WOODWORK
[Illustration: FURNITURE
127, 128, 129, 130, 131. Chair, caskets, and bed of Amenhotep III]
Wood was by no means so rare in early times as it is now in Egypt.
Floyer has shown how much the desert has been stripped by the
introduction of the tree-feeding camel. We see in the royal tombs of
the Ist dynasty a large use of wood. The funeral chamber sunk in the
ground was entirely built of massive beams and planks. The area of this
room was 900 square feet in the largest tomb, varying down to 300 in
the lesser. The framing of the floor, the supports, and the roof beams
were about 10 × 7 inches in section and up to 21 feet in length. The
planking of the floor still remains 2 to 2½ inches thick; and probably
that of the roof was equal to it, as it had to bear about three feet
of sand over it. The great scale of this timber work agrees with the
“royal axe-man” being one of the high officials; before stone came
into use, this title was the equivalent of chief architect. Such a
free use of wood shows that the elaborate framing of façades, which is
represented as a usual pattern in early stone-work, was actually copied
from wooden mansions, just as the Greek architecture was an elaborate
copy of woodwork. At the close of the IIIrd dynasty we have a glimpse
of the large use of wood for shipbuilding, when Senoferu built in one
year sixty ships, and imported forty ships of cedar. The great gates of
the temple enclosures and palaces must also have been massive works;
the outer and inner pylon at Karnak had gates fifteen feet wide on
either side, and over sixty feet high.
The wooden coffins of the Old Kingdom are heavy boxes with sides two
to three inches thick. They are fastened together by bolts of wood;
and such wooden pegs are run diagonally in different directions so as
to prevent the parts being separated. Coffins hollowed out of a single
block, to fit the outline of the mummy, were also used in all the
earlier periods. In late times such forms were built up of boards.
For securing the joints of furniture from racking, two correct systems
were used. For chairs, angle-pieces were cut from wood with bent grain,
and fitted on inside the angles. There must have been a constant
demand for such bent pieces, and probably they were grown into shape.
In other cases forms of wood have been found which had clearly been
grown for many years into the shape required. The angle-pieces can be
seen under the front of the seat in fig. 128. Another system for stands
was to put in diagonal bars, as in fig. 130. Sometimes merely the
stiffness of deep panelling was trusted, as in fig. 129. For the backs
of chairs an excellent triangular stay was made, as in fig. 127.
The light and skilful forms of the woodwork are well shown in the
furniture (figs. 127-131) from the tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu, the parents
of Queen Thyi, in the XVIIIth dynasty. The reliefs on the chair are
carved in wood and gilded. The decoration on the casket (fig. 129) is
of blue glazed hieroglyphs and inlays.
Wood was also much used for statuettes. The ebony negress and other
figures (figs. 40-42) show it on a small scale; larger figures were
also made, such as several in the Turin Museum, and some of life-size,
but the latter are coarser in work, as the figure of Sety I in the
British Museum. A fine figure almost life-size remains from the XIIIth
dynasty, King Hor, in the Cairo Museum.
A system of inlaying coloured stones, glazes or glass, in wood as a
basis, is found as early as the Vth dynasty, in the model vases of
Nofer-ar-ka-ra. In the XVIIIth dynasty this method of decoration is
seen on the gigantic mummy-cases of the Queens Aah-hotep and Aahmes,
which were inlaid, probably with lazuli. The inlay was so valuable
that soon after it was all prised out with the corner of an adze,
and blue paint substituted for it. In the XXIIIrd dynasty decorative
figures were wrought in wood, with the whole detail in inlay, as in the
group of Pedubast. And in the Greek period large wooden coffins were
encrusted with inlay of coloured glass, and the sides of wooden shrines
were similarly the basis for brilliant polychrome adornment.
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.