** Pihiri was, therefore, prince of Nekhabit and of Anit at one and the same time, whereas the town of Nekhnit had its own special rulers, several of whom are known to us from the tombs at Kom-el-Ahmar. The descendants of Ai attached themselves faithfully to the Pharaohs of the XVIIth dynasty, and helped them to the utmost in their struggle against the invaders. Their capital, Nekhabit, was situated between the Nile and the Arabian chain, at the entrance to a valley which penetrates some distance into the desert, and leads to the gold-mines on the Red Sea. The town profited considerably from the precious metals brought into it by the caravans, and also from the extraction of natron, which from prehistoric times was largely employed in embalming. It had been a fortified place from the outset, and its walls, carefully repaired by successive ages, were still intact at the beginning of this century. They described at this time a rough quadrilateral, the two longer sides of which measured some 1900 feet in length, the two shorter being about one-fourth less. The southern face was constructed in a fashion common in brick buildings in Egypt, being divided into alternate panels of horizontally laid courses, and those in which the courses were concave; on the north and west facades the bricks were so laid as to present an undulating arrangement running uninterruptedly from one end to the other. The walls are 33 feet thick, and their average height 27 feet; broad and easy steps lead to the foot-walk on the top. The gates are unsymmetrically placed, there being one on the north, east, and west sides respectively; while the southern side is left without an opening. These walls afforded protection to a dense but unequally distributed population, the bulk of which was housed towards the north and west sides, where the remains of an immense number of dwellings may still be seen. The temples were crowded together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to Nekhabit, the vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* This enclosure formed a kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had fallen into the enemy's hands. The times were troublous; the open country was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to lie fallow. * A part of the latter temple, that which had been rebuilt in the Saite epoch, was still standing at the beginning of the XIXth century, with columns bearing the cartouches of Hakori; it was destroyed about the year 1825, and Champollion found only the foundations of the walls. [Illustration: 119.jpg THE RUINS OF THE PYRAMID OF QULAH, NEAR MOHAMMERIEH] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch- Bey.