the scribes of the Persian period, who no doubt ascribed everything
to "Mena" that was done by the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties.
Therefore it may be considered quite probable that the "Menés" who
founded Memphis was Merpeba, the fifth or sixth king of the Ist Dynasty,
whom Tunure, a thousand years before the time of Herodotus and his
informants, placed at the head of the Memphite "List of Sakkâra."

The reconquest of the North by Khâsekhemui doubtless led to a further
strengthening of Memphis; and it is quite possible that the deeds of
this king also contributed to make up the sum total of those ascribed to
the Herodotean and Manethonian Menés.

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_. It may be
that here is another connection between the Northern Egyptians and the
Semites. The name "Phtah," the "Opener," is definitely Semitic. We may
then regard the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian god of the
Northerners, probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating
the conquest. But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed
its importance and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of
the united kingdom. Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another
Phtah of Southern Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by
the Southerners. 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. The actual god of "the White
Wall" was undoubtedly confused vith the dead god of the necropolis,
whose name was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), "the Coffined." The original