Regarding the methods of woodworking, certainly the axe was the primitive tool, as shown by the royal architect being designated by the axe. In the scenes of the pyramid age we find the saw about three feet long worked with both hands, the mallet and chisel for cutting mortise-holes, and the adze in constant use for shaping and for smoothing wood. To this day the small adze is a favourite tool of the Egyptian carpenter and boat-builder. For smoothing down the caulking inside a boat, heavy pounders of stone were used, held by a handle worked out on each side of the block. Drills were also commonly used both on wood and stone, worked by a bow. The subject of tools and their variations is a very wide one, which cannot be entered upon here.
CHAPTER XIV
PLASTER AND STUCCO
In the masonry of the pyramids, plaster is constantly used, both to fill joints as a bedding, and to level up hollows in a face. The plaster used is a mixture of ordinary lime and plaster of Paris, the carbonate and sulphate of lime. How it was introduced into the joints of the pyramid casing is a mystery. The blocks at the base weigh sixteen tons, so that no free sliding to reduce the joint-filling could be done; yet the vertical joint, five feet high and seven feet long, is filled with a film of plaster only a fiftieth of an inch thick. The joints of the masonry in the passages and chambers are all filled with plaster, though so close as to be almost imperceptible. In the core masonry a coarse plaster was poured between the stones and filled into hollows. The flaws and defects in the faces of stones were freely filled with plaster, which was coloured to match the stone. In rock tombs plaster was used to fill up cracks and hollows; and it often remains in perfect condition while the rock around has decayed.
Plaster was also used on the brick walls, which were faced with a hard coat about a tenth to a sixteenth of an inch thick, upon which paintings were executed. By the XVIIIth dynasty this became a mere whitewash over the mud-facing of the wall. In the roughly-hewn rock tombs of that age at Thebes, the jagged surfaces were smoothed by a coat of plaster, often two or three inches thick in the hollows. A strange use of stucco was for a thin coat over sculpture, as a basis for colouring. Such a coat was even laid over statuary. In all ages this hid to some extent the full detail of the sculptor’s work in reliefs. In the XIIth dynasty the finest lines were hidden by it; and on coming down to the Ptolemaic times the plasterer ignored all the sculpture below, filling the figures with a smooth daub of plaster on which the painter drew what he liked. It seems strange why the sculptors should have continued to put fine work and detail on to a surface where they were going to be at once ignored. It suggests a rigid bureaucracy in which the sculpture had to be passed by one man, and the painting by another, without any collaboration.
Stucco was used for independent modelling, as in Italy. It was laid on a flat canvas base, stretched over wood, and the whole relief was in the stucco. The chariot of Tahutmes IV is one of the main examples of such work, of which a small portion is shown in [fig. 132]. The relief is low and smooth, and full of detail; there is none of the sketchy rough tooling, as seen in Roman stucco reliefs. Minute details of dress and hair are all tooled in, and supply some of the best studies of Syrian robes. The varying patterns on the shields of different branches of Syrians, the feathering of the arrows, the shape of the daggers, and the flowers of the papyrus and lotus of north and south, are all most precisely rendered. It would be hard to find any point in which more details could be introduced.
PLASTER
