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)

368 THE WALL OF SESOSTRIS. [Chap. VI.

extent of the inundation few traces are left of its
existence in these low lands, which, though they
once marked the edge of the desert, now form part
of the cultivated plain of Egypt. That this wall
was raised to check the incursions of the Arabs
(for these deserts were formerly, as now, inhabited
by similar wandering tribes) is highly probable, as
the intent of it was evidently to prevent an ingress
from that quarter, since it extends along the open-
ings of the ravines, and is not carried over those
cliffs, whose perpendicular faces being precipitous
and impassable, obviated the necessity of its con-
tinuation.

Diodorus* says that Sesostris "erected a wall
along the eastern side of Egypt, to guard against
the incursions of the Syrians and Arabs, which
extended from Pelusium, by the desert, to Helio-
polis, being in length fifteen hundred stades," or
between one hundred and seventy and one hundred
and eighty miles; and it is not impossible that this
may be the one in question. But the observation
of Voltaire, " s'il construisit ce mur pour n'etre
point vole, c'est une grande presomption qu'il n'alla
pas lui-meme voler les autres nations," does not
appear to me just, unless the fortified stations built
by the Romans in the desert, for the same purpose,
are proofs of the weakness of that people. The
Arabs might plunder the peasant without its being

* Diod. i. s. 51.