The most frequent item in the scheme of decoration was a roundel moulded of a sandy frit coated with blue or grey slip, upon which is a cream-coloured rosette (fig. 237).  Some of these rosettes are framed in geometrical designs (fig. 238) or spider-web patterns; some represent open flowers.  The central boss is in relief; the petals and tracery are encrusted in the mass.  These roundels, which are of various diameters ranging from three-eighths of an inch to four inches, were fixed to the walls by means of a very fine cement.  They were used to form many different designs, as scrolls, foliage, and parallel fillets, such as may be seen on the foot of an altar and the base of a column preserved in the Gizeh Museum.  The royal ovals were mostly in one piece; so also were the figures.  The details, either incised or modelled upon the clay before firing, were afterwards painted with such colours as might be suitable.  The lotus flowers and leaves which were carried along the bottom of the walls or the length of the cornices, were, on the contrary, made up of independent pieces; each colour being a separate morsel cut to fit exactly into the pieces by which it was surrounded (fig. 239).  This temple was rifled at the beginning of the present century, and some figures of prisoners brought thence have been in the Louvre collection ever since the time of Champollion.  All that remained of the building and its decoration was demolished a few years ago by certain dealers in antiquities, and the debris are now dispersed in all directions.  Mariette, though with great difficulty, recovered some of the more important fragments, such as the name of Rameses III., which dates the building; some borderings of lotus flowers and birds with human hands (fig. 240); and some heads of Asiatics and negro prisoners (fig. 241).[68] The destruction of this monument is the more grievous because the Egyptians cannot have constructed many after the same type.  Glazed bricks, painted tiles, and enamelled mosaics are readily injured; and in the judgment of a people enamoured of stability and eternity, that would be the gravest of radical defects.

[Illustration:  Fig. 240.—­Relief tile, Tell el Yahudeh.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 241.—­Relief tile, Tell el Yahudeh.]

[55] Works on scarabaei are the Palin collection, published in 1828; Mr.
    Loftie’s charming Essay of Scarabs, which is in fact a
    catalogue of his own specimens, admirably illustrated from drawings by
    Mr. W.M.F.  Petrie; and Mr. Petrie’s Historical Scarabs,
    published 1889.—­A.B.E.

[56] These twin vases are still made at Asuan.  I bought a small specimen
    there in 1874.—­A.B.E.

[57] The sepulchral vases commonly called “canopic” were four in number,
    and contained the embalmed viscera of the mummy.  The lids of these
    vases were fashioned to represent the heads of the four genii of
    Amenti, Hapi, Tuatmutf, Kebhsennef, and Amset; i.e. the
    Ape-head, the Jackal-head, the Hawk-head, and the human head.—­A.B.E.