FORTIFICATIONS. FENCED CITIES.' Inventions for the defence of men in social life are older than history. The walls, towers, and gates salem, still bear marks of this most ancient system, notwithstanding that this region, the connecting link between Asia and Africa, between the trade of the East and the \Vest, and between the religious feelings of the whole earth, ltas been the common battle-field of all the great nations of antiqkity, and of modern times, where ruin and desolation, often times repeated, have been spread over every habit represented on Egyptian monuments, though. dat ing back to a period of fifteen centuries before the Christian era, bear evidence of an advanced state of fortifications—of walls built of squared stones, or of squared timber judiciously placed on the summit of scarped rocks, or within the circumference of one or two wet ditches, and furnished on thc summit with regular battlements to protect the defenders. All these are of later invention than the accumula tion of unlaewn or rudely chipped uncemented stones, piled on each other in the form of walls, in the so-called Cyclopean, Pelasgian, Eti-uscan, and Celtic styles, where there are no ditches, or towers, or other gateways than mere openings occasionally left between the enormous blocks employed in the work. As the three first styles occur in Etruria, they shew the progressive advance of military architecture, and may be considered as more primi tive, though perhaps posterior to the era when the progress of Israel, under the guidance of Joshua, expelled several Canaanitish tribes, whose system of civilization, in cominon with that of the rest of 'Western Asia, bore an Egyptian type, a»d whose towers and battlements were remarkably high, or rather were erected in very elevated situations. When, therefore, the Israelites entered Palestine, we may assume that the fenced citics' they had to attack were, according to their degree of antiquity, able place. Stones from six to fifty feet in length, with suitable proportions, can still be detected in many walls of the cities of those regions, wherever quarries existed, from Nineveh, where beneath the surface there still remain ruins and walls of huge stones, sculptured with bas-reliefs, originally painted, to Babylon and Bassorah, where bricks, sun-dried or baked, and stamped with letters, are yet found, as well as in all the plains of the rivers where that material alone could be easily procured. The wall, fortified with more or less of art, but all with huge stones in the lower walls, like the Etruscan. deed, Asia Minor, Armenia, Syria, and even Jeru rnIn choma, was sometimes double or triple (2 Citron. xxxii. 5), successively girding a rocky ele vation ; and building a city' originally meant the construction of the wall.
Before wall-towers, n.19-1= nrijrdaloth, were in
troduced, the gate of a city, originally single, formed a kind of citadel, and was the strongest part of all the defences : it was the armoury of the community, and the council-house of the authori ties. Sitting in the gate' was, and still is, synony mous with the possession of power, and even now there is commonly in the fortified gate of a royal palace in the East, on the floor above the doorway, a council-room with a kind of balcony, whence the sovereign sometimes sees his people, and where he may sit in judgment. Hence the Turkish govern ment is not unfrequently termed the Porte, and in this sense allusion to gates often occurs in the Scriptures. The tower, 11'111' tsaroeh, was another fortification of the earliest date, being often the citadel or last retreat when a city was taken ; or, standing alone in some naturally strong position, was intended to protect a frontier, command a pass, or to be a place of refuge and deposit of so called, but simply an application of the means of defence to the localities, no uniformity of adap tation existed, and, therefore, we refer to No. 242 of our illustrations, representing some primeval fable of the rats besieging the cats in their strong tower, where regular hewn courses of stones in the walls shew skill in structure, and the inclined jambs of the door, with double impost, experience in obviating a too great pressure from above. In treasure in the mountains, when the plain should be no longer defensible. Some of these are figured among the Egyptian monuments, and in the west of England the round towers of Launceston, Restormel, Trematon, and Plympton, shew that similar means of defence were once employed by the Celtm of this island, who may have derived their knowledge from Phcenician or Carthaginian traders. \Watch-towers, nttn mizia, and 171V , terah, rn-ou leroth, used by shepherds all over Asia, and even DOW built on eminences above some city in the plain, in order to keep a look-out upon the distant country, were already in use and occa sionally converted into places of defence (2 Chron. xxvi. to; xxvii. 4). The gatewajs were closed by ponderous folding doors, "13./tr shaer, 0411V shaerim, the valves or folds, con9-Idelethinz, being secured by wooden bars : both the doors and bars were in after times plated with metal. A ditch, 51-; 411 hal, where the nature of the locality required it, was dug in front of the rampart, and sometimes there was an inner wall, with a second clitch before it. As the experience of ages increased, huge counter forts,' double buttresses, or masses of solid stone and ITIRSOIlly (not bulwarks*) were built in particular parts to sustain the outer wall, and I afford space on the summit to place military engines (2 Chron. xxvi.