Sais

Sais, modern Sa el-Hagar in the western Nile Delta, was the city of the goddess Neith. It reached its peak as the capital of the 26th or Saite Dynasty from 664 to 525 BCE, when kings such as Psamtik I and Amasis reunited Egypt and opened it to Greek traders and soldiers. Little survives above ground today.

Greek visitors admired its temples and priests. Herodotus describes the city and its festival of lamps. In Plato's Timaeus and Critias, the Athenian lawgiver Solon visits Sais around 590 BCE. An old priest tells him the Greeks are like children, because floods and fires keep destroying their records, and then recounts the war of ancient Athens against Atlantis nine thousand years earlier. Plutarch later names Sonchis of Sais as one of Solon's teachers.

Most historians think Plato invented the Atlantis story for his philosophical purposes and used Sais to give it the authority of Egyptian antiquity.