squares all over the wall corresponding with
the proportions of the figure to be drawn upon it. The subjects of the
painting and of the hieroglyphics were then drawn on the wall with a
red line, most probably by the priest or chief scribe, or by some
inferior artist, from a document divided into similar squares; then
came the chief artist, who went over every figure and hieroglyphic
with a black line, and a firm and steady hand, giving expression to
each curve, deviating here and confirming there the red line. The line
thus traced was then followed by the sculptor. The next process was to
paint the figure in the prescribed colours."

Although Egyptian architecture was essentially a trabeated
style,--that is to say, a style in which beams or lintels were usually
employed to cover openings,--there is strong ground for the belief
that the builders of that time were acquainted with the nature of the
arch. Dr. Birch mentions a rudimentary arch of the time of the fifth
dynasty: at Abydos there are also remains of vaulted tombs of the
sixth dynasty; and in a tomb in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids
there is an elementary arch of three stones surmounted by a true arch
constructed in four courses. The probability is that true brick arches
were built at a very early period, but in the construction of their
tombs, where heavy masses of superincumbent masonry or rock had to be
supported, the Egyptians seem to have been afraid to risk even the
remote possibility of their arches decaying; and hence, even when they
preserved the form of the arch in masonry, they constructed it with
horizontal courses of stones projecting one over the other, and then
cut away the lower angles. One dominating idea seems to have
influenced them in the whole of their work--_esto perpetua_ was their
motto; and though they have been excelled by later peoples in grace
and beauty, it is a question whether they have ever been surpassed in
the skill with which they adapted their means to the end which they
always kept in view.

ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.

_Plan._

_Floor_ (technically _Plan_).--The early rock-cut tombs were, of
course, only capable of producing internal effects; their floor
presents a series of halls and galleries, varying in size and shape,
leading one out of the other, and intended by their contrast or
combination to produce architectural effect. To this was added in the
later rock-cut tombs a facade to be seen directly in front. Much