Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (15.2003(2004))

NAQLUN

EGYPT

Most of the plaster was about 1 cm thick
or slightly less. Only some of the desert clay
plasters were laid in much thinner layers.151
The plaster was colored occasionally. The
plaster in room G.5 was whitewashed
THE BRICK
The walls in the monastic compound
demonstrate considerable variety in terms
of both the building material and the
construction technique. Beside mud bricks
of more or less standardized size and
composition, the brickwork includes
occasionally bricks produced less carefully,
fragments of bricks and bricks taken from
other structures.1®
The regularity of brick courses seen in
the face of the walls does not always,
especially in the case of flat-laid courses,
correspond to the arrangement of the
bricks in the core, where there was much
more leniency, the bricks and fragments of
bricks being laid askew and thickly filled
with mortar. A very common technique,
even in the better-made walls, was to fill
the space between rows of bricks with
a thicker or thinner layer of mortar
(sometimes mixed with crushed brick).
This allowed the thickness of the walls to
be increased.
The architectural remains on Site A and
its borders are relatively diverse as far as
the brick bondwork is concerned.
Particularly noteworthy is the bond seen in
the walls of building AA.30.1-3,17)17) and
especially room AA.30.2 (Fig. l.A). The
bottom parts of the walls (76 cm thick)

unevenly. The same was done in room G.7,
except for the upper part of the east wall,
which was painted black. Traces of a purple
dye were observed on the so-called cement
plaster on the north wall of room G.8.
BONDWORK
were raised of big bricks laid in courses of
alternately headers and stretchers. At
a height of c. 110 cm, the big bricks were
replaced with smaller ones, although the
rhythm of header and stretcher courses was
retained for the next four courses. The
upper parts of the walls demonstrated
alternating courses of headers on edge and
stretchers, which was a bond made popular
in Egyptian building in Graeco-Roman
times and common in the architecture of
later periods.181
Other walls of considerable thickness
(66-70 cm, i.e. three brick lengths) from
Site A, relatively rare on the whole,191 were
erected of flat-laid bricks, alternating
headers and stretchers. Differences are to
be noted only in the plan of particular
courses (Figs. 1. B and C).
Some of the walls of moderate thickness
(47 cm, i.e. two brick lengths) also
represent the flat-laid brick bondwork. The
southern section of the wall between rooms
G.l and G.2 (Building G), between the
entrance and the staircase, had the west face
made of courses of, alternately, stretchers
and headers (Fig. l.D). The wall between
rooms G.2 and G.3 was made of stretchers
alone, with headers every second course
solely at the end, near the door (Fig. 2.E).

15) West wall of room G.2: 4-5 mm, west wall of room G.5: 3-4 mm, outer wall on the west side of corridor G.l: 2-3 mm.
16) Reused bricks were used mainly for blocking passages, e.g. the large-sized bricks coming from the dismantling of
Building A.
17) Godlewski, PAM XIII, op. cit., 161-162, Fig. 3.
18) Cf. A J. Spencer, Brick Architecture in Ancient Egypt (Warminster 1979), 137.
19) Only the east and south wall of room D.8 (sector D) and the north, east and south walls of room AE.l.

154