Volume II Part 4 (1/2)

People have seen a few granite obelisks standing in two or three of the European capitals, and they have too often juyptians built alranite The fact is that there is but one building in Egypt the body of which is of granite, and that is the ancient tes 202 and 203, vol i) Even there the roof and the casing of the walls was of alabaster Granite was employed, as a rule, only where a very choice and expensive ht into play when certain parts of a building had to be endoith more nobility and beauty than the rest Thus there are, in the great temple at Karnak, a few s 215, H, vol i), in which the material in question has alone been e it was only used incidentally In the pyraranite[46] In many of the Theban temples it was employed for the bases of columns, thresholds, jambs, and lintels of doors It was also used for isolated objects, such as tabernacles, i

The enorypt drew, from first to last, from the quarries at Syene, was mostly for the sculptor The dressed materials of the architect came chiefly from the li entirely constructed of one or the other, soreat temple at Abydos is built partly of lirain and admirably adapted for sculpture, and partly of sandstone

The sandstone has been used for columns, architraves, and the frames of doors, and limestone for the rest”[47]

[46] It is of Mokattam limestone (see vol i, p 223) M

Perrot probably meant to refer to the two upper ”charanite--ED

[47] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol i p 59

Bricks were eyptians They made them of Nile mud mixed with chopped straw, a combination which is mentioned in the Biblical account of the hardshi+ps inflicted upon the Israelites ”And Pharaoh commanded the same day the task, Ye shall no ive the people straw to ather straw for themselves And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon theht thereof, for they be idle”[48]

[48] _Exodus_ v 6-8

This manufacture was remarkable for its extreme rapidity--an excellent brick earth was to be found at almost any point in the Nile valley An unpractised labourer can easily make a thousand bricks a day; after a week's practice he can make twelve hundred, and, if paid ”by the piece” asin the sun was thought sufficient; the result was a crude brick which was endoith no little power of resistance and endurance in such a cliypt When baked bricks were required the operation was a little coyptian bricks were usually very large Those of a pyra by 7 wide and 4-3/4 inches thick[50] After the commencement of the Theban epoch they were often stamped with the royal oval--as the Roman bricks had the names of the consuls impressed upon them--and thus they have preserved the dates at which the buildings of which they for 33)[51]

[49] MARIETTE, _Traite pratique et raisonne de la Construction en egypte_, p 59 All these operations are shown upon the walls of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (LEPSIUS, _Denk water froe jars,the clay into thetested with a plu 16)

[50] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, letter-press, p 179

[51] LEPSIUS (_Denkmaeler_, part iii plates 7, 25A, 26, 39) has reproduced a certain number of these stamped bricks

[Illustration: FIG 33--Brick stamped with the royal ovals; froyptians had no lack of excellent building materials of a lapidary kind On the other hand, they were very poorly provided with good timber Before the conquest of Syria they enous woods The best of these were the _Acacia nilotica_, or gum acacia, and the _Acacia lebhak_, but neither of these trees furnished beams of any size

Sycah for use[52] And yet in default of better wood it was sometimes employed

The same may be said of the date palm, whose trunk furnished posts and rafters, and, at ti the hey-day of Theban supres as the pavilion at Medinet-Abou reat cost The Theban princes, like those of Nineveh in later times, no doubt caused the Phnicians, ere their vassals, to thin the cedar forests of Lebanon for their benefit In structures of less importance carpenters and joiners had to do as best they could with the timber furnished by their own country The difficulty which they experienced in procuring good planks explains to some extent the care which they lavished upon their ork They contrived, by an elaborate systeht and horizontal strips with ornamental members, to avoid the waste of even the smallest piece of s, doorways, and panels of a modern Arab house, of the _moucharabiehs_ of Cairo The principle is the sah the decorative lines are soested the employment of similar processes[53]

[52] We do not here refer to the kind of maple which is often erroneously called a sycamore with us, but to a tree of quite a different family and appearance, the _Ficus Sycomorus_ of Linnaeus

[53] ED MARIETTE, _Traite Pratique_, etc, p 95

-- 3 _Construction_

In spite of the bad quality of Egyptian timber the earliest efforts at construction made by the ancestors of the people were s cannot have been very unlike those which the traveller even yet encounters in Nubia These are cabins alls formed of palm branches interlaced and plastered over with clay and straw Their roofs are branches or planks froypt, upon the borders of Lake Menzaleh, the huts of the people are forots of reeds Wherever as abundant and the rain less to be feared than the heat of the sun, the first dwelling was a hut of branches The ood deal more patience, calculation, and effort, than to plant a few boughs in the soil and weave theether

We do not mean to pretend that earth, either in the form of bricks or pise, did not very soon coan to form shelters for themselves, but it seems certain that wooden construction was developed before any other It was the first to ai which could be called a style This is proved by the fact that the most ancient works in stone have no appropriate character of their own; they owe such decorative qualities as they possess to their docile imitation of works in the less durable us of Mycerinus as an exaus had a short but adventurous career after its discovery by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837 It was then empty, but in a state of perfect preservation, with the exception of the lid, which was broken, but could be easily restored The precious relic was reether with the wooden coffin of the king, on board a land the shi+p recked off Carthagena, and the sarcophagus lost The coffin floated and was saved Happily the sarcophagus had been accurately drawn, and we are enabled to give a perspective view of it co 34)

Frous was of basalt The whole of its forms were appropriate to wooden construction alone Each of its longer sides was divided into three coht in salience, and crowned by a kind of entablature forth and relief The lower parts of the three compartments consist of a kind of false door with very complicated jambs Above this there are deeply cut holloith cross bars, suggesting s, and still higher a nuus The little pilasters are separated by narrow panels, which terminate in an ornament which could readily be cut in wood by the chisel, viz, in that double lotus-leaf which is so universally present in the us were similar to the sides, except that they had only one coe, exclusive of the lid, are carved into a cylindrical les of a wooden case The upper member of the whole, a bold cornice, is the only element which it is not easy to refer to the traditions of wooden construction[54]

[54] In his _Histoire de l'Habitation_, VIOLLET-LE-DUC has sought to find the origin of this cornice in an outward curve imparted to the upper extres were ht of the roof