§ 74. POINTED AND ROUND ARCHES. 293 



far older origin, must be ascribed to it. It is true that several 

 earlier specimens of the pointed arch date about the beginning 

 of the 600 ; but it was then only employed for covering pas- 

 sages and narrow spaces, while the round arch still formed the 

 roof of large chambers in the same buildings. It had not yet 

 become a substitute for the latter ; and it was probably not an 

 acknowledged architectural principle in Egypt much before the 

 middle of the 800. It may also be questioned whether the 

 imperfect pointed arches, built by the Christians of Egypt in 

 the 600, were an original idea gradually developed by them, 

 or an imperfect imitation of some which had been occasionally 

 met with in older buildings ; for a pointed arch, regularly con- 

 structed with a keystone, covered one of the chapels before a 

 pyramid at (rebel Berkel, in Ethiopia, which was coeval at 

 least with the early part of the Eoman empire ; and imita- 

 tions of the pointed, as well as of the round, arch, hewn in roofs 

 of horizontal blocks at Thebes about 1460 B.C., seem to show 

 the former to have been also constructed at a most remote age. 

 Nor was it in the valley of the Nile alone that we have proofs 

 of the pointed arch being known in those early periods ; and 

 one still remains over the inner passage of the aqueduct at 

 Tusculum *, which if not, as some suppose, Pelasgic, dates long 

 before the Christian era, and is pronounced by the valuable au- 

 thority of Canina to be coeval with the Latin Confederation. 

 Others are found in Asia ; as at Zendan (see Eich's Koordistan, 

 p. 254) and in St. Paul's dungeon at Ephesus (Arundell's Asia 

 Minor, vol. ii. p. 256), and one was discovered by Mr. Layard 

 over a drain in the S.E. palace at Nimroud. There appears to 

 be some reason for believing that the pointed arch was of Assy- 

 rian origin ; and the imitations of it cut in the rock by the 

 early Egyptians may possibly have been borrowed by them 



* Not the outer one, which is partly cut into the overlapping stones, and 

 partly pent-roofed. See " Pop. A. Ant. Egyptians," vol. ii. p. 261, woodcut. 



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