[2] Seventeenth to Twentieth Dynasties.

2.—­FORTRESSES.

Most of the towns, and even most of the larger villages, of ancient Egypt were walled.  This was an almost necessary consequence of the geographical characteristics and the political constitution of the country.  The mouths of the defiles which led into the desert needed to be closed against the Bedawin; while the great feudal nobles fortified their houses, their towns, and the villages upon their domains which commanded either the mountain passes or the narrow parts of the river, against their king or their neighbours.

[Illustration:  Fig. 23.—­Ceiling pattern from tomb of Aimadua, Twentieth Dynasty.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 24.—­Door of a house of the Ancient Empire, from the wall of a tomb of the Sixth Dynasty.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 25.—­Facade of a Fourth Dynasty house, from the sarcophagus of Khufu Poskhu.]

The oldest fortresses are those of Abydos, El Kab, and Semneh.  Abydos contained a sanctuary dedicated to Osiris, and was situate at the entrance to one of the roads leading to the Oasis.  As the renown of the temple attracted pilgrims, so the position of the city caused it to be frequented by merchants; hence the prosperity which it derived from the influx of both classes of strangers exposed the city to incursions of the Libyan tribes.  At Abydos there yet remain two almost perfect strongholds.  The older forms, as it were, the core of that tumulus called by the Arabs “Kom es Sultan,” or “the Mound of the King.”  The interior of this building has been excavated to a point some ten or twelve feet above the ground level, but the walls outside have not yet been cleared from the surrounding sand and rubbish.  In its present condition, it forms a parallelogram of crude brickwork measuring 410 feet from north to south, and 223 feet from east to west.  The main axis of the structure extends, therefore, from north to south.  The principal gateway opens in the western wall, not far from the northwest corner:  but there would appear to have been two smaller gates, one in the south front, and one in the east.  The walls, which now stand from twenty-four to thirty-six feet high, have lost somewhat of their original height.  They are about six feet thick at the top.  They were not built all together in uniform layers, but in huge vertical panels, easily distinguished by the arrangement of the brickwork.  In one division the bedding of the bricks is strictly horizontal; in the next it is slightly concave, and forms a very flat reversed arch, of which the extrados rests upon the ground.  The alternation of these two methods is regularly repeated.  The object of this arrangement is obscure; but it is said that buildings thus constructed are especially fitted to resist earthquake shocks.  However this may be, the fortress is extremely ancient, for in the Fifth Dynasty, the nobles of Abydos took possession of the interior, and, ultimately, so piled it up with their graves as to deprive it of all strategic value.  A second stronghold, erected a few hundred yards further to the south-east, replaced that of Kom es Sultan about the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, and narrowly escaped the fate of the first, under the rule of the Ramessides.  Nothing, in fact, but the sudden decline of the city, saved the second from being similarly choked and buried.