in height.  The gate, protected by a large quadrangular bastion, opened in the middle of this wall.  It was three feet four inches in width, and was flanked by two small oblong guard-houses, the flat roofs of which stood about three feet higher than the ramparts.  Passing this gate, we stand face to face with a real Migdol.  Two blocks of building enclose a succession of court-yards, which narrow as they recede, and are connected at the lower end by a kind of gate-house, consisting of one massive gateway surmounted by two storeys of chambers.  The eastward faces of the towers rise above an inclined basement, which slopes to a height of from fifteen to sixteen feet from the ground.  This answered two purposes.  It increased the strength of the wall at the part exposed to sappers; it also caused the rebound of projectiles thrown from above, and so helped to keep assailants at a distance.  The whole height is about seventy-two feet, and the width of each tower is thirty-two feet.  The buildings situate at the back, to right and left of the gate, were destroyed in ancient times.  The details of the decoration are partly religious, partly triumphal, as befits the character of the structure.  It is unlikely, however, that actual fortresses were adorned with brackets and bas-relief sculptures, such as we here see on either side of the fore-court.  Such as it is, the so-called “pavilion” of Medinet Habu offers an unique example of the high degree of perfection to which the victorious Pharaohs of this period had carried their military architecture.

Material evidence fails us almost entirely, after the reign of Rameses III.  Towards the close of the eleventh century B.C., the high-priests of Amen repaired the walls of Thebes, of Gebeleyn, and of El Hibeh opposite Feshn.  The territorial subdivision of the country, which took place under the successors of Sheshonk, compelled the provincial princes to multiply their strongholds.  The campaign of Piankhi on the banks of the Nile is a series of successful sieges.  Nothing, however, leads us to suppose that the art of fortification had at that time made any distinct progress; and when the Greek rulers succeeded the native Pharaohs, they most probably found it at much the same stage as it was left by the engineers of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties.

[3] At Medinet Habu.

3.—­PUBLIC WORKS.

A permanent network of roads would be useless in a country like Egypt.  The Nile here is the natural highway for purposes of commerce, and the pathways which intersect the fields suffice for foot-passengers, for cattle, and for the transport of goods from village to village.  Ferry-boats for crossing the river, fords wherever the canals were shallow enough, and embanked dams thrown up here and there where the water was too deep for fordings, completed the system of internal communication.  Bridges were rare.  Up to the present time, we know of but one in the whole territory of ancient Egypt; and whether that