were upright; and they raised the materials by means of a rude kind of crane planted on the top.  The pylon walls and the principal facades (and sometimes even the secondary facades) were sloped at an angle which varied according to the taste of the architect.  In order to build these, they formed inclined planes, the slopes of which were lengthened as the structure rose in height.  These two methods were equally perilous; for, however carefully the blocks might be protected while being raised, they were constantly in danger of losing their edges or corners, or of being fractured before they reached the top (Note 7).  Thus it was almost always necessary to re-work them; and the object being to sacrifice as little as possible of the stone, the workmen often left them of most abnormal shapes (fig. 52).  They would level off one of the side faces, and then the joint, instead of being vertical, leaned askew.  If the block had neither height nor length to spare, they made up the loss by means of a supplementary slip.  Sometimes even they left a projection which fitted into a corresponding hollow in the next upper or lower course.  Being first of all expedients designed to remedy accidents, these methods degenerated into habitually careless ways of working.  The masons who had inadvertently hoisted too large a block, no longer troubled themselves to lower it back again, but worked it into the building in one or other of the ways before mentioned.  The architect neglected to duly supervise the dressing and placing of the blocks.  He allowed the courses to vary, and the vertical joints, two or three deep, to come one over the other.  The rough work done, the masons dressed down the stone, reworked the joints, and overlaid the whole with a coat of cement or stucco, coloured to match the material, which concealed the faults of the real work.  The walls rarely end with a sharp edge.  Bordered with a torus, around which a sculptured riband is entwined, they are crowned by the cavetto cornice surmounted by a flat band (fig. 53); or, as at Semneh, by a square cornice; or, as at Medinet Habu, by a line of battlements.  Thus framed in, the walls looked like enormous panels, each panel complete in itself, without projections and almost without openings.  Windows, always rare in Egyptian architecture, are mere ventilators when introduced into the walls of temples, being intended to light the staircases, as in the second pylon of Horemheb at Karnak, or else to support decorative woodwork on festival days.  The doorways project but slightly from the body of the buildings (fig. 54), except where the lintel is over-shadowed by a projecting cornice.  Real windows occur only in the pavilion of Medinet Habu; but that building was constructed on the model of a fortress, and must rank as an exception among religious monuments.

[Illustration:  Fig. 53.—­Temple wall with cornice.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 54.—­Niche and doorway in temple of Seti I. at Abydos.]