As the chief seat of the worship of Ptah, the artisan god (Hephaestus), Memphis must have existed from a very remote time.
On the other hand, Osiris with Isis and Horus was everywhere honoured and popular, and while the artificer Ptah, the god of the great native capital of Egypt, made no appeal to the imagination, the Apis bull, an incarnation of Ptah, threw Ptah himself altogether into the shade in the popular estimation.
During the XXVth and XXVIth Dynasties silver of the treasury of Harshafe (at Heracleopolis Magna) was commonly prescribed in contracts, and in the reign of Darius we hear of silver of the treasury of Ptah (at Memphis).
Or else several of the chief deities were consciously combined and regarded as different emanations or aspects of a Sole Being; thus a Ramesside hymn begins with the words Three are all the gods, Ammon, Re and Ptah, and then it is shown how these three gods, each in his own particular way, gave expression and effect to a single divine purpose.
In some places the highest priests bore special names, such as the Ouer maa, the Great Seer, of Re in Heliopolis, or the Khorp himet, chief artificer, of the Memphite Ptah.