Volume II Part 3 (1/2)
[33] These trees e terra-cotta pots, such as are still used in many places for the same purpose
-- 4 _Military Architecture_
The Ancient Egyptians have left us very feorks of reat Theban princes, more than one fortress must have been built outside their own country to preserve their supre peoples In the later periods of the eorges of the Nile, but, unfortunately such works were always carried out in brick and generally in crude brick The Egyptian architect had at hand in great abundance the finest materials in the world, except marble, and yet they were used by him exclusively for the to an indestructible dwelling for the dead, and so of perpetuating the efficacy of the funeral prayers and offerings, ”eternal stone” was not spared; but when less important purposes had to be fulfilled they were content with clay Baking bricks was astone, and if the house or fortress in which they were used had coh to replace it with another
Th crude bricks, dried sirated with time and fell into powder; the kiln dried bricks were carried off fro to be used in another The few piers or fragments of hich remain are confused and shapeless A few blocks of stone, soh to enable us to tell the history of a building which has been long destroyed Such a chip ed, but it preserves the impression of the chisel which fashi+oned it, that is of the taste and individuality of the artist who held the chisel We have nothing of the kind in the case of a brick Bricks were al was required of theht size and of a certain hardness It is only by their inscriptions, when they have them, that the dates of these bricks can be deter at all about the past Someti appearance, and the traveller approaches it thinking that he will soon draw all its secrets fro it he is forced to confess that he has failed
It has no trace of decoration, and it is the decoration of an ancient building which tells us its age, its character, and its purpose
Stone, even when greatly broken, allows ; they are as wanting in individual expression as the pebbles which go to ly beech
Even if it had coypt would have been far less interesting than that of Greece The latter country is mountainous; the soil is cut up by valleys and rocky hills; the Greek towns, or, at least, their citadels, occupied the sureatly in profile and altitude Hence the reat diversity in its couration of the soil was not of a nature to provoke any efforts of invention or adaptation All the cities were in the plain
Fortified posts were distinguished froht, and thickness of their walls We shall, however, have to call attention to the remains of a few defensive works which, like those established to guard the defiles of the cataracts, were built upon sites different enough from those ordinarily presented by the Nile valley In these cases we shall find that the Egyptian constructors kne to adapt their round
Egyptian cities seem always to have been surrounded by a fortified _enceinte_; in some cases the remains of such fortifications have been found, in others history tells us that they existed At Thebes, for instance, no traces have, so far as we know, been discovered of any wall Hoated_ (??at?p????) may be put on one side as evidence, because the Greek poet did not know Egypt He described the great ined it to be The Homeric epithet is capable also of another explanation, an explanation which did not escape Diodorus,[34] it ates of the city, but to the pylons of the temples, and should in that case be translated as ”_Thebes of the hundred pylons_” instead of hundred gates We have better evidence as to the existence of fortifications about the town in the descriptions left to us by the ancient historians of the siege of Ptolemy Physcon: the city could not have resisted for several years if it had been an open town It was the sa the Pharaonic period as well as after the Persian conquest, it played the part of a fortress of the first class It was the key of ypt It even had a kind of citadel which included almost a third of the city and was called the _white wall_ (?e????
te????)[35] This naiven, as the scholiast to Thucydides informs us, ”because its walls were of white stone, while those of the city itself were of red brick” The exactness of this stateyptians made their defensive walls of a thickness which could only be attained in brick It seems likely therefore that these walls consisted of a brick core covered hite stone An exaested to the authors of the _Description de l'egypte_ that the walls of that city also were cased with dressed stone They found, even upon the highest part of the walls, pieces of limestone for which they could account in no other way
[34] DIODORUS, i 45, 6
[35] THUCYDIDES, i 104 Cf HERODOTUS, iii 94, and DIODORUS, xi 74 After the Persian conquest it was occupied by the army corps left to ensure the sub to be discovered beyond the remains of brick walls, which have always been laid out in the forram[36] These walls are sometimes between sixty and seventy feet thick[37] In soentle swelling in the soil; at Sais, however, they seeht of fifty-seven feet in sons of towers or bastions are ever found At Heliopolis there were gates at certain distances with stone jambs covered with inscriptions[39] The best preserved of all these _enceintes_ is that of the ancient city of Nekheb, the Eilithyia of the Greeks, in the valley of El-Kab The rectangle is 595 yards long by 516 wide; the walls are 36 feet-thick[40] About a quarter of the whole _enceinte_ has been destroyed for the purposes of agriculture; the part which reates, which are not placed in the s representing sieges these walls are shoith round-topped battlements, which were easily constructed in brick
[36] Plate 55 of the first volume of Lepsius's _Denkmaeler_ contains traces of the _enceintes_ of Sais, Heliopolis, and Tanis See also the _Description de l'egypte_, _Ant_, Ch 21, 23, 24
[37] At Heliopolis they were 64 feet thick (_Description_), at Sais 48 feet (_ibid_) while at Tanis they were only 19 feet
[38] ISAMBERT, _Itineraire de l'egypte_
[39] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, p 64
[40] LEPSIUS, _Denkypten_,) makes the _enceinte_ of Nekheb a square
The only fort, properly speaking, which has been discovered in Egypt, appears to be the ruin known as _Chounet-es-Zezib_ at Abydos[41] This is a rectangular court inclosed by a double wall, and it still exists in a fair state of preservation, to the west of the northern necropolis (Fig 28) After exa many possible hypotheses, Mariette came to the conclusion that this was a military post intended to watch over the safety of the necropolis, and to keep an eye upon the caravans arriving froht otherwise be tee of the teuarding against a _coup-de-ateways, there is a covered way extending round the whole fort, and commanded by the inner wall Before the inner court could be reached, an enee in the thickness of the wall, which ell calculated to secure the necessary ti 29)
[41] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles_, vol ii pp
46-49, and plate 68
[Illustration: FIG 28--Military post at Abydos; perspective from the plans, etc, of Mariette]
[Illustration: FIG 29--Military post Plan of the entrances; froineering of the Egyptians is to be found in Nubia Thirty-seven miles south-ward of the cataracts of Wadi-Halfah the Nile has worn a channel through a long chain of granite hills which run across the valley from east to west On each side of the river-bed these hills rise to soht and across its torrent there are a few detached rocks, which once formed a natural daation is only possible a the inundation This point in the river's course was therefore well fitted to be the gate of Egypt and to be fortified against the incursions of the southern tribes During the first Theban Empire, the Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty drew the national frontier at this point, and resolved to establish themselves there in force The Third Ousourtesen seems to have built the two fortresses of which substantial remains exist even now Each fortress contained a teives the naht bank and reserves the naroup, to the building on the left bank only
[Illustration: FIG 30--Bird's-eye view of the fortress of Semneh; restored by Charles Chipiez]