even when kiln-baked bricks were
introduced they were often employed merely to face the older variety.
Spacious and lofty buildings consisting entirely of bricks were erected
at a very early date in Assyria, Persia, and elsewhere, and some of the
most noteworthy architectural survivals of the Roman Empire are of the
same material.

The main features of a building are determined by the shape of the walls
or the mode of arrangement of the pillars that take the place of walls,
the way in which the roof is constructed, and that in which the openings
of the doors and windows are spanned. The earliest roofs were flat, and
the most ancient mode of linking together the supports of doors and
windows was to place a plank of wood or slab of stone known as a
_lintel_ across them at the top. To this style of roofing and spanning,
which reached its most perfect development in the temples of Greece, the
name of the _trabeated_ was given, derived in the first instance from
the so-called _trabea_, a toga adorned with horizontal stripes.

It was only by very gradual degrees that the trabeated mode of roofing
and spanning was succeeded by what is known as the _arcuated_, or that
in which the arch takes the place of the horizontal beam. In early Roman
temples and palaces the Greek style was long carefully copied, but in
utilitarian works such as bridges, viaducts, and drains the arch was
employed at a very remote period. An arch whether circular or pointed
consists of two series of stones cut into the form of wedges known as
_voussoirs_, a central one at the apex or highest point called the
_keystone_ locking the two series together. This beautiful contrivance,
the inventor of which is unknown, gradually revolutionised the science
of architecture. It was used at first, tentatively as it were, in
combination with the horizontal beam or slab of stone, but in the end
became in its rounded form the distinctive peculiarity of the Romanesque
and in its pointed shape of the Gothic style.

ARCHITECTURE

CHAPTER I

EGYPTIAN, ASIATIC, AND EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE

The most ancient existing examples of Egyptian architecture are the
royal tombs of the Memphite kingdom known as the Pyramids, of which the
oldest is that of King Seneferu (about 3000 B.C.) at Medum, and the
largest, which rises to a height of 481 feet from a base 764 feet
square, that called the Great Pyramid of King Cheops (3788-3666) at
Ghizeh, near Cairo, on whi