Another Reason for the Foundation of Memphis

CAMPAGNO, MARCELO

El Cairo

Congreso; Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists,; 2000

International Association of Egyptologists

the position of Memphis was conspicuously strategic from a specifically political and economic point of view as well as from the wider framework of the ideological conceptions of the inhabitants of the Nile valley. We believe, however, that it is possible to propose another reason that could have contributed to the decision to construct the settlement of Memphis. While this reason converges with the first three, it is?unlike them?not directly related to the specific place in which the city was founded, but rather to the events produced some time before several hundred kilometers to the south, in Upper Egypt, during the times of State emergence. Our point is that the moving of the ruling elite from the south to Memphis was related to its attempts to avoid the limits that kinship necessarily imposed on the consolidation of a fully state-like elite.