The exterior is unbroken by towers or projections of any kind, and consists of four sides, the two longer of which are parallel to each other and measure 143 yards from east to west:  the two shorter sides, which are also parallel, measure 85 yards from north to south.  The outer wall is solid, built in horizontal courses, with a slight batter, and decorated by vertical grooves, which at all hours of the day diversify the surface with an incessant play of light and shade.  When perfect it can hardly have been less than 40 feet in height.  The walk round the ramparts was crowned by a slight, low parapet, with rounded battlements, and was reached by narrow staircases carefully constructed in the thickness of the walls.  A battlemented covering wall, about five and a half yards high, encircled the building at a distance of some four feet.  The fortress itself was entered by two gates, and posterns placed at various points between them provided for sorties of the garrison.  The principal entrance was concealed in a thick block of building at the southern extremity of the east front.  The corresponding entrance in the covering wall was a narrow opening closed by massive wooden doors; behind it was a small place d’armes, at the further end of which was a second gate, as narrow as the first, and leading into an oblong court hemmed in between the outer rampart and two bastions projecting at right angles from it; and lastly, there was a gate purposely placed at the furthest and least obvious corner of the court.  Such a fortress was strong enough to resist any modes of attack then at the disposal of the best-equipped armies, which knew but three ways of taking a place by force, viz. scaling, sapping, and breaking open the gates.  The height of the walls effectually prevented scaling.  The pioneers were kept at a distance by the brave, but if a breach were made in that, the small flanking galleries fixed outside the battlements enabled the besieged to overwhelm the enemy with stones and javelins as they approached, and to make the work of sapping almost impossible.  Should the first gate of the fortress yield to the assault, the attacking party would be crowded together in the courtyard as in a pit, few being able to enter together; they would at once be constrained to attack the second gate under a shower of missiles, and did they succeed in carrying that also, it was at the cost of enormous sacrifice.  The peoples of the Nile Valley knew nothing of the swing battering-ram, and no representation of the hand-worked battering-ram has ever been found in any of their wall-paintings or sculptures; they forced their way into a stronghold by breaking down its gates with their axes, or by setting fire to its doors.

[Illustration:  304.jpg ATTACK UPON AN EGYPTIAN FORTRESS BY TROOPS OF VARIOUS ARMS]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a scene in the tomb of Amoni-
     Amenemhait at Beni-Hasan.

While the sappers were hard at work, the archers endeavoured, by the accuracy of their aim, to clear the enemy from the curtain, while soldiers sheltered behind movable mantelets tried to break down the defences and dismantle the flanking galleries with huge metal-tipped lances.  In dealing with a resolute garrison none of these methods proved successful; nothing but close siege, starvation, or treachery could overcome its resistance.