<P> With the arrival of the Romans, Memphis, like Thebes, lost its place permanently in favour of Alexandria, which opened onto the empire . The rise of the cult of Serapis, a syncretic deity most suited to the mentality of the new rulers of Egypt, and the emergence of Christianity taking root deep into the country, spelled the complete ruin of the ancient cults of Memphis . </P> <P> Gradually, the city dropped out of existence during the Byzantine and Coptic periods . The city then became a quarry to build new settlements nearby, including a new capital founded by the Arabs who took possession in the 7th century . The foundations of Fustat and later Cairo, both built further north, were laid with stones of dismantled temples and ancient necropoleis of Memphis . In the 13th century, the Arab chronicler Abd - ul - Latif, upon visiting the site, describes and gives testimony to the grandeur of the ruins . </P> <P> "Enormous as are the extent and antiquity of this city, in spite of the frequent change of governments whose yoke it has borne, and the great pains more than one nation has been at to destroy it, to sweep its last trace from the face of the earth, to carry away the stones and materials of which it was constructed, to mutilate the statues which adorned it; in spite, finally, of all that more than four thousand years have done in addition to man, these ruins still offer to the eye of the beholder a mass of marvels which bewilder the senses and which the most skillful pens must fail to describe . The more deeply we contemplate this city the more our admiration rises, and every fresh glance at the ruins is a fresh source of delight...The ruins of Memphis hold a half - day's journey in every direction ." </P> <P> Although the remains today are nothing compared to what was witnessed by the Arab historian, his testimony has inspired the work of many archaeologists . The first surveys and excavations of the 19th century, and the extensive work of Flinders Petrie, have been able to show a little of the ancient capital's former glory . Memphis and its necropolis, which include funerary rock tombs, mastabas, temples and pyramids, were inscribed on the World Heritage List of UNESCO in 1979 . </P>

Why was memphis a good place to build egypt's capital city