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Defensive and Military Architecture
The Egyptians soon developed their early building
skills to enable them to construct artificial fortifications. There
were different types of defense works: Fortresses guarded the
frontiers, small forts were built on desert hills, and there were
other buildings across the countryside that acted both as prisons
and surveillance posts (the Egyptian word for “prison” and
“fortress” was the same). In temple and other scenes there are
“fortress cartouches” in the shape of crenellated ovals, each
surmounted by the head and shoulders of a bound prisoner, with the
name of the foreign enemy written inside the cartouche.
They are arranged in rows, and the Egyptian king is shown holding bunches of cords attached to the cartouches, thus indicating his conquests of these peoples. Early royal residences were similarly built with high, enclosing mud brick walls, but they were rectangular in plan and were decorated with the design of a paneled facade. Another style of fortress used by both Egyptians and Palestinians in earliest times was oval and had rounded buttresses. During the Middle Kingdom, Egypt first began to build extensive fortifications on the frontier with Nubia. Senusret III was responsible for the extension or construction of at least eight of these forts situated on islands and promontories between Semna South and Buhen. At Semna he blockaded the right bank of the river with a great fortress, portions of which have survived. These immense mud brick buildings were sixteen to twenty feet high and had double-tiered walls. Semna, with an irregular ground plan, had many projecting corners and was protected on the outside by a wall that incorporated a change of direction in the line of its slope. This was intended to make the use of scaling ladders by the enemy more difficult, since much longer ladders would be needed to climb a wall with a change of angle. A similar device is shown in a Middle Kingdom tomb scene at Beni Hasan, where a fortress with a change in the angle of the wall is depicted. The Middle Kingdom fortresses also had parapets and balconies and sometimes ditches and ramps. During the New Kingdom the number of Nubian fortresses was increased by the addition of new buildings intended to defend Egypt’s extended area of influence. These centers were manned by military and other personnel who not only ensured that Egypt retained control of the region but also introduced Egyptian customs and traditions. Another weak point in Egypt’s defense was in the east of the Delta where the Wadi Tumilat (the old land of Goshen) ran from the center of the Delta to a break in the string of the Bitter Lakes. This was a place of strategic importance requiring defense against the Asiatics. A fortress had existed here from at least as early as the Middle Kingdom when Amenemhet I built the castle called the “Wall of the Prince.” This was garrisoned so that the soldiers could constantly guard against the enemy. A later adage that a king built a continuous wall from Pelusium to Heliopolis is probably an exaggerated description of these castles. During the New Kingdom, when the Egyptians came into contact with fortifications in Asia, they quickly adopted an Asian style of fort, the “migdol.” This had a crenellated outer wall, a keep, and turrets. In the Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu the stone gateway is designed as a copy of the simple form of the Syrian migdol. In the Egyptian account, told in words and pictures on the pylons of the Ramesseum, of Ramesses II’s encounter with the Hittites at Kadesh, there is a description of the Egyptian camp pitched by the division of Amun. The soldiers placed their shields side by side to construct a four-cornered enclosure to which there was only one entrance; this was fortified with barricades and defended by four infantry divisions. A large tent at the center of the enclosure accommodated the king, and this was surrounded by the officers’ smaller tents; between these and the enclosure wall the ordinary soldiers, their animals, and the transport vehicles were housed. These included war chariots, two-wheeled wagons for the baggage, horses, oxen, donkeys, and the king’s tame lion. In the later campaigns when Ramesses continued his fight against the Hittites, he was mainly engaged in storming fortresses built close to the towns in Syria/Palestine. There are several representations of these buildings: They all had the same basic form, with strong gates that gave access to a lower story featuring battlements above and widely projecting balconies on each of the four sides; there was a second, more narrow story above with similar balconies and barred windows. The Egyptians still succeeded in taking these fortified buildings, however, breaking down the gates with their axes and using scaling ladders to climb the walls to the first story; meanwhile, they protected their backs with their shields and used their daggers against the enemy. The inhabitants are shown taking refuge in the second story, but as soon as they saw the Egyptians approaching they begged the king for mercy, and some tried to help the women and children escape by letting them down over the wall. Throughout the New Kingdom the Egyptians expanded and added to the protection of their kingdom by building fortresses along their frontiers and garrisoning them with troops and by constructing forts along the most important strategic routes to Libya and Palestine. Although natural barriers the sea and deserts protected Egypt, a few points of access remained particularly vulnerable, especially the Nubian frontier and the northeastern and northwestern boundaries with Palestine and Libya. Here, it was always necessary to use fortified defenses and soldiers to keep the enemy at bay. .
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Defensive and Military Architecture
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