| Foundations |
Stone buildings were often erected on rock surfaces. When foundations had to be laid, the building pit was first filled with water and the resulting horizontal lines were marked on the walls. The water was then removed and the pit filled with sand up to the marks. This was covered with several layers of broken rock on which the rock slabs forming walls and pillars were placed. The pavement in the Osiris temple at Tell Tebilla was laid on a 20 cm thick layer of sand. At Karnak wall foundations never go deeper than two to three metres. At Luxor close to the river, walls were built on three layers of stone blocks each about 80 cm high and the brick foundations of the collonades at the Ramesseum were less than two metres thick. The relative weakness of these foundations, rising water-tables and other causes led to the collapse of most ancient buildings: The alkaline groundwater at Karnak had dissolved the sandstone base of eleven huge pillars which crumbled on the 3rd October 1899. That they had endured for so long was thanks to the virtual absence of rain, the composition of the soil and the sun which bakes the Egyptian earth above the high-water line of the Nile almost to the hardness of rock. |
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