One of the most familiar early motives is wooden framing. This is continually imitated in the stone figures of doorways in the tombs. The details of it show that a frame or grate of joinery must have been used for the porch of large houses, so as to admit light and air while the door was fastened. The prevalence of such wooden frames or lattices in modern times in Egypt—known as mushrabiyeh work—shows how suited such a system is to the climate. Long after the use of stone was general the frames were imitated, and the pattern survived as a decoration. The same style of framing was used in the upper part of a house, with decorative uprights of the hieroglyph _tat_, and was copied as a fancy decoration in furniture, as seen in a beautiful ivory carving in the Louvre. This style survived until the XVIIIth dynasty, when it is seen in a tomb at Thebes (Amenhetop II., Prisse Art) and at the temple of Sedeinga under Amenhotep III. [Illustration: Fig. 175.] [Illustration: Fig. 174.—Ghizeh.] Much akin to this wood framing is the panelling of the brickwork which is seen in the earliest examples in Egypt, and is identical with the panelling of walls in early Babylonia, one of the indications of a common civilisation of the two great valleys. This panelling does not seem to have lasted beyond the Old Kingdom; there was no trace of it found at Kahun or Gurob, in the buildings of the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties, nor does it appear in any drawings or imitations of buildings. [Illustration: 176.—P. M. vii. (plan).] [Illustration: Fig. 177.] One of the best known characteristics of Egyptian architecture is the sloping face of the walls and pylons. This is directly copied from brickwork. In order to give more cohesion to a wall it was the custom to build it on a curved bed, so that the courses all sloped up outwards at the outer corners. Thus the outer faces sloped inwards, and the wall had more stability. So wedded were the builders to this method, that where a long wall of a fort or city was to be built they preferred to begin with a row of towers of brickwork thus arranged, and then to fill in the spaces between them with more plain walling. This slope of the walls was copied in stone at the earliest time. The temple of Sneferu at Medum has a slope on the face of about 1 in 16, and it was continued down to the very latest age of Roman building. [Illustration: 178.—Perring. L.D. II. 44.]