The name "Phtah," the "Opener," is definitely Semitic. We may
then regard the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian god of the
Northerners, probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating
the conquest. But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed
its importance and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of
the united kingdom. Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another
Phtah of Southern Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by
the Southerners. This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in
mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of
the Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah. The actual god of "the White
Wall" was undoubtedly confused vith the dead god of the necropolis,
whose name was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), "the Coffined." The original
form of this deity was a mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very
probable that he was imported from the South, like the second Phtah, at
the time of the conquest, when the great Northern necropolis began
to grow up as a duplicate of that at Abydos. Later on we find Seker
confused with the ancient dwarf-god, and it is the latter who was
afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of
the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally recognized ruler
of the City of the White Wall.
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