Wood was by no means so rare in early times as it is now in Egypt. Floyer has shown how much the desert has been stripped by the introduction of the tree-feeding camel. We see in the royal tombs of the Ist dynasty a large use of wood. The funeral chamber sunk in the ground was entirely built of massive beams and planks. The area of this room was 900 square feet in the largest tomb, varying down to 300 in the lesser. The framing of the floor, the supports, and the roof beams were about 10 × 7 inches in section and up to 21 feet in length. The planking of the floor still remains 2 to 2½ inches thick; and probably that of the roof was equal to it, as it had to bear about three feet of sand over it. The great scale of this timber work agrees with the “royal axe-man” being one of the high officials; before stone came into use, this title was the equivalent of chief architect. Such a free use of wood shows that the elaborate framing of façades, which is represented as a usual pattern in early stone-work, was actually copied from wooden mansions, just as the Greek architecture was an elaborate copy of woodwork. At the close of the IIIrd dynasty we have a glimpse of the large use of wood for shipbuilding, when Senoferu built in one year sixty ships, and imported forty ships of cedar. The great gates of the temple enclosures and palaces must also have been massive works; the outer and inner pylon at Karnak had gates fifteen feet wide on either side, and over sixty feet high. The wooden coffins of the Old Kingdom are heavy boxes with sides two to three inches thick. They are fastened together by bolts of wood; and such wooden pegs are run diagonally in different directions so as to prevent the parts being separated. Coffins hollowed out of a single block, to fit the outline of the mummy, were also used in all the earlier periods. In late times such forms were built up of boards. For securing the joints of furniture from racking, two correct systems were used. For chairs, angle-pieces were cut from wood with bent grain, and fitted on inside the angles. There must have been a constant demand for such bent pieces, and probably they were grown into shape. In other cases forms of wood have been found which had clearly been grown for many years into the shape required. The angle-pieces can be seen under the front of the seat in fig. 128. Another system for stands was to put in diagonal bars, as in fig. 130. Sometimes merely the stiffness of deep panelling was trusted, as in fig. 129. For the backs of chairs an excellent triangular stay was made, as in fig. 127. The light and skilful forms of the woodwork are well shown in the furniture (figs. 127-131) from the tomb of Yuaa and Thuiu, the parents of Queen Thyi, in the XVIIIth dynasty. The reliefs on the chair are carved in wood and gilded. The decoration on the casket (fig. 129) is of blue glazed hieroglyphs and inlays.