Homes and Mud-Brick Construction in Ancient Egypt | Middle East And North Africa

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ANCIENT EGYPTIAN HOMES

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models of homes
Egyptian homes tended to have small windows. They were basically high. square holes in the mud brick walls that were covered by woven reed mats that kept heat, sunlight and dust out. Some houses had two stories. Others had courtyards and gardens.

Egyptian palaces featured master bedrooms, with draped four-post bed,s surrounded by narrow "apartments" for wives and children, each with smaller beds. The best-made palaces had thick walls, which were cooler in hot weather, and raised platforms for the beds.

Because mosquitos were such a nuisance, many Egyptian beds had canopies with curtains or mosquito netting. Describing the netting, Herodotus: "In the marshy country, where there are no towers, each man possess a net. By day it serves to catch fish, while at night he spreads it over the bed, and creeping in, goes to sleep underneath. The mosquitos, which, if her rolls himself up in his dress or in a piece of muslim, are sure to bite through the covering, do not so much as attempt to pass the net."

Some houses had massive granaries capable of storing enough grain to last a family for years. By 1500 B.C. some homes of Egyptian aristocrats were outfit with copper pipes that carried hot and cold water. Termites are believed to have been a problem in homes with wood.

Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Ancient Egypt Magazine ancientegyptmagazine.co.uk; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Egyptian Study Society, Denver egyptianstudysociety.com; The Ancient Egypt Site ancient-egypt.org; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk

Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture

In ancient Egypt trees were scarce so wood was not widely used as a building material. Mud, clay, rock and reed were the only materials that were in abundance. The ancient Egyptian first lived in reed houses and later switched to unbaked mud brick, which was used even on palaces. Around 2,700 B.C. they developed a method of constructing buildings from stone and within half a century they were building pyramids, and within a century and half they built the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

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House Funerary model garden
"How and why their unexcelled techniques for building in stone were so quickly perfected still puzzles historians," the historian Daniel Boorstin wrote. "How did they quarry huge blocks of limestone, transport them for miles, then raise, place and fit them with jewelers precision? All without the aid of a capstan, a pulley, [beast of burden] or even a wheeled vehicle!" [Source: Daniel Boorstin, "The Creators"]

Egyptian architecture most likely had its roots in wood or clay. An indication of this is the practice of "battered walls." This means that they slant upwards from a broad base. These slanting walls are topped by horizontal molding on which leaf and stem patterns are often carved or painted. These patterns are reminders of a time when walls were built of matting stiffened with long reds or tree branches and covered with clay. Such walls can only stand vertically if they are low: higher walls are built at a slant. Walls made of stone don’t need to slant, but the practice of slanting continued after stone came into use.

Large houses, temples and tombs all had similar plans — with a main court, hall and private rooms — that was also found in Greek architecture. The Egyptians and Assyrians used enamel bricks to decorate their buildings. The Greeks and Romans were masters of using enamels to make jewelry.

Development of Housing in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Slim as it is, archaeological evidence records a transition from prehistoric, single-room pit houses and wattle and daub structures with courtyards, hearths, and grain storage at Merimde, Omari, Hammamiya, and Maadi to the multi-chambered, rectangular courtyard houses of historic times. This courtyard- centered abode was so foundational it even became the hieroglyph pr, meaning house or enclosure. By the New Kingdom, houses more commonly were constructed around a central living room, rather than a hypaethral courtyard, as a logical development from the courtyard-centered house; suites of bedrooms with bathing facilities and administrative spaces would have been accessed either from the courtyard or the living room, depending on the focus of the house. Architecturally, a distinction arose between country or estate houses, which tended to be larger domiciles with a variety of subsidiary structures for work and storage and town houses, which were constructed on smaller plots of land and therefore were all- inclusive, with the work and storage areas integrated into the house proper.[Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

“Two categories of urban housing can be distinguished, based primarily on the organization of the urban setting: planned towns, especially those attached to royal funerary monuments, are attested from the Old Kingdom at Giza, including the complex of Khentkawes, from the Middle Kingdom at el-Lahun, and from the New Kingdom at Deir el-Medina and at the workmen’s village at Amarna; these planned towns were composed of regularly laid out houses of nearly identical plan, though frequently with size differentiation reflecting an administrative hierarchy. The Nubian fortresses of the Middle and New Kingdoms provide another example of planned urban (or semi-urban) settings, though were unique in their entirely self- contained nature (only Buhen appears to have possessed an attached settlement) and in their need to be adapted to the local topography for defensive reasons.

“Less systematically planned towns, such as Thebes , would have offered greater flexibility in style of house plan, though construction still was constrained by plot size. In such urban settings, houses were constructed with two or more stories to make the best possible use of space. By the Ptolemaic Period (304–30 B.C.), these multi-storied town houses were constructed with a concave foundation and battered walls, reaching up to three stories and being provided with vaulted cellars. Unfortunately, it is primarily the first level of these structures that survives, making it difficult to reconstruct the upper floors with any certainty; generally, the vaulted rooms of the cellars were employed for storage, with the vaults providing structural support for stairs leading to the upper stories. The construction of these houses from the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods is marked by the increased use (and survival) of wood in the corners of the structures and the better preservation of wooden window casings, doors, jambs, and lintels. Contemporary with these tower houses are examples of houses arranged around a peristyle courtyard, an architectural style harkening back to the Middle Kingdom but reinterpreted during the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods in light of the influence of Mediterranean architecture. Houses dating to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods have been studied most extensively at Karanis, but are also known from Philadelphia, Theadelphia, Qasr Qarun, and Dimai in the Fayum, and in the Nile valley at Hermopolis, Medinet Habu, Armant, Edfu, and Elephantine.”

Mud-Brick Architecture in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “The study of ancient Egyptian architecture traditionally has focused on the monumental stone constructions and feats of engineering represented by the pyramids, the temples, and the rock-cut tombs of the dynastic era: those monuments for which Egypt is justly famous. However, this modern bias toward stone architecture passes over structures constructed with the more common building medium of mud-brick, thereby failing to consider the vast majority of ancient Egyptian architecture... Unfired brick, made from mud, river, or desert clay, was used as the primary building material for houses throughout Egyptian history and was employed alongside stone in tombs and temples of all eras and regions. Construction of walls and vaults in mud-brick was economical and relatively technically uncomplicated, and mud-brick architecture provided a more comfortable and more adaptable living and working environment when compared to stone buildings. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

bathroom at Amarna

“Mud-brick architecture was by no means the first use of earthen architecture in ancient Egypt, but rather followed upon an established history of pit houses and wattle and daub structures . In fact, these latter types, constructed with reeds coated in mud plaster, were the source of many of the decorative architectural elements that continued into later stone architecture, becoming icons of Egyptian architectural style (torus molding, cavetto cornice, khekher-frieze, scalloped parapet, column capital styles). The beginnings of earthen architecture conceptually are related to other uses of sediment as a resource both for agricultural purposes and in the creation of ceramics. During the prehistoric period, mud plaster increasingly was employed for the lining of fire and storage pits, highlighting the potential of mud as an architectural resource. With a shift from ephemeral construction in reeds and mud or rounded subterranean abodes to increasingly permanent, entirely aboveground, rectilinear structures, mud-brick came into its own.

“Mud-brick became the building material of choice, being the primary material used for domestic architecture henceforth. Likewise, mud-brick became a standard medium for religious and funerary architecture, though stone increasingly was employed next to mud- brick in these latter situations. Unfortunately, given the historical trend in Egyptian archaeology to focus on cemeteries and temples, mud-brick domestic architecture is less well known than its funerary and religious counterparts; this trend increasingly is changing, however, as the study of urban sites, such as Amarna, and the residential and administrative areas of necropolis sites, such as Giza provide information concerning the architecture employed in such settings.”

Mud Bricks in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Made from a mixture of silt, clay, sand, and straw formed into regular molded units, unfired mud- bricks were the primary construction material employed in ancient Egypt—being quite literally the most basic of building blocks for all levels of domestic structures, from simple one-room buildings to lavishly decorated palace complexes, as well as administrative and storage structures, and even early phases of temples. Modern methods of mud-brick fabrication accord with ancient evidence, suggesting that the production of unfired mud-brick has remained a stable technology through the millennia. Ancient evidence concerning mud-brick not only illuminates mud-brick production organization, but also highlights the symbolic significance of bricks in religious contexts, especially relating to birth and death. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

mud brick

“Adobe, a building material of mixed earth and straw, is commonly employed in arid environments as the standard construction material. In fact, the word adobe can be traced back to the ancient Egyptian word for brick, Dbt; Dbt became Coptic twbe, which entered into Arabic as (toob), which probably eventually reached Spanish as adobe. Within Egyptology, these sun-dried building blocks traditionally have been identified as mud-bricks, rather than as adobe, although they increasingly are being labeled as unfired brick, in an effort to shift away from what is perceived as a Nilocentric perspective focused on bricks fabricated with riverine sediment to a more inclusive term that explicitly includes bricks made with desert sands and marls as well.

“Most ancient Egyptian constructions employed unfired mud-brick as the primary building material. At the beginning of the famous biblical story of the Exodus, the enslaved Israelites were forced to make mud- bricks for the Egyptians (Exodus 1:11 - 14), a task made even more arduous when pharaoh rescinded their supplied straw source (Exodus 5:1 - 21), insisting that they gather their own or (famously) make bricks without straw, for accomplishing the impossible. Unfired mud-brick was the most common building material used in ancient Egypt. Even though standing stone monuments are the stereotype for ancient Egyptian building endeavors, the vast majority of buildings in Egypt, including subsidiary temple buildings (and sometimes early phases of temples themselves), royal palaces, and funerary monuments, employedmud-brick construction. Due to its prevalent use, unfired brick has the potential to inform upon the cultural customs and organization of the ancient Egyptians, though it is currently a little-used archaeological resource, both culturally and scientifically.”

Manufacture of Mud-Bricks in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Ingredients. Unfired mud-brick is still made throughout the world today, and various methods are used in its manufacture, ranging from large-scale production using a bulldozer and grids of brick molds in the southwestern United States to small-scale production with an adze or hoe and a single-brick mold for individual construction jobs in villages in Egypt. Though the scale differs, the materials used to make the bricks are relatively consistent: a mix of sand, clay, and silt combined with chopped straw or dung as temper and binding agent. If the earth mixture has a high enough percentage of clay, the straw is not always necessary; omitting the straw can reduce the chance of insects eating through the organic content of the bricks, thereby weakening them. However, untempered bricks with a high percentage of clay can dry slowly, shrink, crack, and lose their shape. The ratio of sand to clay to silt varies in the surrounding environment from place to place, but the mix that creates the best bricks, a mix containing no more than thirty percent clay or silt and no less than fifty percent sand, is standard and can be artificially produced. In Egypt, alluvial Nile sediment was and is traditionally employed, with desert sand added to create a mixture in the ideal range; occasionally, marl clays could be used as well, depending on the local environment and available resources. Specifically, alluvial sediment removed from the plow-zones of worked fields is a preferred source of material with which to make mud- bricks, as is the sediment cast up when canals are dredged; both are sources from which matrix with well-mixed particle sizes can easily be obtained, thereby minimizing the need for processing before adding sand or organic temper. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

brick mold

“Production. To make bricks, sediment is removed from its source, dumped in a circular area created for the job, broken up with adzes or hoes, and mixed with water to form a stiff mixture. Chopped straw is then added to the earth mixture in a ratio of roughly one part straw to five parts earth. Straw in Egypt today is sold by the hamla or himl, a measure of 555 pounds, which is theoretically what a donkey can haul in its baskets, and therefore proportions in modern Egyptian mud-brick recipes usually are expressed by volume rather than by weight. In ancient Egypt, the donkey load for straw was a known measurement expressed as aAt (“donkey load”). The straw is kneaded into the earth mixture with hands or by treading, and the whole concoction is left to age and ferment for a night or two. The following day, the earth-straw mixture is re- kneaded and more water is added, at which point the mixture is ready to mold.

“Although double molds for making two bricks at a time are sometimes used in the southwestern United States, Egyptians universally tend to employ single molds. Egyptian molds are simple rectangles made of wood, with one end of a long side extended to create a handle. The earth-straw mixture is carried in flat, round baskets from the preparation area, the makhmara, to a brick field that has been strewn with straw to prevent the molded bricks from adhering to the ground surface while drying. The wooden mold is quickly dipped in water to prevent the earth-straw mixture from sticking to it during the molding process, then filled to slightly over capacity with the earth-straw mixture, which is compacted and flattened out. The mold is then carefully removed, without jostling the form of the newly-made brick, and the process is repeated. Bricks are lined up with the thickness of the mold’s edges between them and left to dry for three days before being turned over and left to dry for another three days. After six days, the sun- dried bricks are piled on their sides and left to continue drying, the longer the better. Thus, the total number of days needed to produce usable bricks varies depending on personal idiosyncrasies in technique, but eight or nine days from beginning to stacking seems to be average. Bricks that have been dried longer are preferred and thus require even further planning; for construction in the fall, bricks could be made in the spring and left to dry all summer.

“While the style of wooden brick molds employed to produce bricks was standard in ancient Egypt, the size of the molds, and therefore of the bricks themselves, was not standardized, and ancient bricks ranged greatly in size. Based on the recorded archaeological evidence, for ancient Egypt, there is a general trend for smaller bricks in the earlier periods, with average brick size increasing through the Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom, and Late Period, and a subsequent size reduction in the Ptolemaic, Roman, and Coptic Periods, a trend attested elsewhere in the ancient Near East. However, this trend is only broadly true for Egypt and ought not be taken as ultimately chronologically diagnostic, because, in addition to the consideration of brick sizes through time, differences in size based on the type of construction and on the sponsoring agent of that construction also apparently affected brick formats. Constructions initiated by private individuals in domestic contexts produced and employed smaller bricks than “public” constructions undertaken by governmental or sacerdotal institutional entities—a size difference presumably reflecting the use of two different cubit lengths, that of the standard cubit and that of the royal cubit. However, brick size cannot be applied indiscriminately as a means by which to draw conclusions with regard to the function of a structure or to those who initiated its construction, as the re-use of old mud-bricks in new constructions was common practice, being particularly clearly attested on the Theban west bank, where the large, stamped mud-bricks of the various royal funerary complexes increasingly were reemployed in domestic contexts. Although brick sizes are not solely sufficient to determine clearly either the date of construction or the function of a structure, a consideration of varying brick sizes within a site may bear information to aid in the relative chronology specific to that site.”

Work Organization for Mud Brick Production

brick making

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: Modern work organization. In traditional Egyptian villages, knowledge of how to make unfired mud-brick is almost universal, and knowledge of the proper proportions for the earth- mixture appears to be connected to an intuitive sense of the local environment developed through agricultural work. When construction needs arise, each family produces its own bricks, or, if they lack the time and have the monetary resources, they can hire out the production of bricks to others; neighbors frequently help each other on a voluntary basis, with the implicit understanding that when aid is needed in return, it will be offered. For private construction jobs, mud-bricks are made by both men and women, with the women carrying the earth from the source to the makhmara, where the men create the earth- straw mixture; women then carry the earth- straw mixture to the brick field, where both men and women work to form the bricks . [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

“In large- scale, public construction employing unfired brick, the bricks are made by men working in teams of four, with two brick makers for molding, one laborer for mixing, and one laborer for carrying the mortar; three additional laborers are added to these teams to help with the turning and stacking of the bricks as they dry. Any number of such teams can work at the same time, with their labor and their use of raw materials coordinated by a supervisor. Whether for small-scale or large-scale construction, bricks are produced in batches, usually groups of one thousand bricks, and the workers are paid accordingly, rather than receiving a daily wage. Just as the method of the production of unfired brick is not specialized knowledge, so too are methods of construction with mud- brick generally non-specialized.

“Though many people in villages in Egypt know how to build using mud-brick, given time and monetary resources, they may hire masons to undertake the construction; these tend to be local men for whom the job of mason is a secondary or tertiary occupation (behind farming and/or fishing), a self-taught occupation based on personal experience. While the laying of walls and the construction of flat roofs is generally non-specialized, the erection of domes and vaults is a specialized endeavor. This knowledge survives in the southern-most reaches of Egypt and into the Sudan, where Nubians employed techniques similar to those used by the ancient Egyptians to create vaults, which did not require expensive wooden framing to hold bricks in place while the vault was under construction. The vaults created thusly are termed inclined vaults, as they are laid by leaning the parabola of the vault against an end wall for support, and are attested in ancient Egypt from the 1st Dynasty into the Coptic Period.”

Art and Artifacts Regarding Mud Bricks in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “The modern accounts of mud-brick production seem to accord well with what is known of ancient production. Sporadic artistic, artifactual, and textual evidence bear witness to the nature of the ancient methods of production and work organization, and the massive volume of surviving brick itself stands as an under-utilized potential resource for understanding ancient production and construction techniques. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2009, escholarship.org ]

brick mold

Art and Artifacts Regarding Mud Bricks in Ancient Egypt

Amarna

“One of the most famous artistic sources for information concerning the ancient Egyptian production of mud-brick is a scene in the tomb of Rekhmira, vizier under Amenhotep II and Thutmose III. In this scene, which occurs on the lower portion of the eastern half of the south wall of the passage, a reconstructed, large standing figure of vizier Rekhmira oversees construction work undertaken by Egyptian, Nubian, and Syrian servants and slaves depicted in four registers before him. Included in a series of scenes depicting the production and erection of statues, as well as other constructions, the brick-making scene pictures the stages of activity known from modern methods of brick fabrication: men mixing mud next to a pool from which workers supply the necessary water for the earth-straw mixture; men carrying the prepared earth-straw mixture in round baskets to the brick field; men striking bricks in standard-fashion molds; and men transporting completed bricks to a construction ramp. The inscription carved in the triangular space above the ramp reads: “Drive home the blocks; bring earth (mud mortar) and the very large number of mats (needed); build as a man adroit of finger and alert in his tasks. Let the supervisors be men of vigor who listen to the counsels of this magnate, one experienced in working gangs and who can lay down procedure for superintendents, and who supplies his…for us with food and drink, all of it being good. He is our director, inspired by the desire that the king.Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkheperre, may build a sanctuary to (the gods) in order that they may give him its equivalent return in millions of years.”

“Beyond the assurances (in this funerary setting, directed at the gods rather than at the work crew depicted) that Rekhmira is a capable man for the job, the inscriptions accompanying the scene are informative in that they articulate that the construction logically required a certain level of organization, not only of the workers themselves, but also of the overseers who administered in lower positions. Based on the depiction of production and construction, it is possible to infer that the two processes were considered as separate enterprises, since the brick production was watched over by one overseer perched on a brick facing left in the upper subregister, while the construction was directed by a second overseer, facing right toward the ramp being built. Both overseers were probably then directed by a superior, perhaps Rekhmira himself, though most likely by another intermediate level manager in the long chain of bureaucracy between the vizier and the workers. It might also be suggested based on the scene that the making of the unfired bricks for large state projects, such as building at Karnak, was undertaken somewhere close to the construction site, a practicality that reduced the labor needed to carry the bricks from the production area to the construction area; however, given the massive construction projects undertaken at Karnak during the New Kingdom and the idiosyncratic nature of the Egyptian’s depiction of perspective, it is always possible that the temple had an area of centralized mud-brick production and that the bricks were then used throughout the temple complex (and perhaps in neighboring complexes as well).

“In addition to the single scene from the tomb of Rekhmira, the molding of unfired mud-bricks can also be an element in the idealized and sanitary depictions of royal foundation ceremonies. Depictions of striking bricks during foundation ceremonies are most common in the Late Period, and one such scene is represented at Edfu in the second hypostyle hall on the left-hand side of the east wall in the bottom register, where the king precedes from the palace accompanied by royal standards, breaks ground with a mr- shaped hoe before a hieracocephalic Horus, and then makes a super-sized brick in an over- sized brick mold. Representations of brick making during foundation ceremonies are rarely attested also for the New Kingdom, for example, during the reign of Hatshepsut, where the queen/king, accompanied by her ka, kneels in order to form a brick in a mold; the scene is labeled “making bricks”.”

“Brick molds, both regular-sized and miniature, are attested as items in foundation deposits from the Middle Kingdom into the Ptolemaic Period, for instance, from the foundation deposits of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, of Ramesses II at the Ramesseum, and of a king Mn- xpr-Ra Mny(-Ra), tentatively dated to the time of the 25th Dynasty, at a small temple in northern Nubia on the island of Sai. Apart from molds from foundation deposits, which were probably mainly ceremonial and symbolic (especially in the case of miniature molds), brick molds have also been found in other archaeological contexts, such as a mold from the 12th Dynasty found in the course of excavations at el-Lahun, the mud-brick pyramid of Senusret II. Ancient molds are of the same form as modern molds employed in Egypt but have mortised, rather than nailed, corners. No molds have yet been found that would have been used to make bricks of special shapes, such as curved cornice or column bricks.”

Mud Brick as a Building Material in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Because of its easy and economical production and universal availability, mud- brick was used throughout Egyptian history for domestic, funerary, and religious structures. A simple material with which to build, mud-brick was a construction medium ideally suited to Egyptian environmental and cultural conditions. The universality of mud- brick as a building material in ancient Egypt would have created a living environment that no longer survives intact, but which the study of mud-brick architecture reveals. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

Deir el Medina

“In ancient Egypt, structures of all sizes and socio-economic levels were constructed of mud-brick, from the simplest of abodes to the grandest of palaces, from backyard grain storage bins to immense state- administered granaries, from the humble early phases of temples to the massive temenos walls that encircled their final monumental stone incarnations. Throughout Egyptian history, mud-brick was employed as a building material for domestic, funerary, and religious architecture; while the resulting mud-brick structures were used for different activities, the methods of construction were the same, adapted to the strengths and limitations of the building material rather than the use of the structure.

“When compared to stone as a construction material, mud-brick presented many advantages. Unlike stone, mud-brick was universally available, it being possible to produce brick from Nile alluvium or desert sediments/clays, sand, and water—resources accessible to everyone, though in varying quantity. Mud-brick was quick to fabricate, especially when compared to the quarrying of stone blocks, and was therefore more economical, particularly for large construction projects such as entire palace complexes or row upon row of temple storage magazines. Likewise, mud-brick was fast and easy to build with, as a modular and regularized construction material that did not require further trimming and modification once laid, which Egyptian stone masonry techniques frequently demanded.

“Early stone construction actually employed more regularly sized blocks as a byproduct of its development out of mud-brick masonry techniques, as did the talatat of the Amarna Period. Mud-brick structures offered better interior climate control than equivalent stone structures, providing more comfortable living and working spaces. Mud-brick construction was easily modified and expanded upon, allowing for the allocation of space and the adaptation of spatial arrangements in a fashion that stone could not accommodate, thereby offering a flexibility not physically or financially feasible in stone structures. However, mud-brick construction was not without its disadvantages: mud-brick structures required continual upkeep and even with constant care would have had a limited life span, in part explaining the evident dichotomy between the sacred Hwt nt HHw m rnpwt, “temples of millions of years,” built of stone and the more practical and frequently more temporal constructions executed in mud-brick.”

Construction with Mud-Brick in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Construction planning and work organization. The analysis of the methods employed to build mud-brick houses, funerary monuments, and temples can serve to illuminate not only the structures and their construction, but also can reveal aspects of the construction planning and the levels of the organization of work and workers employed to produce the structure. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

House model

“Then, as now, construction presumably would have begun with a planning phase in which the size and layout of the structure would have been determined and the number of bricks needed for the project calculated, though this initial phase is little attested in either the textual or the archaeological record. A Ramesside scribal training piece included in Papyrus Anastasi I includes an example of the mathematical process of calculating the number of bricks that the building of a construction ramp of a prescribed size would require; while the dimensions of the ramp are outlandish, the inclusion of the problem as an exercise in a scribal training text does suggest that young scribes would be required to make such calculations in real- world situations.

“Once the ground plan of the structure had been decided upon, the outline of the structure would have been set out on the ground. For larger structures, it actually would have been laid out with pegs and string, presumably the stage in the planning depicted in the “Stretching of the Cord” scenes included as a standard element in the temple cycle of scenes picturing the foundation ceremony. For structures with simple floor plans, the first course of bricks may have been laid out on the ground as the guideline for further construction. Mud-brick walls could be constructed directly on an unprepared ground surface, though more commonly were provided with brick foundations and wall footings laid in trenches upon a bed of sand; this style of foundation is especially well-recorded for the Late Period temple temenos walls. Occasionally, particularly along high- traffic routes, the base of the wall at ground level was protected by a footing of stone, in an effort to minimize the undercutting of the wall due to water or wind damage and traffic; stone elements also could be included in the wall proper, being most common at the quoining of building corners.”

Construction of Mud-Brick Walls in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “The construction of walls followed upon the laying of the foundation or preparation of the area and the production of sufficient quantities of mud- brick. In addition to the brick itself, wall construction required mortar and frequently included wooden elements and mats or bundles of reeds. Mortar was sedimentalogically similar in composition to mud-bricks, though rarely had straw temper. This mortar usually was used only in the horizontal joints between courses and not along the vertical joints between bricks in a course. Even as today, mortar would have been mixed as close to the construction site as possible, whereas bricks more often were produced at a greater distance from the construction site and transported at least a short distance. Wooden elements included in construction were comprised of the windows and doors of buildings; other architectural elements such as columns, door jambs, and lintels could be wood as well, though in elite residences and palaces the door jambs and lintels, as well as the window grates, often were executed in stone and inscribed with the home owner’s name. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

“In royal contexts, stone architectural elements are more frequently attested, with stone cladding of mud-brick walls known from residential settings, such as the Great Palace at Amarna and the palace of Apries at Memphis, from funerary settings, such as the pyramids of the Middle Kingdom, as well as from sacerdotal settings, such as the Ptolemaic pylon of the small temple at Medinet Habu. In thick walls, such as town walls or temple enclosure walls, wooden beams could be used to aid the bonding and cohesion of the mass of bricks, even as metal ties are used to reinforce bonding today. Serving a like purpose in massive mud-brick walls, layers of loose reeds or reed matting could be employed, occurring regularly every set number of courses. Wooden beams and reed mats, together with narrow air channels, traditionally have been interpreted as facilitating the (re)drying of bricks that would have been flooded annually and would have wicked moisture up from the ground under regular circumstances; little analysis has taken into consideration the ways in which these additions to the wall would have aided in the structural bonding of the wall and, therefore, to the stability of the wall as a whole.

“Though the role of organic materials in structural bonding has not been widely considered, the bonding patterns employed by the ancient Egyptians have been studied and bonding typologies developed. The first such typology was that developed by Mond and Myers as they attempted to address the issue of site chronology in their work at the Bucheum. Spencer improved upon Mond and Myers’ original typology, primarily addressing the problem that frequently opposite faces of a given wall could be classified as two different bonding styles; Spencer’s typology allows for a single description designating the bond of both faces to be given to a wall. Despite the existence of these bonding typologies, they are little applied; however, the bonding typologies for ancient mud-brick construction essentially reproduce in a highly specific fashion the basic bonding patterns still in use, suggesting that the nature of construction in brick, like the production of unfired bricks themselves, has not changed all that much, despite technological developments.”

Roof Construction of Mud-Brick Buildings in Ancient Egypt

Virginia L. Emery of the University of Chicago wrote: “Upon the completion of the walls, mud-brick buildings were roofed in one of two fashions: with flat roofs or with vaulted roofs. Flat roofs were created by laying wood cross-beams perpendicular to the face of the wall spanning the space from wall to wall or from wall to architrave (supported by columns), laying palm ribs, reeds or reed matting from beam to beam, then covering this layer with mud plaster; this style of ceiling construction is essentially identical in execution to viga and latilla construction of the American Southwest. In the most important rooms at the palace of Malqata, the underside of the ceiling was plastered, filling in the spaces between the crossbeams, in order to create a smooth, level surface for painting. [Source: Virginia L. Emery, University of Chicago, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2011, escholarship.org ]

“Vaults could be laid using the same bricks as were employed in the construction of walls or could be created with bricks made specifically for the job. In the latter case, the bricks are thinner and lighter and could even be wedge-shaped, rather than rectangular, to facilitate the shaping of the vault; specialized vaulting bricks often were scored with finger- marks when they were produced, a feature that increased the bonding of mortar to the bricks during construction. Inclined vaults, or vaults whose bricks were laid at a slight angle in order to rest the weight of the vault against one of the end-walls, were more common than were vaults with bricks laid parallel to the end wall, as it was possible to erect inclined vaults without wooden framing or centering, thereby rendering them more economical to construct.

“Vaults were used to roof the long, gallery-style magazines known throughout dynastic history, with perhaps the best-preserved and therefore best-known examples being at the Ramesseum. Another well-known, large-scale example of a vaulted ceiling is the palace of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu where five vaults roofed the audience room of the first phases of the palace, while three vaults were used to roof the same space during the second phase.”

Knives tended be made from bronze. They were considerably sharper than copper knives. The sharpest knives of all were made of flaked obsidian. A wide variety of stone tools were also used, including pick axes and hammers.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2018