MEMORY, DISEASES OF. Memory, or the power of reproducing mental impressions, is impaired by age,,wounds, or injuries to the head or nervous system, fevers, intem perance, and various physical conditions. It is perltaps affected in all kinds of mental derangement, but is in a most signal manner obliterated or enfeebled in dementia. There are, however, examples of recollection surviving all otherlaculties, and preserving a clear and extensive notion of long and complicated series of events amid the general. darkness and ruin of Mind, Incoherence owes some of its features to defective or irregular.metnou. Cases of so marvelous an exaltation and extension of this capacity, as where a whole parliamentary debate could be recalled, suggest the suspicion or unhealthy action. There appear, however, to be special affections of the faculty. It may be suspended while the intelligence remains intact. Periods of personal or general history may elude the grasp, and even that continuity of impressions which goes far to constitute the feeling of personal identity, is broken up, and a duality or multiplicity of experiences may appear to be conjoined. The converse of this may happen, and knowledge that had completely faded away may, under excitement or cerebral disease, return. There are, besides, states in which this power is partially affected, as in the instances where the numbers 5 anti 7 were lost, and where a highly educated man could not retain any conception of the letter F; secondly, where it appears perverted, recalling images inappropriately, and in an erroneous sequence of order or time, and dif ferent from what are desired; and thirdly, where, while the written or printed signs of ideas can be used, the oral or articulate signs are utterly forgotten. All these deviations from health appear to depend upon changes generally of an apoplectic nature in the anterior lobes of the brain.—Crichton on Mental Derangement, i. 337; Teuchtersleben, Medical Psychology, p. 121.
B1E21'1)1115, a celebrated Egyptian city, situated in the Delta, or Lower Egypt, the the ancient capital of the country, called by the Egytians Men meter, or " the Good Station;" by the IIebrews, ihropk-and by the Arabs, Heinf. It was founded by Mcnes, the first monarch of the first dynasty, who, according to Herodotus, changed the bed of the Nile, and made an embankment, 100 stadia above Memphis, to protect the new city against inundations. The remains of this bank still exist at Kafr-el Tyat, about 14 m. above Metralienny, which is the center of old Memphis, aud the site of the temple of Ptah or Hepliwsteurn. Menes fortified the city. and laid the foundations of the temple. Uchoreus, a later monarch, is also said to have founded Memphis, and introduced the worship of Apis and Epaphus. The site of the city was well chosen, protected alike by the Libyan and Arabian chains of, mountains against the river and the incursions of the sand, defending the approaclt of the country from the incursions of Asiatic nomads, and communicating with the Red sea and the Mediterranean. The city WaS composed of two portions—one built of crude bricks; the other, on which was the citadel, of calcareous stone, called the Leakon Teichos, or " White Wall," which held some of the principal buildings. The palace, built by Menes, was enlarged by his son Athothis, and was
always inhabited either by a monarch or his viceroy. 'Under the Persian rule it was occnpied by the satrap; and by the Greek mercenaries under the Saite kings. Under Uchoreus the total circumference was 150 stadia. After the 6th dynasty the city declined in importance. and was apparently held by the Hykshos after the 13th and before the 18th (1500 At this period 31emphis was ruled by a viceroy, a prince of the blood, and still remained the religious capital of the old worship. It rose again to great importance under the Saite monarchs, about 600 B.C., who restored it, became the seat of a separate monarchy, and was conquered by Sennacherib and his successors. The temples of this city were magnificent, and comprised the Iselin], a large temple of Isis, completed by Amasis II. just prior to Cambyses (525 tic.); a temple dedicated to. Proteus, in the foreign quarter; the temple of the Apis, having a peristyle and court ornamented with figures, opposite the south propykeum of the temple of Ptah, where the sacred bull resided; the Serapeum, or temple of Os or Apis, in the quarter recently dis covered by M. 3Iariette (see SERAPEUM); the Nilometer, removed by Constantine I. to Constantinople, replaced by Julian III. or the apostate; a temple of Ra; and the shrine of the Cahill. Here were the statues of Ramses II., one of which exists as the fallen colossus, Metrahenny, and others have been discovered by Hekekyan Bey in his exca– -vations. These colossi, above 75 ft. high, were of syenitic eranite, or of the limestone of 'Tourah or Mokattam. These temples flourished in all their glory till the Persian con quest. Still more remarkable was the great necropolis of the city, in the center of which towered the pyramids (see PYRAMIDS). During the attempts of the native rulers to throw off. the Persian rule, Memphis was an important strategic point. Ochus inflicted severe injury on this town, having plundered the temples and thrown down the walls after he had driven out Nectanebus. Alexander the great here worshiped the Apis, and his corpse was brought to this city by Ptolemy before it was finally transferred to Alex andria. The first Ptolemies were crowned in the serapeum. -Ptolemy VIII. destroyed the city, and it had so declined after his time as to become a decaycol site. It fell with the rest of Egypt under the Roman rule, and afterwards was conqaered by Amru Ben Abas (639-640 A.D.); and Fostat and Cairo were built out of its ruins, wliich were large and important in the 13th c., when they were seen by Abd-alatif. The few remains of of the ancient city are lioum-el-Azyzeh to the n., Metralienny on the w., and the canal • of Bedrachin on the s.; but tlie remains here are submerged many ft. in the soil of the Delta.
Flerod. 97, 101, 147, 178; Diod. xviii. 34, i. 46, Fragm. t. 33, lvi. p. 184; Thucyd.
104; Hygin. xiv. 90; kleliod. ii. 59, 61; Hosea ix. 6; Isaiah xix. 30; Ezek. xxx. 13, 16; Wilkinson, Top. Thebes, p. 340; Bunsen, Egypt's Place, p. 47; Chanipollion-Figeac, L'Egypte, 35, 63, 205, 286; Lepsius, Reise, 20, 51, 63.