onstantly in danger of losing their edges or corners, or of being
fractured before they reached the top (Note 7). Thus it was almost always
necessary to re-work them; and the object being to sacrifice as little as
possible of the stone, the workmen often left them of most abnormal shapes
(fig. 52). They would level off one of the side faces, and then the joint,
instead of being vertical, leaned askew. If the block had neither height
nor length to spare, they made up the loss by means of a supplementary
slip. Sometimes even they left a projection which fitted into a
corresponding hollow in the next upper or lower course. Being first of all
expedients designed to remedy accidents, these methods degenerated into
habitually careless ways of working. The masons who had inadvertently
hoisted too large a block, no longer troubled themselves to lower it back
again, but worked it into the building in one or other of the ways before
mentioned. The architect neglected to duly supervise the dressing and
placing of the blocks. He allowed the courses to vary, and the vertical
joints, two or three deep, to come one over the other. The rough work done,
the masons dressed down the stone, reworked the joints, and overlaid the
whole with a coat of cement or stucco, coloured to match the material,
which concealed the faults of the real work. The walls rarely end with a
sharp edge. Bordered with a torus, around which a sculptured riband is
entwined, they are crowned by the _cavetto_ cornice surmounted by a flat
band (fig. 53); or, as at Semneh, by a square cornice; or, as at Medinet
Habu, by a line of battlements. Thus framed in, the walls looked like
enormous panels, each panel complete in itself, without projections and
almost without openings. Windows, always rare in Egyptian architecture, are
mere ventilators when introduced into the walls of temples, being intended
to light the staircases, as in the second pylon of Horemheb at Karnak, or
else to support decorative woodwork on festival days. The doorways project
but slightly from the body of the buildings (fig. 54), except where the
lintel is over-shadowed by a projecting cornice. Real windows occur only in
the pavilion of Medinet Habu; but that building was constructed on the
model of a fortress, and must rank as an exception among religious
monuments.

[Illustration: Fig. 53.--Temple wall with cornice.]

[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Niche and doorway in temple of Seti I. at Abydos.]

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