I. Ancient Orient
In Egypt and the Near East, the history of the brick and its predecessor, the mud brick, dates back to the 8th/7th millennia BC. The raw material was generally a local mixture from clay/loam and sand/gravel, in Egypt the silt deposits of the Nile. The mixture, made lean through the addition of vegetal (chopped) straw, chaff, mineral (crushed stones or potsherds) or waste material (animal dung), was shaped into bric…