* The type of town described in the text is based on a representation on the walls of Karnak, where the siege of Dapur-Tabor by Ramses II. is depicted.  Another type is given in the case of Ascalon.

[Illustration:  187.jpg THE MIGDOL OF RAMSES III.  AT THEBES, IN THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-ABUL]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken by Deveria
     in 1865.

Of these bulwarks of Canaanite civilization, which had been thrown up by hundreds on the route of the invading hosts, not a trace is to be seen to-day.  They may have been razed to the ground during one of those destructive revolutions to which the country was often exposed, or their remains may lie hidden underneath the heaps of ruins which thirty centuries of change have raised over them.*

* The only remains of a Canaanite fortification which can be assigned to the Egyptian period are those which Professor F. I. Petrie brought to light in the ruins of Tell el-Hesy, and in which he rightly recognised the remains of Lachish.

The records of victories graven on the walls of the Theban temples furnish, it is true, a general conception of their appearance, but the notions of them which we should obtain from this source would be of a very confused character had not one of the last of the conquering Pharaohs, Ramses III., taken it into his head to have one built at Thebes itself, to contain within it, in addition to his funerary chapel, accommodation for the attendants assigned to the conduct of his worship.  In the Greek and Roman period a portion of this fortress was demolished, but the external wall of defence still exists on the eastern side, together with the gate, which is commanded on the right by a projection of the enclosing-wall, and flanked by two guard-houses, rectangular in shape, and having roofs which jut out about a yard beyond the wall of support.  Having passed through these obstacles, we find ourselves face to face with a migdol of cut stone, nearly square in form, with two projecting wings, the court between their loop-holed walls being made to contract gradually from the point of approach by a series of abutments.  A careful examination of the place, indeed, reveals more than one arrangement which the limited knowledge of the Egyptians would hardly permit us to expect.  We discover, for instance, that the main body of the building is made to rest upon a sloping sub-structure which rises to a height of some sixteen feet.

This served two purposes:  it increased, in the first place, the strength of the defence against sapping; and in the second, it caused the weapons launched by the enemy to rebound with violence from its inclined surface, thus serving to keep the assailants at a distance.  The whole structure has an imposing look, and it must be admitted that the royal architects charged with carrying out their sovereign’s idea brought to their task an attention to detail for which the people