Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/49

 The Egyptian House. 27 country the ordinary dwelling-house is constructed of small materials, and the day arrives, sooner or later, when it succumbs to the action of the weather. It is only under exceptional circumstances that the private house leaves ruins behind it from which much can be learnt. Pompeii, under its shroud of ashes and fine dust, is a case in point. Some- times, also, when the house has entirely disappeared, interesting facts may be gleaned as to its extent and arrangement. Instances of this are to be seen at Athens, where, upon several of the hills which were formerly included within its walls, may be traced the foundations of private dwellings cut in the living rock. Neither of these favourable conditions existed in the valley of the Nile. The sands of the deserts would, no doubt, have guarded the houses of Memphis and Thebes as effectually as the cinders of Vesuvius did those of the little Roman town, if they had had but the same chance. We know how thoroughly they protected the dwellings of the dead upon the plateau of Gizeh, but the homes of the living were built close to the river and not upon the borders of the desert, and we can neither hope to find dead cities under the Egyptian sands, nor such indications of their domestic archi- tecture as those which may sometimes be gleaned in mountainous countries. Their situation upon the banks of the river, or not far from it, made it necessary for Egyptian cities to be placed upon artificial mounds or embankments, which should raise them above the inundation. Those modern villages which are not built upon the slopes of the mountain, are protected in the same fashion. The tradition has survived of the great works undertaken during the period of national prosperity in order to provide this elevated bed for the chief cities of the country. According to Herodotus and Diodorus, Sesostris and Sabaco. that is to say the great Theban princes and the Ethiopian conquerors, were both occupied with this work of raising the level of the towns.^ Some idea of the way in which these works were carried out has been gained by excavations upon the sites of a few cities. When a new district was to be added to a city the ground was prepared by building with crude brick a number of long and thick walls parallel to one another ; then cross walls at right angles with the first, chessboard fashion. The square pits thus constructed were ^ Herodotus, ii. 137 ; Diodorl's. i. 57.