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.]

[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Pavement of the portico of Osiris in the temple of
Seti I. at Abydos.]

The ground-level of the courts and halls was flagged with rectangular
paving stones, well enough fitted, except in the intercolumniations, where
the architects, hopeless of harmonising the lines of the pavement with the
curved bases of the columns, have filled in the space with small pieces,
set without order or method (fig. 55). Contrary to their practice when
house building, they have scarcely ever employed the vault or arch in
temple architecture. We nowhere meet with it, except at Deir el Baharî, and
in the seven parallel sanctuaries of Abydos. Even in these instances, the
arch is produced by "corbelling"; that is to say, the curve is formed by
three or four superimposed horizontal courses of stone, chiselled out to