he charge of the more important strategical points
in his own hands. Strongholds placed at bends of the river and at
the mouths of ravines leading into the desert, secured freedom of
navigation, and kept off the pillaging nomads. The fortress of Derr
[Kubban?--Ed.], which was often rebuilt, dates in part at least from
the early days of the conquest of Nubia. Its rectangular boundary--a
dry brick wall--is only broken by easily filled up gaps, and with some
repairs it would still resist an Ababdeh attack.*

* The most ancient bricks in the fortifications of Derr,
easily distinguishable from those belonging to the later
restorations, are identical in shape and size with those of
the walls at Syene and El-Kab; and the wall at El-Kab was
certainly built not later than the XIIth dynasty.

The most considerable Nubian works of the XIIth dynasty were in the
three places from which the country can even now be most effectively
commanded, namely, at the two cataracts, and in the districts extending
from Derr to Dakkeh. Elephantine already possessed an entrenched camp
which commanded the rapids and the land route from Syene to Philo.
Usirtasen III. restored its great wall; he also cleared and widened
the passage to Seriel, as did Papi I. to such good effect that easy and
rapid communication between Thebes and the new towns was at all times
practicable. Some little distance from Phihe he established a station
for boats, and an emporium which he called Hiru Khakeri--"the Ways of
Khakeri"--after his own throne name--Khakeri.*

* The widening of the passage was effected in the VIIIth
year of his reign, the same year in which he established the
Egyptian frontier at Semneh. The other constructions are
mentioned, but not very clearly, in a stele of the same year
which came from Elephantine, and is now in the British
Museum. The votive tablet, engraved in honour of Anukit at
Sehel, in which the king boasts of having made for the
goddess "the excellent channel [called] 'the Ways of
Khakeuri,'" probably refers to this widening and deepening
of the passage in the VIIIth year.

Its exact site is unknown, but it appears to have completed on the
south side the system of walls and redoubts which protected the cataract
provinces against either surprise or regular attacks of the barbarians.
Although of no appreciable use for the purposes of general security, the
fortifi