Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/72

50 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. since a few fragments of wood which the centuries have spared have been found. These fragfrnents have been recoQ^nized as having come from the douni palm, which is very common in Upper Egypt, and commoner still in Nubia. We need not dwell upon the other fortress — that on the right bank. It may be seen in the distance in our restoration of Semneh. Being built upon rocks which were on all sides difficult of access, it did not require any very elaborate works. It was composed of an enceinte inclosing an irregular square about 190 feet each way. It had but a few salient buttresses ; there were only two on the north east, towards the mountains, and one, a very bold one, on the south-west, commanding the river. There was no room for a wide ditch. But at a distance of thirteen feet from the walls there was a glacis similar to that at Semneh. It had the same casing of polished stone, but on account of the irregularities of the rock, the height of its crown varied con- siderably, and its slope was very steep, almost vertical. The trace of the counterscarp followed that of the enceinte, including the buttresses. Moreover, at its northern and southern angles it followed a line which roughly resembled the bastions of a modern fortification. Its structure was similar to that of Semneh. Lepsius does not hesitate to ascribe both these forts to Ousour- tesen III., whose name appears upon all the neighbouring rocks, and who, with the deities of the south, was worshipped at Semneh.^ They would thus date back, according to the chrono- logy which is now generally adopted, to the twenty- seventh or twenty-eighth century B.C. In any case they cannot be later than the time of Thothmes III., who, in the course of the seventeenth century B.C. restored the temples which they inclose, and covered their walls with his effigies and royal cartouches. Even if we admit that these two castles are not older than the last-named epoch, we shall still have to give to Egypt the credit of possessing the oldest examples of military architecture, as well as the oldest temples and the oldest tombs. ^ Lepsius, Briefe aus /Egyptcjj, p. 259. — See also Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, pp. 111-113.