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Building Materials and Techniques
Brick
Stone was used to build tombs and temples, but dried bricks were employed for all domestic dwellings, since Nile mud can be easily fashioned into the required shape and then dried in the sun. Kiln-baked bricks appeared c.600 BC, but most bricks were unburned. Scenes in the tomb of the vizier Rekhmire at Thebes (Dynasty 18) illustrate the process of manufacturing the bricks, and at Kahun the excavator W. M. Flinders Petrie discovered a wooden mud brick mold. Construction commenced as soon as the required number of bricks was produced. The bricks, often concave to provide stability, were built up alternately in one or two layers with the broad side facing outward first and then the narrow side, unlike the modern custom of placing all bricks in each row so that the broad side faces outward. Pieces of wood, even complete tree trunks, were sometimes incorporated into large brick buildings to give them strength. Nile mud mixed with potsherds was also used as a mortar in the brick buildings. Wood and Wooden Pillars In earliest times trees were relatively abundant in Egypt, and wood was probably widely used for building. By the historic period, however, local woods became scarce and not very serviceable; they were used for the production of weapons, domestic articles, ordinary coffins, and statuettes. Local sycamore, palm trees, willow, acacia, and thorn trees met these needs, but the Egyptians had to go abroad for better timber. From at least as early as Dynasty 2 they traveled to Byblos to obtain cedars from Lebanon, which could be used for ships, the best coffins, flag masts on pylons, and large temple doors. An important architectural feature of later stone buildings owes its form to the initial use of wood for this purpose. The pillar was originally devised as a wooden prop, needed to support the roof even in mud or wooden buildings. It was fixed at the base in a lump of clay so that it had a firmer hold on the ground, and where the roof beam rested on it at the top a board was placed between the pillar and the beam to divide the weight. In the later stone columns these features were retained as a round base and square abacus. Wooden pillars were decorated around the top with bunches or garlands of flowers and buds, which developed into the flower- and bud-form capitals of later stone columns. .
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Stone
Egyptian carpenters were no doubt skillful, using mortises and joints from the time of the Old Kingdom, but it was the masons who were the outstanding craftsmen; they carried the mastery of stone to perhaps unequaled heights. Masons could not only carve limestone with delicate reliefs but also carve and polish hard stones such as granite and diorite; they were especially adept at dealing with deficiencies in the available material. Fine white limestone, used for the pyramids and best mastabas, was obtained from the Tura quarries near Memphis. Alabaster came from quarries south of Tura in the Wadi Gerrawi, and sandstone the least destructible building material came mainly from Gebel es-Silsila. Red granite was brought from the quarries at Aswan, while black granite was transported from the Wadi Hammamat between Coptos and the Red Sea, a journey of two or three days from the Nile. In the Aswan quarries it is possible to observe the places from which obelisks (upright stones placed at the entrance to temples) were cut. Obelisks often weighed hundreds of tons, and the largest (over a thousand tons) still lies in an unfinished state in the Aswan quarry. There are various theories about the methods of quarrying, transporting, and erecting the obelisks. Evidence at Aswan indicates that to remove the stone the masons probably chiseled holes into the rock to a depth of about six inches and then forced wooden wedges into these holes before moistening them with water so that the wood swelled and caused the rock to split. The obelisk could then be chiseled out and transported by river to the site of the temple, where it was finished. .
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Tools
Craftsmen’s tools were generally simple. In addition to tomb scenes illustrating craftsmen at work, some rare examples of tools have also been found. At Kahun W. M. Flinders Petrie discovered a caster’s shop that still contained metal tools and earthenware molds for metal casting. He also found masons’ tools and wooden pieces used in stoneworking near the royal monuments at Lahun. At Kahun metal and stone tools both continued to be used alongside each other for appropriate tasks. Carpenters generally used copper or bronze tools, but stonemasons employed both stone and metal implements. Stone tools included flint axe and adze blades, knives, scrapers, and flakes; the adze blades were fitted with wooden handles. Metal tools were now used for stone facing, however, and the masons could cut and work stones that ranged from soft limestone to granite and basalt. Analysis of the Kahun metals has shown that the metalsmiths were adept at judiciously adding certain alloys to metals to make them suitable for particular tasks; they also tempered them and thus were probably able to produce tools of required strengths to deal with all these stones. Other masons’ tools found at Kahun included wooden wedges and clamps (flat pieces of wood with expanding ends) to hold stones in place, as in pavements. There were also stone and clay plummets and wooden offset pieces that were used for facing the stone blocks. .
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Building Materials and Techniques
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