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It is told of Anushirwan, the Just King, that once upon a time he feigned himself sick, and bade his stewards and intendants go round about the provinces of his empire and the quarters of his dominion and seek him out a mud-brick thrown away from some ruined village, that he might use it as medicine, informing his intimates that the leaches had prescribed this to him.
The commander's first shot picked off one of the leaders in the front ranks of the native warriors, and was followed by a raking volley from the other power weapons, firing from the windows of the mud-brick buildings. The warriors in the front rank dropped, and those in the second rank had to move adroitly to keep from stumbling over the bodies of their fallen fellows.
The Hakim's countenance was dignified and impressive enough to thoroughly keep up his character, and he listened in silence to the remarks made in a low tone from time to time by the professor, who was eagerly noting the crowd in front that they were approaching; but Frank sat his camel as if turned into stone, his eyes fixed upon the wilderness of mud-brick buildings, while he wondered which contained the prisoner they had come to save.
They were on in front, stopping the way in the narrow street between two rows of mud-brick houses, and consequently Frank's party had to slacken their pace, the driver having glanced insolently back at them and then fixed his eyes half-wonderingly upon Frank, before turning again and continuing his way, quite ignoring the fact that those behind were waiting to pass.
Town sites rise in Egypt about forty inches a century, by the dust, rubbish, and decay of mud-brick buildings. In Palestine the rise is five feet a century, owing to the rains. Cemeteries. These have generally been more or less plundered; if recently, the pits show; if anciently, there are scraps of pottery lying about.
'Come to the roof of my house, my mother will show you the way, and these women can come too if they like. I acceded to this courteous invitation, and followed the mother and son up the mud-brick steps leading to the rude terrace; and though anything but clean, it was a great improvement on what we had left, and with genuine kindliness the old woman brought out an old but well-preserved carpet and spread it for me.
From the First Dynasty, say from 3300 B.C. down, as soon as the Egyptian had mastered the use of mud-brick and wood, we gain the certainty of an idea which could only be guessed at in the primitive period. A place is provided above the grave at which the living could meet the spirit of the dead with periodical offerings of food and other necessities.
The natives were building up their courage with some sort of war dance, whooping and screaming and making threatening gestures toward the embattled invaders. Then the pattern of the dance changed; the islanders whirled to face the mud-brick buildings which housed the invading Earthmen. Suddenly, the dance broke, and the warriors ran in a screaming charge, straight for the trapped soldiers.
The invading Earthmen were in a village at the southern end of the eight-mile-long island, waiting inside the mud-brick huts while the natives who had surrounded the village worked themselves into a frenzy for an attack. The commander knew there was no sense in charging into them at that point: they would simply scatter and reassemble.
The mud-brick tombs of the early part of the First Dynasty, like the pre-dynastic graves, had only one chamber, limited in size by the length of logs obtainable to form the roof. The growing desire for ostentation found a way to enlarge the tombs by building them with a number of chambers. The burial was placed in the central chamber and the burial furniture in the additional chambers.
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