David Jeffreys

A survey of Memphis, Egypt

The Egypt Exploration Societys Survey of Memphis was begun in 1982, the aim being to provide a full documentation for the past study of a much-neglected national capital of the ancient near east: indeed, as the authors of this article remark, ‘A history of ancient Egypt which omitted Memphis would be like a history of ancient Italy which omitted Rome’. The programme of investigation is being undertaken in the face of encroaching agricultural and residential development, and an ever-rising water table. Excavation may be regarded as auxiliary to broader survey and environmental questions. The authors are Professor Harry Smith, Edwards Professor of Egyptology, who has worked in Egypt for the last 30 years, including the groundwork for the Unesco-backed Nubian survey in the 1960s; and David Jeffreys (Research Assistant at UCL) who has worked for 16 years on sites in the UK, Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

Real and Literary Landscapes in Ancient Egypt

During the past thirty years the Survey of Memphis and others have acquired more than two hundred borehole logs from the Capital Zone of Egypt. Combining these boreholes with maps and satellite images, we show that, during the past five thousand years, the geography of the Nile has been in constant flux with mean rates of migration around 2 m/y and one of its channels becoming extinct, by nature or through human intervention. Re-visiting ancient texts in the light of this changing environment, we show that the literary settings of both fictional and historical texts were real landscapes known to the authors. Hence we infer that ancient descriptions of landscape can be interpreted in a more literal way than before and that the authors were not as prone to writing of a metaphorical realm as was previously thought.