Brickmaking in Egypt

Brickmaking in Egypt

From Adolf Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt. London: Macmillan, 1894.

The natural building material of Egypt is the Nile mud; this substance can be easily fashioned into any shape, and when dried in the sun possesses no little strength, and is the more enduring as under that happy sky it is rarely exposed to any rain. In Egypt little mud huts are still to be seen in country places, and there seems no doubt that a similar barbaric, rough style of building was that most anciently practiced in Egypt. In historic times Egyptian architecture possesses, at any rate, some forms which are apparently derived from mud buildings of this kind. The outer walls of the buildings diminish in size towards the top, evidently because in a mud wall greater strength is required in the lower part to give due support. The corners of the building are formed by round posts; these were to protect it from crumbling, a danger which, without this precaution, would be inevitable at the corners of a mud building. In the same way the upper edge of the wall is protected by a similar beam, without which the rafters would crush in the soft walls. The roof itself however, with its hollow recess, was generally constructed, as in modern days, of trunks of wood, covered in on the outside with a layer of mud. The short marks which we see side by side in the hollow recess, may possibly represent the sloping ends of the beams, just as the horizontal frame which encloses them above represents the coating of mud.
   In very early times the Egyptians discovered that they could construct the walls with far greater ease and safety, if they converted the mud into rectangular pieces of a definite size, i.e. into bricks. Brick buildings, belonging to all ages of Egyptian history, still exist, but as yet they have not attracted due attention. With few exceptions the bricks are unburnt, and are mixed with short pieces of straw; in the periods with which we are concerned their size is always a matter to be taken into account--they are generally 15 inches x 7 inches x 4 1/2 inches.
   The above interesting representation (Lepsius, Denkmaler iii. 40) of the time of the 18th dynasty shows us how they prepared the bricks. The storehouses of the great temple of Amon could no longer contain the royal gifts; Thothmes III. therefore ordered a new building to be constructed. The high official who was entrusted with this commission has represented for us in his tomb how the necessary number of bricks were made; they were, as was usually the case, the work of the captive Asiatics, whom the king had presented to the temple. As we see, the Nile mud is first moistened--two men are drawing the water from a tank for this purpose--it is then worked through with the common Egyptian hoe. It is next placed in wooden moulds which, as is proved by many bricks we possess, were stamped with the name of the reigning king. When ready, the bricks were placed in the sun to dry; the dried bricks, which can be recognised in our representation by their small size, were then placed in heaps ready for the builders to fetch them away for their work. Further on in our picture the process of building is represented, and one fact that we observe here we also learn from every brick building which has been preserved to us, namely, the curious way in which the bricks were built up. In old times, as in modern days, the Egyptian rarely placed his bricks as we do now, with all the bricks in each row resting on the broad side. It was the Egyptian custom, on the contrary, to place the bricks alternately in one or two layers, first on the broad side and then on the narrow side.
   The Nile mud served also as mortar in the brick buildings; for this purpose it was generally mixed with potsherds. I must add that in very early times they understood how to build the arch; in the long vaulted passages (probably used as store-rooms) which Ramses II. built round his funerary temple, the vaulting is constructed with peculiarly flat bricks, somewhat resembling our tiles, these were provided with special grooves in order to fasten them together more securely. (417-8)