Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

Chap. V.] HOUSES OF THE CITY. 201

or on a level with the court-yard. Their granaries
were generally in the outhouses, and their roofs, like
many of the houses* themselves, formed of crude
brick vaults, attest the invention f of the arch from
the earliest times into which Egyptian sculpture has
given us an insight.

Many, indeed, of the houses of Thebes were laid
out in this manner, at least in the Libyan suburb,
though it does not appear to have been generally
the case in the interior of Diospolis itself, J where
they stood in the unhealthy and constipated mass
usual in most large cities, particularly of the East;
but this did not prevent the wealthier Theban
citizens from possessing their country houses, or the
sacerdotal and military nobles § their parks, \\ where
they amused themselves with the pleasures of fish-
ing and the chase.

The court-yard of the larger mansions was sur-
rounded by a strong wall, defended and ornamented

* Some of the roofs were no doubt supported by rafters of
palm and other wood, an imitation of which may be seen in a
grotto cut in the scarped rock behind the second pyramid of
Geezeh. The invention of the arch was, in all probability, owing
to the great deficiency of wood in Egypt.

t I have noticed this fact, and my authority for it, in my
" Materia Hierog." p. 79.

% Diodorus affirms that they were even four or five stories high
as early as the time of its founder.—Lib. i. s. 45.

§ Diodorus says, speaking of the dead, " all the Egyptians are
equally noble;" but this could only signify after death, for in no
country, except among the Hindoos, was the distinction of castes
so scrupulously maintained as among the Egyptians. Diod. i.
s. 92. Vide Herod, ii. s. 47.

|| Tlapahitrovc. Conf. the Sculptures of Thebes and Beni
Hassan, and the Rosetta Stone.