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Updated: September 30, 2025
It may be that a town of the Northerners existed here before the time of the Southern Conquest, for Phtah, the local god of Memphis, has a very marked character of his own, quite different from that of Khen-tamenti, the Osiris of Abydos. He is always represented as a little bow-legged hydrocephalous dwarf very like the Phoenician Kabeiroi.
This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah.
Greek gods were therefore identified with Egyptian; Phtah became Hephæstos; Thot, Hermes; Ra, Helios; Amon, Zeus; and, in consequence of a dream which commanded him to offer adoration to a foreign god, Ptolemy Soter created a new Greek god who was of Egyptian origin.
The temples of Phtah, of Amon-Ra, and the other gods of the country were not only kept open, but were repaired and even built at the cost of the king; the religion of the people, and not that of their rulers, was made the established religion of the state.
The temple of Phtah, and every other building of Memphis, is now gone, and near the spot stands the great city of Cairo, whose mosques and minarets have been quarried of its ruins, but the pyramids still stand, after fifty-six centuries of broken and changing history, unbroken and unchanged.
PHTAH or PTAH: In form a mummy, holding the emblem called by some the Nilometer, by others the emblem of Stability, called "the father of the Beginning, the Creator of the Egg of the Sun and Moon," Chief Deity of Memphis. KNEPH, KNOUM or KNOUPHIS: Ram-headed, called the Maker of gods and men, the Soul of the gods. Chief Deity of Elephantine and the Cataracts.
Later on we find Seker confused with the ancient dwarf-god, and it is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall. It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kâra takes its title.
Under the Ptolemies it had given much of the material of her temples and palaces for the building of Alexandria. The great palace of the Pharaohs had long been destroyed, but there still remained many notable monuments, such as the temple of Phtah, the pyramids, the necropolis, and the Serapeum, and they retained their ancient cult.
Ptolemy is there styled King of Upper and Lower Egypt, son of the gods Philopatores, approved by Phtah, to whom Ra has given victory, a living image of Amon, son of Ra, Ptolemy immortal, beloved by Phtah, god Epiphanes most gracious.
Thus: Amset 'I am thy son, a god, loving thee; I have come to be beside thee, causing to germinate thy head, to fabricate thee with the words of Phtah, like the brilliancy of the sun for ever. Hape 'I have come to manifest myself beside thee, to raise thy head and arms, to reduce thy enemies, to give thee all germination for ever. Soumautf 'I am thy son, a god, loving thee; I have come to support my father. Kebhsnauf 'I have come to be beside thee, to subdue thy form, to submit thy limbs for thee, to lead thy heart to thee, to give it to thee in the tribunal of thy race, to germinate thy house with all the other living.
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