38 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, is shaped like a stone bottle, it has a door at the ground level and a little window higher up.^ The Egyptians had country houses as well as those in town, but the structural arrangements were the same in both. The dwelling of the peasant did not differ very greatly from that of the town- bred artisan, while the villas of the wealthy w^ere only distin- guished from their houses in the richer quarters of Thebes and Fig. 27. — Granaries ; Sakkarah. Memphis by their more abundant provision of shady groves, parks, and artificial lakes. Their paintings prove conclusively that the Egyptians had carried horticulture to a very high pitch ; they even put their more precious trees in pots like those in which we place orange-trees.^ § 4. Military Architectttre. The Ancient Egyptians have left us very few works of military architecture, and yet, under their great Theban princes, more than one fortress must have been built outside their own country to preserve their supremacy- over neighbourijig .peoples. In the later periods of the empire fortresses were erected in the Delta ^ It is difficult to say what the artist meant by the httle oblong mark under these windows. Perhaps it represents an outside balcony by which the window could be reached either for the purposes of inspection or in order to add to the store within. - These trees must have been planted in large terra-cotta pots, such as are still used in many ])laccs for the same purpose.
