Wilkinson, John Gardner; Birch, Samuel [Mitarb.]: The Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs: being a companion to the Crystal Palace Egyptian collections (London, 1857)

13S

DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE EGYPTIANS.

bricks, nearly one and a half foot long, eight inches broad, and
five and a half inches thick, was a saving of labour in the con-
struction. And in order to spare as much of the arch as
possible, they were placed lengthways ; the ends of the bricks

being cut into a wedge shape, or
the space left between their
upper edges being filled in by a
triangular piece of stone im-
bedded in the mud, that served
for mortar. Either of these
methods made up for the curve
C&-9S-) of the arch, and enabled the

bricks to radiate to a common centre, on which, and not on the
key-stone, the principle of an arch depends; for many arches,
both round and pointed, have been built in modern ages
without a keystone.

They afterwards improved upon their mode of placing the
bricks, and arranged them side by side, as in modern buildings;

and some of the double con-
centric arches, over the gate-
ways before the tombs at
Thebes, are as beautifully con-
structed as those of Eoman,

:

.

(W. 99.)

or of modern, times. They
arc of the age of Psammitichus
and the other kings of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, about
GOO before our era. But many
well-built arches were made on the old principle to a late time,
and consisted of three or four concentric rows of bricks placed
lengthways, with a sort of hood or dripstone projecting beyond
the level of the wall and the face of the archivolt (woodcut 99).