History

The strategic significance of the sandy plateau just below the Nile Delta did not elude the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. In the vicinity of contemporary Cairo on the western bank, the ancient capital of Memphis flourished as one of the world’s earliest urban settlements. On the eastern bank, Pharaonic remains suggest the presence of similarly important cities-Heliopolis and Khery-Aha, later known as Babylon. These cities, along with the funerary complexes at Saqqara and Giza, were located at the juncture of the newly joined upper and lower lands, at the throat of the new body politic. With this joining of the kingdoms, Memphis became the logical locus of the capital and reached its zenith in the 30th century BC. Even though the royal capital eventually moved to Thebes and elsewhere, Memphis and Heliopolis remained important political and religious centers until the Ptolemaic period, when Heliopolis faded along with its sun cult. Memphis’ eminence endured until the beginning of the Christian era, when massive population shifts left the western bank only Giza with its small settlement and the eastern bank Babylon, an economic base for the Romans, protected by its Byzantine fort.

The early decades of the seventh century AD found Egypt, and the Nile Delta region especially, in the throes of power struggles between the Persian and Byzantine empires. Both Memphis and Alexandria changed hands continuously; the warring near Babylon drove many urban dwellers to the villages, leaving the city bereft and deserted at the time of the Arab conquest in 641. General Amr Ibn al-As, head of the invading Arab forces, came to Egypt with specific instructions from the Caliph Omar to center the new state at Babylon, not Alexandria. The former had the appeal of its strategically superior location, and the latter the desert people distrusted because of its Mediterranean culture. Amr instead founded the outpost of Fustat (the Latin and Byzantine roots of which mean “entrenchment"), the seed of modern Cairo, on part of the plain due east of the ruins of Babylon.