most huts, the ceiling is so low that to rise suddenly is dangerous both to
one's head and to the structure, while in others the roof is six or seven
feet from the floor. Windows, of course, there are none. Sometimes a hole
is left in the middle of the roof to let the smoke out; but this is a
refinement undreamed of by many.

[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Brickmaking, from Eighteenth Dynasty tomb-painting,
Tomb of Rekhmara.]

At the first glance, it is not always easy to distinguish between these
huts of wattle and daub and those built with crude bricks. The ordinary
Egyptian brick is a mere oblong block of mud mixed with chopped straw and a
little sand, and dried in the sun. At a spot where they are about to build,
one man is told off to break up the ground; others carry the clods, and
pile them in a heap, while others again mix them with water, knead the clay
with their feet, and reduce it to a homogeneous paste. This paste, when
sufficiently worked (Note 2), is pressed by the head workman in moulds made
of hard wood, while an assistant carries away the bricks as fast as they
are shaped, and lays them out in rows at a little distance apart, to dry in
the sun (fig. I). A careful brickmaker will leave them thus for half a day,
or even for a whole day, after which the bricks are piled in stacks in such
wise that the air can circulate freely among them; and so they remain for a
week or two before they are used. More frequently, however, they are
exposed for only a few hours to the heat of the sun, and the building is
begun while they are yet damp. The mud, however, is so tenacious that,
notwithstanding this carelessness, they are not readily put out of shape.
The outer faces of the bricks become disintegrated by the action of the
weather, but those in the inner part of the wall remain intact, and are
still separable. A good modern workman will easily mould a thousand bricks
a day, and after a week's practice he may turn out 1,200, 1,500, or even