ON USEFUL AND ORNAMENTAL STONES OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 273 



date is evidently altogether anterior to the operation of that 

 wind-drift which has produced the modern rounded desert 

 sand. 



4. Limestone, &o. 



In a country where cliffs of this rock present themselves on 

 every side, it is necessarily of great importance, both as a 

 stone of construction and as cement. It is mostly of Eocene 

 age, though some Cretaceous beds have been locally quarried, 

 and it is of very various qualities. It may be coarse and 

 unequal in grain, or filled with fossil shells, as Nummulites, 

 &c, or may be fine and uniform in texture. It is sometimes 

 hard as marble, in other cases soft and chalky. It may be 

 grey or brown, or of a pure white. All these varieties were 

 more or less used, the coarser and more unsightly for cores 

 of pyramids, foundations, and other structures not intended 

 to be seen. The stepped pyramid of Sakkara, one of the 

 oldest known, is wholly composed of a brownish limestone, 

 found in the vicinity. The pare white and fine grained 

 varieties were employed for lining and casing buildings, and 

 for ornamental work and sculpture. 



The finer varieties present under the microscope various 

 characters. The most common and softest is of the nature 

 of an indurated chalk ; a congeries of microscopic foramini- 

 feral shells, and must be an oceanic deposit similar to 

 chalk and globigerina ooze. This is the variety employed 

 for casing the Great Pyramid, for lining many temples and 

 tombs, for statues and monumental tablets, and it is the 

 whitest kind quarried at Turra at present. A variety 

 observed at Abydos is of a light grey tint and earthy aspect, 

 but this has been coated with a white cement and coloured. 

 Other varieties used in sculpture have a fine concretionary 

 or oolitic structure, or are so cemented with infiltrated 

 matter as to assume a minutely crystalline character. The 

 fine-grained foraminiferal limestone lends itself to the cutting 

 of hieroglyphic inscriptions of all kinds, and to the art of the 

 colourist, so that it is admirably adapted to the uses to which 

 it was applied in tombs and temples. 



A more modern limestone of later Tertiary age exists on 

 the coast near Alexandria, and is quarried for building pur- 

 poses. It is an organic rock, made up of fragments of shells, 

 and is apparently similar in age and origin to the Pleistocene 

 limestones found near Jaffa and Beyrout, on the Syrian coast, 

 and to the modern shelly sandstones of the coast of the Red 

 Sea, which are used for purposes of construction at Suez. 



