(Greek; Egyptian, Men-nofer, after a “pyramid town”founded by the pharaoh Pepi I; originally known as White Walls, after the fortress beside which the city was founded), an ancient Egyptian city founded at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. on the border between Upper and Lower Egypt on the left bank of the Nile; located southwest of Cairo near the villages of Al Badrashayn and Mit Rahinah.
Memphis was an important religious, political, cultural, and artisan center of Egypt as well as the capital of the Old Kingdom (28th to 23rd centuries B.C.). With the rise of Alexandria (founded 332-331 B.C.) in Hellenistic times, Memphis lost its former importance. The ruins of a temple to the god Ptah (third millennium B.C.), a sphinx from the New Kingdom, two colossuses of Rameses II (late 14th century to mid-13th century B.C.), and the Serapeum have been preserved. The necropolises of Memphis, with pyramids and tombs of the kings and nobles, are located near present-day Giza (Gizeh), Saqqara, Abu Sir, and Dahshur.
a city in the southern USA, in the state of Tennessee. A port on the left bank of the Mississippi River, near the point where the Wolf River flows into it. Population, 623,500, with the suburban zone on the right bank of the Mississippi (in Arkansas)—770,100 (1970); about two-fifths of the population are Negroes.
Memphis is one of the most important economic centers in the South. About 60,000 workers are employed in the manufacturing industry. The leading brar ches of industry in Memphis are agricultural machinery, the production of structural elements, electrical engineering instruments, automobile construction (assembly and the production of trailers), and woodworking. Memphis is an important trading cer.ter and a major transportation junction. Cargoes of petroleum and cotton predominate in the city’s freight turnover (6-7 million tons a year).