[Illustration:  Fig. 55.—­Pavement of the portico of Osiris in the temple of Seti I. at Abydos.]

The ground-level of the courts and halls was flagged with rectangular paving stones, well enough fitted, except in the intercolumniations, where the architects, hopeless of harmonising the lines of the pavement with the curved bases of the columns, have filled in the space with small pieces, set without order or method (fig. 55).  Contrary to their practice when house building, they have scarcely ever employed the vault or arch in temple architecture.  We nowhere meet with it, except at Deir el Bahari, and in the seven parallel sanctuaries of Abydos.  Even in these instances, the arch is produced by “corbelling”; that is to say, the curve is formed by three or four superimposed horizontal courses of stone, chiselled out to the form required (fig. 56).  The ordinary roofing consists of flat paving slabs.  When the space between the walls was not too wide, these slabs bridged it over at a single stretch; otherwise the roof had to be supported at intervals, and the wider the space the more these supports needed to be multiplied.  The supports were connected by immense stone architraves, on which the roofing slabs rested.

[Illustration:  Fig. 56.—­“Corbelled” arch, temple of Seti I. at Abydos.]

The supports are of two types,—­the pillar and the column.  Some are cut from single blocks.  Thus, the monolithic pillars of the temple of the sphinx (Note 8), the oldest hitherto found, measure 16 feet in height by 4- 1/2 feet in width.  Monolithic columns of red granite are also found among the ruins of Alexandria, Bubastis,[12] and Memphis, which date from the reigns of Horemheb and Rameses II., and measure some 20 to 26 feet in height.  But columns and pillars are commonly built in courses, which are often unequal and irregular, like those of the walls which surround them.  The great columns of Luxor are not even solid, two-thirds of the diameter being filled up with yellow cement, which has lost its strength, and crumbles between the fingers.  The capital of the column of Taharka at Karnak contains three courses, each about 48 inches high.  The last and most projecting course is made up of twenty-six convergent stones, which are held in place by merely the weight of the abacus.  The same carelessness which we have already noted in the workmanship of the walls is found in the workmanship of the columns.

[Illustration:  Fig. 57.—­Hathor pillar, Abu Simbel.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 58.—­Pillar of Amenhotep III., Karnak.]

The quadrangular pillar, with parallel or slightly inclined sides, and generally without either base or capital, frequently occurs in tombs of the ancient empire.  It reappears later at Medinet Habu, in the temple of Thothmes III., and again at Karnak, in what is known as the processional hall.  The sides of these square pillars are often covered with painted scenes, while the front faces were more decoratively