After we finished touring the tombs, we headed back down the hill toward massive these massive brick defensive walls, which are relatively young (only 4th century B.C.) Surely carving sandstone with magnificent hieroglyphs is an amazing feat, but there was something oddly entrancing about these walls too. They were just so massive, so simple, and so unyielding. The finest temples in Egypt are almost so perfect you forget they are built by hand in a time when there weren’t many tools. But mud brick walls are clearly handmade; I imagine some ancient person patting them, shaping them, and putting them into the sun to dry. Thanks to the near-total lack of rain, they’ve persisted 2,400 years to remind us of our past.
The walls enclosed a huge area. There was supposedly the ruins of a small temple inside, but as we walked across the basin, there wasn’t much to see but sand and plants. I’m not sure if it was on the other side of the area or perhaps buried by sand?
We entered back through the village
We saw these clay pots periodically in Egypt. They are communal drinking fountains; if you’re feeling thirsty, you can take the tin cup, dunk it in the pot, and be refreshed.
Pushing off:
