A rough stone bench from two to two and a half feet high surrounds the plateau on which the village stands; a _cheval défrise_ made of thorny brushwood probably completed the defence, as in the _duars_ of the desert. The position was very strong and easily defended. Watchmen scattered over the neighbouring summits kept an outlook over the distant plain and the defiles of the mountains. Whenever the cries of these sentinels announced the approach of the foe, the workmen immediately deserted the mine and took refuge in their citadel, which a handful of resolute men could successfully hold, as long as hunger and thirst did not enter into the question. As the ordinary springs and wells would not have been sufficient to supply the needs of the colony, they had transformed the bottom of the valley into an artificial lake. A dam thrown across it prevented the escape of the waters, which filled the reservoir more or less completely according to the season. It never became empty, and several species of shellfish flourished in it--among others, a kind of large mussel which the inhabitants generally used as food, which with dates, milk, oil, coarse bread, a few vegetables, and from time to time a fowl or a joint of meat, made up their scanty fare. Other things were of the same primitive character. The tools found in the village are all of flint: knives, scrapers, saws, hammers, and heads of lances and arrows. A few vases brought from Egypt are distinguished by the fineness of the material and the purity of the design; but the pottery in common use was made on the spot from coarse clay without care, and regardless of beauty. As for jewellery, the villagers had beads of glass or blue enamel, and necklaces of strung cowrie-shells. In the mines, as in their own houses, the workmen employed stone tools only, with handles of wood, or of plaited willow twigs, but their chisels or hammers were more than sufficient to cut the yellow sandstone, coarse-grained and very friable as it was, in the midst of which they worked.* * E. H. Palmer, however, from his observations, is of opinion that the work in the tunnels of the mines was executed entirely by means of bronze chisels and tools; the flint implements serving only to incise the scenes which cover the surfaces of the rocks.