Even in Rome until well into the Christian era "the largest domestic and
civil buildings were of plastered brick". "Wrought masonry seems to have
been demanded only for the great monuments, triumphal arches, theatres,
temples and above all for the Coliseum." (Lethaby, _op. cit._ p. 120).

Nevertheless Rome was mainly responsible for breaking down the hieratic
tradition which forbade the use of stone for civil purposes. "In Roman
architecture the engineering element became paramount. It was this which
broke the moulds of tradition and recast construction into modern form,
and made it free once more" (p. 130).

But Egypt was not only responsible for inaugurating the use of stone for
building. For another forty centuries she continued to be the inventor
of new devices in architecture. From time to time methods of building
which developed in Egypt were adopted by her neighbours and spread far
and wide. The shaft-tombs and _mastabas_ of the Egyptian Pyramid Age
were adopted in various localities in the region of the Eastern
Mediterranean,[20] with certain modifications in each place, and in turn
became the models which were roughly copied in later ages by the
wandering dolmen-builders. The round tombs of Crete and Mycenae were
clearly only local modifications of their square prototypes, the
Egyptian Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom. "While this AEgean art gathered
from, and perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals to the north
and west of Europe, where the productions of the Bronze Age clearly show
its influence" (Lethaby, p. 78) in the chambered mounds of the Iberian
peninsula and Brittany, of New Grange in Ireland and of Maes Howe in the
Orkneys.[21] In the East the influence of these AEgean modifications may
possibly be seen in the Indian _stupas_ and the _dagabas_ of Ceylon,
just as the stone stepped pyramids there reveal the effects of contact
with the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt.

Professor Lethaby sees the influence of Egypt in the orientation of
Christian churches (p. 133), as well as in many of their structural
details (p. 142); in the domed roofs, the iconography, the symbolism,
and the decoration of Byzantine architecture (p. 138); and in Mohammedan
buildings wherever they are found.

For it was not only the architecture of Greece, Rome, and Christendom
that received its inspiration from Egypt, but that of Islam also. These
buildings were not, like the religion itself, in the main Arabic in
orig