Rameses II. of the Egyptians, who is the same as the great Sesostris of the Greeks and the Pharaoh of the Old Testament, reappears as a mummy before the world to-day. The pride which carried him in conquest over half the eastern world, the dignity that enabled him for many years to support the weight of empire, the hardness of heart that made him so severe a task-master to the Hebrews, and the unyielding obstinacy that made him do prolonged battle with the chosen servants of God, are all visibly stamped upon his countenance now, as when Moses stood before him vainly pleading that he would " let the people go." How much better it would be for those who op press the people to lift their heavy hands while still alive than to stand either in cerecloth or in history, as Rameses does, an immortal monument of injustice, tyranny, and wrong.
The mud of the Nile is the only material in Egypt suitable for brick-making ; the modern plan is the same as the old ; a bed is made into which are thrown large quantities of cut straw, mud and water, and this is tramped into pug, removed in lumps, and shaped in moulds, or by the hands. The moulded clay is sun-dried, not burned, the brick of Egypt, both ancient and modern, being adobes.
Herodotus testifies that the walls of Babylon were built of brick made from the clay thrown from the trenches surrounding the place. Accounts of the extraordinary mounds of brick at Birs Nimrod, the supposed site of Babylon, and the remains of other ancient cities of the stoneless plains of the Euphrates and Tigris, have been given by noted Eastern travelers. The buried palaces of Nebuchadnezzar have, for a long series of years, provided brick for all the buildings in the neighborhood ; there being scarcely a house in Hillar, a city of over 8,000 inhabitants, built close to the ruins of ancient Babylon, which is not almost entirely built with them. " To this day," says Layard, " there are men who have no other trade than that of gathering brick from this vast heap, and taking them for sale to neighboring towns and villages, and even to Bagdad." Many brick found in this ruin are coated with a thick enamel or glaze. The colors have resisted the effects of time, and present their orig inal brightness.
On every brick that was made during the reign of Nebuchad nezzar it was his custom to have his name stamped, and Sir Henry Rawlinson, the Oriental scholar, in examining the brick in the walls of the modern city of Bagdad, on the borders of the Tigris, discovered on each brick the clear traces of that royal signature.
The Babylonish brick were usually of three colors : red, pale-yellow, and blue, and also in all ancient Egyptian decora tions the primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, were principally employed ; green was the only secondary, to which were added black and white. The profuse employment of colored decora
tion is the distinctive feature of Babylonish architecture, the brick being stamped out of a mould, and impressed with cunei form inscriptions, which is a certain form of writing, the com ponent parts of which .may be said to resemble either a wedge, the barb of an arrow, or a nail, the inscription being placed in a sunken rectangular panel. The sizes of the Babylonish brick vary, the burned ones being thirteen inches square and three inches thick ; the adobes or sun-dried brick measuring from six to sixteen inches square, and from two to seven inches thick. The adobes were laid in clay, the work being striped hori zontally, every four or five feet in height, with thick layers of reed matting steeped in bitumen to form the bond ; the burned brick were laid while warm in hot bitumen, the bond being formed in the laying. In addition to the above kinds there were triangular brick for corners of walls, and wedge-shaped brick for arches, which were sometimes concave below and convex on top.
Recent excavations have been made on the site of the Pithom, the treasure city built by King Rameses II. with the bondage-labor of the children of Israel. The buildings prove to have consisted almost entirely of tremendous store-houses built of adobes. Some of these sun-dried brick were made with straw and some without it.
The pyramids of Aboo Roash, Dashour, Howara, and Illa hoon, were constructed of adobes ; unburnt brick have also been found in the joints near the foundation of the third pyra mid of Gizeh. The bricks in the pyramid at Aboo Roash contain no straw, and those in the pyramid at Saqqara contain only a small quantity of straw on the outside. The northern pyramid at Dashour was built of brick about sixteen inches long, three inches wide, and four and three-quarters inches thick. The southern pyramid at Dashour is constructed of brick fifteen and one-quarter inches long by seven and three quarter inches in width and five and one-half inches in thick ness, or thirteen and one-half inches long, six and one-half inches wide, and four and one-half inches in thickness, and these brick contain a large quantity of straw. The brick used in the construction of the pyramid of Howara measure seven teen and one-half inches in length, eight and three-eighths inches in width, five and one-eighth inches in thickness, and like the brick used in the southern pyramid at Dashour, they contain a large quantity of straw.