Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/75

Materials. ^t, tabernacles, monolithic statues, obelisks, and sarcophagi. The enormous quantity of granite which Egypt drew, from first to last, from the quarries at Syene, was mosdy for the sculptor. The dressed materials of the architect came chiefly from the lime- stone and sandstone quarries. Sometimes we find a building entirely constructed of one or the other, sometimes they are employed side by side. " The great temple at Abydos is built partly of limestone, very fine in the grain 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." ^ Bricks were employed to a vast extent by the Egyptians. They made them of Nile mud mixed with chopped straw, a combination which is mentioned in the Biblical account of the hardships in- flicted upon the Israelites. " And Pharaoh commanded the sam.e day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore ; let them q-q and rather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them ; ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they be idle." - 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 " as many as eighteen hundred a day.^ Sometimes drying in the sini was thought sufficient ; the result was a crude brick which was endowed with no little power of resistance and endurance in such a climate as that of Egypt. When baked bricks were required the operation was a little complicated as they each had to pass through the kiln. Egyptian bricks were usually very large. Those of a pyramid in the neighbourhood of Memphis average 15 inches long by 7 wide ' Mariette, Voyage dans la Haute- Egypie, vol. i. p. 59. - Exodus V. 6-8. ^ Marietie, Traite praiigm tt raisonnl- de la Construction en Ei^ypte, p. 59. All these operations are shown upon the walls of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (Lfpsius, Denkniixhr, p. rii, pi. 40). Labourers are seen drawing water from a basin, ^'gging the earth, carriing it in large jars, mixing it with the water, pressing the clay into the moulds, finally building walls which are being tested with a plumb-line by an overseer or foreman (see also I'ig. 16).