* The village of Karka or Kaka was identified by Brugsch with the hamlet of Deir el-Medineh:  the founder of the temple was none other than Amenothes, who was minister under Amenothes iii.

[Illustration:  004.jpg the Theban cemeteries]

Each of these temples had around it its enclosing wall of dried brick, and the collection of buildings within this boundary formed the Khiru, or retreat of some one of the Theban Pharaohs, which, in the official language of the time, was designated the “august Khiru of millions of years.”

[Illustration:  005.jpg the necropolis of Sheikh and el-Qurneh]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Beato.

A sort of fortified structure, which was built into one of the corners, served as a place of deposit for the treasure and archives, and could be used as a prison if occasion required.*

     * This was the hliatmu, the dungeon, frequently mentioned in
     the documents bearing upon the necropolis.

The remaining buildings consisted of storehouses, stables, and houses for the priests and other officials.  In some cases the storehouses were constructed on a regular plan which the architect had fitted in with that of the temple.  Their ruins at the back and sides of the Ramesseum form a double row of vaults, extending from the foot of the hills to the border of the cultivated lands.  Stone recesses on the roof furnished shelter for the watchmen.* The outermost of the village huts stood among the nearest tombs.  The population which had been gathered together there was of a peculiar character, and we can gather but a feeble idea of its nature from the surroundings of the cemeteries in our own great cities.  Death required, in fact, far more attendants among the ancient Egyptians than with us.  The first service was that of mummification, which necessitated numbers of workers for its accomplishment.  Some of the workshops of the embalmers have been discovered from time to time at Sheikh Abd el-Qurneh and Deir el-Bahari, but we are still in ignorance as to their arrangements, and as to the exact nature of the materials which they employed.  A considerable superficial space was required, for the manipulations of the embalmers occupied usually from sixty to eighty days, and if we suppose that the average deaths at Thebes amounted to fifteen or twenty in the twenty-four hours, they would have to provide at the same time for the various degrees of saturation of some twelve to fifteen hundred bodies at the least.**

     * The discovery of quantities of ostraca in the ruins of
     these chambers shows that they served partly for cellars.