Now, of all rare things in the valley of the Nile, a purely secular ruin is the rarest; and this, with the exception of some foundations of dwellings here and there, is the first we have seen. It is probably very, very old; as old as the days of Thothmes III, whose name is found on some scattered blocks about a quarter of a mile away, and who built two similar fortresses at Semneh, thirty-five miles above Wady Halfeh. It may be even a thousand years older still, and date from the time of Amenemhat III, whose name is also found on a stela near Kobban.[162] For here was once an ancient city, when Pselcis (now Dakkeh) was but a new suburb on the opposite bank. The name of this ancient city is lost, but it is by some supposed to be identical with the Metachompso of Ptolemy.[163] As the suburb grew the mother town declined, and in time the suburb became the city and the city became the suburb. The scattered blocks aforesaid, together with the remains of a small temple, yet mark the position of the elder city. The walls of this most curious and interesting fortress have probably lost much of their original height. They are in some parts thirty feet thick, and nowhere less than twenty. Vertical on the inside, they are built at a buttress-slope outside, with additional shallow buttresses at regular distances. These last, as they can scarcely add to the enormous strength of the original wall, were probably designed for effect. There are two entrances to the fortress; one in the center of the north wall, and one in the south. We enter the inclosure by the last named, and find ourselves in the midst of an immense parallelogram measuring about four hundred and fifty feet from east to west, and perhaps three hundred feet from north to south. All within these bounds is a wilderness of ruin. The space looks large enough for a city, and contains what might be the débris of a dozen cities. We climb huge mounds of rubbish; skirt cataracts of broken pottery; and stand on the brink of excavated pits honeycombed forty feet below, with brick foundations. Over these mounds and at the bottom of these pits swarm men, women, and children, filling and carrying away basket-loads of rubble. The dust rises in clouds. The noise, the heat, the confusion, are indescribable. One pauses, bewildered, seeking in vain to discover in this mighty maze any indication of a plan. It is only by an effort that one gradually realizes how the place is but a vast shell, and how all these mounds and pits mark the site of what was once a huge edifice rising tower above tower to a central keep, such as we see represented in the battle-subjects of Abou Simbel and Thebes.