One of the most familiar early motives is wooden framing. This is continually imitated in the stone figures of doorways in the tombs. The details of it show that a frame or grate of joinery must have been used for the porch of large houses, so as to admit light and air while the door was fastened. The prevalence of such wooden frames or lattices in modern times in Egypt—known as mushrabiyeh work—shows how suited such a system is to the climate. Long after the use of stone was general the frames were imitated, and the pattern survived as a decoration. The same style of framing was used in the upper part of a house, with decorative uprights of the hieroglyph tat, and was copied as a fancy decoration in furniture, as seen in a beautiful ivory carving in the Louvre. This style survived until the XVIIIth dynasty, when it is seen in a tomb at Thebes (Amenhetop II., Prisse Art) and at the temple of Sedeinga under Amenhotep III.
Fig. 175.
Fig. 174.—Ghizeh.
Much akin to this wood framing is the panelling of the brickwork which is seen in the earliest examples in Egypt, and is identical with the panelling of walls in early Babylonia, one of the indications of a common civilisation of the two great valleys. This panelling does not seem to have lasted beyond the Old Kingdom; there was no trace of it found at Kahun or Gurob, in the buildings of the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties, nor does it appear in any drawings or imitations of buildings.
176.—P. M. vii. (plan).
Fig. 177.