Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie.

  • Flinders Petrie
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Social life in ancient Egypt / by W.M. Flinders Petrie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Around it is a space ioj feet wide, and then another high fender-wall, 9J feet thick. Thus, direct battering was prevented on the main wall; and if the enemy entered between the walls, he could not retreat easily, but could be pounded with heavy bricks from above. There are large chamber gateways to E.S.E. and N.N.E., and narrow openings on the west and south. Strangely, there is no trace of a gangway to the top, nor of any attachment for a wooden stair, yet access to the top would be essential for defence. Two other forts of the same kind are close by this, one removed to the foundations, the other occupied as the Coptic Deir. Forts were also built in southern Syria in the Vth dynasty, as there is a scene of the siege of a fort by scaling ladder and by mining. In the Xllth dynasty, at the very important frontier fortress of Semneh, a new principle appears of throwing forward solid towers along the wall, so that any attack could be repelled on three sides, while if the towers were destroyed it would not injure the fortress. The wall rose to 82 feet above the plain. Outside of this a ditch encircled the building, with a stone glacis outside of the ditch. Thus the enemy could be attacked by archery on two awkward slopes, of glacis and of ditch, before he reached the wall. Beams of wood laid in the brickwork steadied it, so that a
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