One of the best known characteristics of Egyptian architecture is the sloping face of the walls and pylons. This is directly copied from brickwork. In order to give more cohesion to a wall it was the custom to build it on a curved bed, so that the courses all sloped up outwards at the outer corners. Thus the outer faces sloped inwards, and the wall had more stability. So wedded were the builders to this method, that where a long wall of a fort or city was to be built they preferred to begin with a row of towers of brickwork thus arranged, and then to fill in the spaces between them with more plain walling. This slope of the walls was copied in stone at the earliest time. The temple of Sneferu at Medum has a slope on the face of about 1 in 16, and it was continued down to the very latest age of Roman building.
178.—Perring. L.D. II. 44.
Another familiar feature is the roll or torus down the corners of the buildings. It is usually ornamented by a pattern of binding. This—as was well pointed out by Professor Conway—is evidently a bundle of reeds bound together, and put down the angle of the plastering in order to preserve it from breaking away. Such a construction was an ugly necessity at first, but when stoneworking arose it had become so familiar that it was faithfully copied in stone as a decoration, and continued to be so copied for more than four thousand years, as long as Egyptian architecture lasted.
Fig. 180.
Fig. 179.
181.—L.D. II. 112.