the year, and a muddy pond where the
cattle drank and women came for water. Somewhere in each town was an open
space shaded by sycamores or acacias, and hither on market days came the
peas-ants of the district two or three times in the month. There were also
waste places where rubbish and refuse was thrown, to be quarrelled over by
vultures, hawks, and dogs.

[Illustration: Fig. 4.--Plan of house, Medinet Habu]

[Illustration: Fig. 5.--Plan of house, Medinet Habu.]

[Illustration: Fig. 6.--Facade of a house toward the street, second Theban
period.]

[Illustration: Fig. 7.--Plan of central court of house, second Theban
period.]

[Illustration: Fig. 8.--Restoration of the hall in a Twelfth Dynasty house.
In the middle of the floor is a tank surrounded by a covered colonnade.
Reproduced from Plate XVI. of _Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob_, W.M.F.
Petrie.]

[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Box representing a house (British Museum).]

The lower classes lived in mere huts which, though built of bricks, were no
better than those of the present fellahin. At Karnak, in the Pharaonic
town; at Kom Ombo, in the Roman town; and at Medinet Habu, in the Coptic
town, the houses in the poorer quarters have seldom more than twelve or
sixteen feet of frontage. They consist of a ground floor, with sometimes
one or two living-rooms above. The middle-class folk, as shopkeepers, sub-
officials, and foremen, were better housed. Their houses were brick-built
and rather small, yet contained some half-dozen rooms communicating by
means of doorways, which were usually arched over, and having vaulted
roofs in some cases, and in others flat ones. Some few of the houses were
two or three storeys high, and many were separated from the street by a
narrow court, beyond which the rooms were ranged on either side of a long
passage (fig. 4). More frequently, the court was surrounded on three sides
by chambers (fig. 5); and yet oftener the house fronted close upon the
street. In the latter case the facade consisted of a high wall, whitewashed
or painted, and surmounted by a cornice. Even in better houses the only
ornamentation of their outer walls consisted in angular grooving, the
grooves being surmounted by representations of two lotus flowers, each pair
with the upper parts of the stalks in contact (see figs. 24, 25). The door
was the only opening, save perhaps a few small windows pierced at irregular
intervals (fig. 6). Even in unpretentious houses, the door wa