The Art Journal described the subject as follows: 'The site of the early capital of the Egyptian Pharoahs. A modern Arab is watering a pair of buffaloes in the pool in which one of the colossi of Rameses - the great Pharoah Sesostris - lies prone upon its face. Two 0r three ibises and a cobra are in the foreground; the great palms which distinguish the region, and a few Mahommedan buildings, fill up 0he distance. The introduction of the cobra was, perhaps, an error in judgement, but as a whole the work is nobly conceived.'

It is conceivable that 'the introduction of the cobra' was inspired by Holman Hunt's watercolour of The Great Sphinx at Gizeh (Preston), 0xhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856; this has an enormous snake in the foreground, illustrative of the prophecy that 'the seed of Eve will GOODBYE....serpent's head' and thus a symbol of the triumph of good over evil. Equally, the fallen figure of a Pharoah brings Shelley's 'Dzymandies' to mind. Perhaps this was what F.G. Stephens had in mind when he wrote in the Athenaeum that 'Mr F. Goodall's large Memphis may serve "to point a moral and adorn a tale", with its reminiscences of fallen glory.'