the broken bricks, and all the accumulated refuse of the work, made a bed
of eight inches or a foot in depth, and the base of the wall thus buried
served instead of a foundation. When the new house rose on the ruins of an
older one decayed by time or ruined by accident, the builders did not even
take the trouble to raze the old walls to the ground. Levelling the surface
of the ruins, they-built upon them at a level a few feet higher than
before: thus each town stands upon one or several artificial mounds, the
tops of which may occasionally rise to a height of from sixty to eighty
feet above the surrounding country. The Greek historians attributed these
artificial mounds to the wisdom of the kings, and especially to Sesostris,
who, as they supposed, wished to raise the towns above the inundation. Some
modern writers have even described the process, which they explain thus:--A
cellular framework of brick walls, like a huge chess-board, formed the
substructure, the cells being next filled in with earth, and the houses
built upon this immense platform (Note 5).

[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Ancient house with vaulted floors, against the
northern wall of the great temple of Medinet Habù]

[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Plan of three-quarters of the town of Hat-Hotep-
Ûsertesen (Kahûn), built for the accommodation of the officials and workmen
employed in connection with the pyramid of Ûsertesen II. at Illahûn. The
workmen's quarters are principally on the west, and separated from the
eastern part of the town by a thick wall. At the south-west corner, outside
the town, stood the pyramid temple, and in front of it the porter's lodge.
Reproduced from Plate XIV. of _Illahûn, Kahun, and Gurob_, W.M.F. Petrie.]

But where I have excavated, especially at Thebes, I have never found
anything answering to this conception. The intersecting walls which one
finds beneath the later houses are nothing but the ruins of older