While, however, these various branches of art were advancing with greater or lesser speed, while the number of the people was increasing, a division of property arose, and the desire was naturally kindled in the bosom of families to dwell apart: a dissatisfaction would therefore arise with the tent, and an effort be made to collect other materials, and to construct separate and more durable dwellings. In the time of Job, and probably for ages afterward, the houses of all ranks in the land of Uz appear to have been built of mud; for of some transgressors he says—“In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for themselves in the day-time.” We read of others who “dig through” houses “and steal;” thus suggesting to us those clay-built dwellings, which, though not substantial like edifices of later date, were still sufficiently so to require that he should dig through them who would gain a forcible entrance.

On men determining to become settlers in towns, more stable materials were rendered available. The manufacture of bricks ascends to the earliest time of historical record. The first building of which there is any mention after the deluge is the Tower of Babel. Considerable progress appears to have been made, not only in this but the city before “the confusion of tongues” took place. It is expressly stated that well-burned brick was used, instead of stone, in these structures, and that slime, which is generally understood to be bitumen, was employed instead of mortar. Other edifices were reared from bricks formed of earth, and then burned in furnaces or kilns.

The manufacture of bricks was familiar to the ancient Egyptians. In this, as is well known, the children of Israel were greatly oppressed. The circumstance of the bricks they made being mixed with chopped straw, renders it probable that they were not burned, but merely dried in the sun. Herodotus records of Asychis, one of the kings of Egypt, that he built a pyramid of bricks, made of the mud or silt dredged up from the bottom of the Nile. In one compartment of a tomb in Thebes the whole process of brick-making is portrayed. Some persons appear carrying the clay in vessels from the field, others beating it with spades, others taking the bricks out of the mould, and others bearing away the dried bricks, making a balance over their shoulders with ropes attached to a beam.

The first effort of those who would rear a town would be to mark out the extent of the ground they required, including not only a desirable space for building, but pasture-lands for flocks and herds, and also fields for the produce of grain. A wall would now be necessary at the boundary line, as a defense from the assaults of ravenous beasts, or the incursions of hostile bands. This would at first be formed of any stones that could be dug out or collected, and then heaped together; a strong and stable, but rude protection.

The earliest houses would probably be only one story in height: all of them having a similarity in general appearance. But the chief would soon require that his dwelling should accord with his personal elevation, and obedience to his mandate would result in the rudiments of a palace. The sound knowledge or the superstition of the sovereign and his people would give rise to the structure of a temple, and in the course of time to the multiplying of edifices accounted sacred. Other distinctive circumstances would inevitably arise. To walls rendered increasingly massive would be added towers, gradually acquiring a military character; and places of security to which the inhabitants might retire in seasons of peril. On an assault being made, the men who tilled the ground, and those who carried on the business of the town, would unite in its defense; but as attacks continued to be threatened, or were actually experienced, there would be the organization of a martial force, and the population be divisible into the civil and the military; the latter class being supplied with weapons and trained to the exercises of assault and defense.

The implements of the carpenter, like those of other artisans, were long both few and simple. It does not follow that the axe was first formed of iron. As a spear-head of hard wood serves the purpose of some of the South Sea Islanders, so does still an axe of green jade. If to this there was a resemblance in early times, a sharpened piece of iron with a wooden helve would naturally succeed. We know that celebrity might be acquired in its use; for “a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees.” When Solomon was about to build the Temple, he conveyed his wish to the King of Tyre for a supply of timber, knowing as he said, “there is not among us any that can skill to hew timber like unto the Sidonians.”

In early times, the trunks of trees were split with wedges into as many, and as thin pieces as possible; and if they were required to be still thinner, they were hewn on both sides to the proper size. Much advantage was therefore gained by the invention of the saw. As it could only be made of metal, this would occur at a far later period than that to which it is just to ascribe the origin of the axe. That the Egyptians possessed the saw is manifest from their sculptures. David, on the subjugation of the Ammonites, appears to have put them to labor with different implements, among which was the saw. The use of this was not confined to wood; for parts of Solomon’s palace were formed of “costly stones, according to the measure of hewn stones, sawed with a saw.”

The art of the locksmith is nowhere apparent in early times: the bolt, the lock, the key, were all of wood, as they are in the metropolis of Egypt to the present day. To produce these, therefore, the carpenter must have been employed. The Orientals looked to watchmen as their chief means of defense.

The lamp-maker must have been, however, in great request. Metals were often employed in the structure of lamps. The one commonly used in Cairo is of palm-tree wood; the glass that hangs in the middle is half-filled with water, and has oil on the top, about three fingers in depth. The wick is preserved dry at the bottom of the glass, and ascends through a pipe. Such Lamps are very convenient, from their being easily removed from place to place.

And here we are reminded of a valuable substance not yet noticed. According to Pliny, some storm-beaten mariners were boiling their food at the mouth of the river Belus—a small stream running from the foot of Mount Carmel—where the herb kali was growing abundantly, when they perceived that the sand—when incorporated with the ashes of the plant—melted, and ran into a vitreous substance. Nor is the supposition unnatural; for the sand at this place was well adapted to the manufacture of glass; and it is scarcely possible to produce a fire of sufficient heat for metallurgical operations without vitrefying part of the bricks or stones of the furnace. Strabo and Josephus alike supported the statement of Pliny, and probably from the spot referred to, the material was obtained that was used in the glass-works of Tyre and Sidon. At Beni Hassan, glass-blowers are represented at work: glazed pottery was used by the Egyptians; they also made glass bugles and beads for necklaces, and a sort of network with which they covered the wrappers of mummies, so as to form by their various hues numerous devices and figures, resembling those that are made in our bead-purses. The chief articles of that people were, however, bottles, vases, and other utensils, though they must have had great skill in the manufacture of glass, as they counterfeited amethysts, emeralds, and other precious stones, and were practiced in cutting glass and gems. A pane of glass, and numerous fragments of broken glass bottles were discovered on the excavation of the city of Pompeii. And Mr. Layard has found that the people of Nineveh had also acquired the art of making glass. Several small bottles, or vases—of elegant shape—in this material, were found at Nimroud and Kouyunjik. One bears the name of the Khorsabad king. The gems and cylinders still frequently found in ruins, prove that the Assyrians were also very skillful in engraving on stone.

Not very long after the rise of the arts we discover the practice of working in gold. The golden ear-ring presented by Abraham’s steward to Rebekah weighed half a shekel, and the two bracelets for her hands were ten shekels’ weight of gold. The ark of the covenant, though made of wood, was to be overlaid with pure gold, within and without. It was also to have a crown of gold round about, and rings of gold in the four corners. Even the staves were to be overlaid with gold. Similar directions were given as to the table of shewbread and the altar of incense. And Solomon garnished the house of the Lord with gold.

The Egyptians appear to have been familiar with the manufacture of gold. The gold-leaf still found in and about mummy-cases, some thousands of years old, proves not only that they had an abundant supply of the precious metal, but were acquainted with the art of gilding. Their making of golden ornaments and golden vases, of large size and beautiful workmanship, might be inferred from various incidental notices in ancient writers; but, it is placed beyond all doubt by the representations of Rosellini. Among these are numerous vases of a golden color, many of them showing not only manual dexterity, but also considerable taste. A picture in the tomb of Rameses IV. contains a golden vase of great beauty, supported by two Philistines.

There is no mention of silver in Scripture till the time of Abraham. It then appears in the form of money, estimated by weight: “Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant.” Jeremiah paid for the field of Hanameel in the same way. The shekel and the talent indeed do not appear to have been originally fixed and stamped pieces of money, but merely weights used in traffic. So general did this become, that the Jews usually had scales attached to their girdles for weighing the gold and silver they received in payment, while the Canaanites carried them in their hands. Silver was so abundant in the days of Solomon that it was “nothing accounted of;” for “the king made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem.”

The mention of brass which occurs in ancient writers must often be understood as meaning copper, either in its pure state or alloyed with tin, rather than the metallic compound with which we are familiar. It is stated that the chief sources of the wealth of the Pharaohs were the mines of the neighboring countries of Nubia and Ethiopia, which were abundantly productive of copper.

The mirrors which were in possession of the Israelitish women when they left Egypt are said to have been of brass, for the laver and the foot of it were made of that metal. Such were all the mirrors made in ancient times. Many metallic mirrors may be observed in our collections of Egyptian antiquities. They are nearly round, but varied in form, according to the taste of the artisan, and are inserted in handles of wood, stone, or metal. Their substance is chiefly copper, but mixed with other metals, most carefully wrought and highly polished. In the Egyptian Museum at Paris, there are several mirrors of a metal which looks like brass.

David provided an immense quantity of copper for the use of the Temple. Of this substance all sorts of vessels were made for the Temple, as they had been for the Tabernacle; and to these may be added weapons, more especially helmets, armor, shields, and spears. Hiram of Tyre was celebrated as a worker in brass. The larger vessels, and the pillars for architectural ornaments, were moulded in foundries; but it appears that this art, even in the time of Solomon, was little known among the Jews, and was peculiar to foreigners, particularly the Phoenicians.

Mines of copper occur in the mountains of Kourdistan, which appear to have been worked from remote antiquity. They formed the chief source from which copper, iron, and lead were obtained by the ancient Assyrians. A disused copper-mine, nearly blocked up with earth and rubbish, and only known to a few mountaineers, was visited by Mr. Layard. He found the metal in various states. Inscriptions on copper, various utensils, and figures of lions in solid metal, have been exhumed from the ruins of Nineveh. Tools, daggers, arrow-heads and armor, were formed from the ore, as was commonly the case among Asiatic nations, while the metal in powder was used to color the bricks and ornaments in the Assyrian palaces.

The general style of building in the East, with which our modern travelers are so familiar, accords with that which is traceable to the remotest ages. Fronting the street, which is usually narrow, as providing a better defense from the sun, and sometimes with a range of shops on one or both sides, dead walls appear, here and there only broken by a window, to which a grotesque frame of lattice-work serves as a guard. The house is entered by a porch or gateway, which conducts into a quadrangular court paved with stone or marble, and is generally surrounded by a cloister; over which, when the house has a number of stories, a gallery, having a balustrade, or else a piece of carved or latticed work, is erected of the same dimensions as the cloister. The apartments are approached by doors from the quadrangular court. When houses are built close together, the staircase is placed in the porch, or at the entrance into the court, and continued through one corner of the gallery or another to the top of the house; but when the houses are not contiguous, the staircase appears to have been conducted along the outside of the building. The roof is always flat; it is often composed of branches of wood laid across rude beams, and is covered with a strong plaster of terrace, to defend it from injury in the rainy season. It is surrounded by a parapet or a wall breast high, serving as a protection to those who go on the roof for various purposes, and also as a means of separation from the adjacent houses. Such a battlement was expressly required by the law of Moses, intimating probably, that terraced houses were at that time less common in Syria than they were in Egypt.

In the survey of ancient buildings, the use of immense masses of stone cannot fail to be observed. It appears from recent discoveries that they were cut from the quarries by a number of metal wedges, placed in a line, and struck simultaneously with a wooden mallet; or that a mass was split by wedges of highly-dried wood saturated with water, and thus acquiring a great expansive force. They were sometimes hewn, either roughly or with greater care. They were raised aloft by means still employed in India, as mounds, or inclined planes, or others equally simple. In all the remains of ancient Egypt we have no trace of any machinery being employed in building; a fact not a little remarkable when we consider how vast and stupendous were many of its edifices.

In the language of the Hebrews, the name of a garden was given to every place where plants and trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open field. Such inclosures are generally defended, as they have been for ages, by loose stones, a wall, or a hedge formed of the wild pomegranate tree, or of thorns mingled with rose-bushes, adorned in their season with their lovely flowers, and giving forth their delightful fragrance. Within, however, but little design or beauty is apparent, the whole commonly presenting only a confused medley of fruit-trees, with beds of esculent plants, having even plots of wheat and barley sometimes interspersed. Solomon could say, “I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits;” but then he had not only an unusual knowledge of the vegetable tribes, but also vast resources as a sovereign. And travelers still tell us of the supposed remains of the works he constructed, when he said, “I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees.”

Particular attention appears to have been bestowed on the culture of the vine by the Israelites and other Oriental people. The site for this purpose was carefully selected in fields of a loose, crumbling soil, on a rich plain, on a sloping hill, or where the acclivity was very steep, or on terraces supported by masonry; the whole being inclosed by a wall. How luxuriant was the produce of Palestine is evident from the fact, that on the return of the spies they passed through the valley of Eshcol, where they were so much struck by the size and beauty of the vines, that they broke off a branch to take with them to the camp, and to prevent the attached and rich clusters from being bruised, bore it between two on a staff. That the vine was cultured in Egypt, and that the juice of the grape was expressed from its clusters, is apparent, not only from Scripture, but the paintings and sculptures of that country, in which are often and strikingly depicted the vineyards and vine-arbors, the gathering of the grapes, and the treading of the wine-press.

On the construction of military machines we do not enter; we dwell rather on the arts of peace. Music, to which allusion has been made, in connection with pastoral life, has, however, in all ages furnished a powerful stimulus to men when engaged either in assault or defense. The ancient inhabitants of Etruria used the trumpet for this purpose; the Arcadians, the whistle; the Sicilians, the pectida; the Cretians, the harp; the Lacedemonians, the pipe; the Thracians, the cornet; the Egyptians, the drum; and the Arabians, the cymbal.

The transmission of persons and goods on the surface of the water would appear to be desirable in a very remote age. How the idea of doing so arose we know not. It is, however, certain that man did not

“Learn of the little nautilus to sail;”