1,800. The ancient workmen, whose appliances in no wise differed from those
of the present day, produced equally satisfactory results. The dimensions
they generally adopted were 8.7 x 4.3 x 5.5 inches for ordinary bricks, or
15.0 x 7.1 x 5.5 for a larger size (Note 3), though both larger and smaller
are often met with in the ruins. Bricks issued from the royal workshops
were sometimes stamped with the cartouches of the reigning monarch; while
those made in private factories bore on the side a trade mark in red ochre,
a squeeze of the moulder's fingers, or the stamp of the maker. By far the
greater number have, however, no distinctive mark. Burnt bricks were not
often used before the Roman period (Note 4), nor tiles, either flat or
curved. Glazed bricks appear to have been the fashion in the Delta. The
finest specimen that I have seen, namely, one in the Gizeh Museum, is
inscribed in black ink with the cartouches of Rameses III. The glaze of
this brick is green, but other fragments are coloured blue, red, yellow, or
white.

The nature of the soil does not allow of deep foundations. It consists of a
thin bed of made earth, which, except in large towns, never reaches any
degree of thickness; below this comes a very dense humus, permeated by
slender veins of sand; and below this again--at the level of infiltration--
comes a bed of mud, more or less soft, according to the season. The native
builders of the present day are content to remove only the made earth, and
lay their foundations on the primeval soil; or, if that lies too deep, they
stop at a yard or so below the surface. The old Egyptians did likewise; and
I have never seen any ancient house of which the foundations were more than
four feet deep. Even this is exceptional, the depth in most cases being not
more than two feet. They very often did not trouble themselves to cut
trenches at all; they merely levelled the space intended to be covered,
and, having probably watered it to settle the soil, they at once laid the
bricks upon the surface. When the house was finished, the scraps of mortar,