Household furniture was no more abundant in ancient Egypt than it is in the Egypt of to-day. In the time of the Twelfth Dynasty an ordinary house contained no bedsteads, but low frameworks like the Nubian angareb; or mats rolled up by day on which the owners lay down at night in their clothes, pillowing their heads on earthenware, stone, or wooden head-rests.
The art of the cabinet-maker was nevertheless carried to a high degree of perfection, from the time of the ancient dynasties. Planks were dressed down with the adze, mortised, glued, joined together by means of pegs cut in hard wood, or acacia thorns (never by metal nails), polished, and finally covered with paintings.