ce, and partly by pillage, the lords of Elephantine
became rapidly wealthy, and began to play an important part among the
nobles of the Said: they were soon obliged to take serious precautions
against the cupidity which their wealth excited among the tribes of
Konusit. They entrenched themselves behind a wall of sun-dried brick,
some seven and a half miles long, of which the ruins are still an object
of wonder to the traveller. It was flanked towards the north by the
ramparts of Syene, and followed pretty regularly the lower course of the
valley to its abutment at the port of Mahatta opposite Philas: guards
distributed along it, kept an eye upon the mountain, and uttered a
call to arms, when the enemy came within sight. Behind this bulwark
the population felt quite at ease, and could work without fear at the
granite quarries on behalf of the Pharaoh, or pursue in security their
callings of fishermen and sailors. The inhabitants of the village of
Satit and of the neighbouring islands claimed from earliest times the
privilege of piloting the ships which went up and down the rapids,
and of keeping clear the passages which were used for navigation.
They worked under the protection of their goddesses Anukit and Satit:
travellers of position were accustomed to sacrifice in the temple of the
goddesses at Sehel, and to cut on the rock votive inscriptions in their
honour, in gratitude for the prosperous voyage accorded to them. We meet
their scrawls on every side, at the entrance and exit of the cataract,
and on the small islands where they moored their boats at nightfall
during the four or five days required for the passage; the bank of
the stream between Elephantine and Philae is, as it were, an immense
visitors' book, in which every generation of Ancient Egypt has in turn
inscribed itself. The markets and streets of the twin cities must have
presented at that time the same motley blending of types and costumes
which we might have found some years back in the bazaars of modern
Syene. Nubians, negroes of the Soudan, perhaps people from Southern
Arabia, jostled there with Libyans and Egyptians of the Delta. What the
princes did to make the sojourn of strangers agreeable, what temples
they consecrated to their god Khnumu and his companions, in gratitude
for the good things he had bestowed upon them, we have no means of
knowing up to the present. Elephantine and Syene have preserved for us
nothing of their ancient edifices; but the