stand next to.

Does it earn its half hour?

Half an hour: yes, comfortably, if you are already driving past. An hour: no. A separate half-day trip from Cairo: absolutely not. The site is small and it is honest about being small, and the failure mode is arriving with the expectations a word like "capital" sets up.

The case for stopping is that the colossus is a first-rate piece of sculpture you can get close to, the sphinx is unusual, and seeing where the city was makes sense of why the necropolis at Saqqara is where it is. The case against is arithmetic: on a day already full of Saqqara and Dahshur, the same forty minutes buys you a second mastaba tomb, or the descent into a pyramid, and both of those are stronger experiences.

There is one group for whom Memphis is unambiguously worth it. If anyone in your party cannot manage steep ramps, low passages and long walks over sand — which is most of what Saqqara and Dahshur ask of you — this is the stop on the loop that is flat, shaded, short and genuinely rewarding. Plan around that rather than apologising for it.

How it fits the Saqqara and Dahshur morning

The three sit close together on the same road south of Cairo and are almost always done as one loop: Saqqara for the Step Pyramid and the mastaba tombs, Dahshur for the Bent and Red pyramids, Memphis briefly on the way past. Done properly that is a full day out of Cairo, and traffic in and out of the city is unpredictable enough that an early start buys you more than it costs in sleep.

Where Memphis goes in the order is worth deciding rather than leaving to chance. It asks the least of you physically, so it works well after Saqqara has already taken three hours out of your legs, or as the last stop before the drive back when everybody is finished. It is also the only shade on the loop. Agree the sequence with your driver before you set off, because rearranging it at the second stop rarely works.

Tickets are bought at each site. Do not assume that whatever your driver has already paid covers all three, and check what is included before you go through any gate.

What most visitors get wrong

First, expecting a city, then blaming the site for not being one. Second, expecting a museum in the modern sense: this is a yard with a roof over the best object in it, not the Grand Egyptian Museum. Third, giving it either five minutes or ninety. The right answer is in between and it is closer to the five.

Fourth, and the commonest: photographing the colossus from one angle and calling it done. It is the reason to be there. Fifth, budgeting no patience for the sellers at the gate, who work the same trade as everywhere on this loop and respond to the same firm, friendly no.

Sixth, and this one costs people the whole point: treating Memphis as a substitute for Saqqara because the names get muddled. They are different places with different tickets, a short drive apart. Memphis was the city. Saqqara was its cemetery, and the cemetery is the half that survived.