remains at Tel-el-Kebir and Abu Kesheb are the ruins of Egyptian buildings. At the second place an image of Ramses II. has been found, worshipping Tum and Ammon. We may assume that the ruins at Tel-el-Kebir are those of the city of Pithom (Patumos, _pa-tum_, _i.e._ habitation of Tum), which we learn from Herodotus lay on this canal, and those at Abu Kesheb are the ruins of the city of Ramses (_pa-rameses_), names preserved to us in the tradition of the Hebrews, and that Sethos and Ramses II. had built both these cities.[225] The Hebrews, whose forefathers had broken off from the Edomites, the settlers on Mount Seir, which runs from the north-east point of the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, and pastured their flocks on the Pelusiac arm of the Nile under Egyptian protection, have a tradition that it was they who were compelled to build Pithom and Ramses for the Pharaoh. The canal remained unfinished; at that time it apparently reached only to the Lake of Crocodile. Seven hundred years later Necho carried it as far as the Bitter Lakes; it was finished by King Darius and the Ptolemies, who completed what the Pharaohs were unable to carry out. The tradition of the mighty deeds of Sesostris in Asia contradicts itself in the most glaring manner, inasmuch as it likewise tells us that he dug a number of canals from Memphis downwards to the sea, in order to fortify the land and make the approach difficult for enemies. The eastern side of Egypt also he fortified against the inroads of Arabians and Syrians, by building a wall of about 1,500 stades long through the desert from Pelusium to Heliopolis. And the inscriptions on the building of Sethos at Karnak are believed to tell us that this prince had erected "the double walls against the lands of the impure."[226] No line of fortification was required against the nomads on the eastern border, if these were sufficiently held in check by the Egyptian arms, or had been thoroughly subjugated. This great fortification which passed beyond the protecting arm of the Nile from Bubastis in a slanting direction through the desert, from the sea to Heliopolis, along a line of about 1,500 stades, may very likely have been connected with the making of the canal. The trade on the canal would be protected against predatory attacks, and the territory rescued from the desert by its construction, and the cities adjacent would be protected. The city which Ramses built on the canal and named by his own name apparently belonged to those fortifications. It was a border fortress against the desert and the attacks of Syrian tribes.