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Bible Dictionaries
Noph
American Tract Society Bible Dictionary
or Sometimes called also, in Hebrew, MOPH, Hosea 9:6 , the ancient city of Memphis in Egypt. The ruins of it, though not to any great extent, are still found a few miles above Old Cairo, or Fostat, Isaiah 19:13 Jeremiah 2:16 44:1 Ezekiel 30:13,16 .
Memphis was the residence of the ancient kings of Egypt till the times of the Ptolemies, who commonly resided at Alexandria. Here, it is supposed, Joseph was a prisoner and a ruler, and here Moses stood before Pharaoh. The prophets, in the places above referred to, foretell the miseries Memphis was to suffer from the kings of Chaldea and Persia; and threaten the Israelites who should retire into Egypt, or should have recourse to the Egyptians, that they should perish in that country. In this city they fed and worshipped the sacred bull Apis, the embodiment of their false god Osiris; and Ezekiel says, that the lord will destroy the idols of Memphis, Ezekiel 30:13,16 . Memphis retained much of its splendor till it was conquered by the Arabians in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of the Hegira, A. D. 641; after which it was superseded as the metropolis of Egypt by Fostat, now Old Cairo, in the construction of which its materials were employed. The pyramids, in which its distinguished men were buried, still survive; but the magnificent city, that stretched along for many miles between them and the river, has almost wholly disappeared.
These files are public domain and are a derivative of the topics are from American Tract Society Bible Dictionary published in 1859.
Rand, W. W. Entry for 'Noph'. American Tract Society Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ats/n/noph.html. 1859.
