Tools Used in Ancient Egyptian Construction

Building Materials

Most ancient Egyptian buildings were constructed of either mud bricks with wood elements or waddle‐and‐daub walls of intertwined poles packed with mud. These include all the houses and even the royal palaces. In the better‐built structures, mud bricks were used for the foundations and walls with wood planks and poles employed for most everything else, including door and window frames, doors, window shutters, vertical supports (pillars) for roofs and upper floors, and horizontal supports for the mud‐brick walls. Stone was also sometimes used in these buildings wherever extra strength and durability were required, such as for door thresholds and pillar bases. The only buildings constructed largely or entirely of stone were the temples and freestanding tombs (pyramids and mastabas [tombs]), although some of these were also built of mud brick, and many stone temples were surrounded by massive mud‐brick walls.

The construction tools considered here were in use during...