In fact, the earliest known vaults of handicraft have but a trivial age in the vast antiquity of human life. Let us take a rapid glance at them, so as to note their rudimentary construction. They are built not with stones directed towards the intrados, but with stones in horizontal courses that jut out one beyond another, just as Nature’s archways in stratified rocks have a succession of layers. At Abydos, one of the most ancient cities of Upper Egypt, there is a vault of this primitive sort in the temple of Rameses the Second, who reigned for sixty-seven years, from about 1292 to about 1225 B.C.[58] Another is found at Thebes in the temple of Ammon-Rē, but the most ancient specimen of all is at Gizeh, in the great pyramid of Menkaura. Now Menkaura belonged to the Fourth Dynasty, so that his date is more than 3000 years B.C. His sepulchral chamber is ceiled with a pointed arch--not a true arch, of course, the stones being merely cantilevers opposite to each other, with their undersides cut to the pointed shape. To understand the structural method, close your hands together at their full length, then open them gradually into the form of a pointed arch: the united finger-tips represent the apex of the vault, and the curving fingers represent the long archstones. Here is a departure from the horizontal layers of stone, but with these also pointed arches have been built. For instance, Italy has a very good example at Arpino, in Campania. “Arpino occupies the lower part of the site of the ancient Volscian town of Arpinum, which was finally taken from the Samnites by the Romans in 305 B.C..... The ancient polygonal walls, which are still finely preserved, are among the best in Italy. They are built of blocks of pudding-stone, originally well jointed, but now much weathered. They stand free in places to a height of eleven feet, and are about seven feet wide at the top. A single line of wall, with mediæval round towers at intervals, runs on the north side from the present town to Civita Vecchia, on the site of the ancient citadel. Here is the Porta dell’ Arco, a gate of the old wall, with an aperture fifteen feet high, formed by the gradual inclination of the two sides towards each other.”[59]