L'Incient W aL, Building

L'Incient W aL, Building

If walls could talk, they'd tell the story of the human race. From prehistory to the present, architecture shows human character, ambition, and values set in stone.

Remarkably early, human beings reached beyond pure utility. Whether constructing in mud, wood, brick, stone, marble, or concrete, they erected shelters and shrines meant to impress. Motives for these grand build-ings were diverse. Most often, tombs and towers filled political, religious, or military needs. Just as frequently, a ruler's vanity propelled buildings far beyond necessity into the realm of aesthetics.

The story of ancient architecture begins with the first dwellings of the Neolithic Age, when hunter-gatherers set-tled down in communities to grow food and tend , domestfc animals. Once people mingled in villages, their urge to show

off flowered. Stone monoliths sprouted like wild poppies across the landscape of Western Europe.

After Mesopotamia invented the city, huge piles of sun-baked brick, or ziggurats, rose. Along the Nile, stone pyramids proclaimed life everlasting for the pharaohs (the word pharaoh comes from the Hebrew for "great house"). In the New World of Meso-america, steep pyramids climbed to the sky, and in the Near and Far East, architecture of sumptuous ornament developed. In Greece and Rome, architecture—like civilization itself—achieved classic status, becoming Architecture with a capital A.

Ruins and archeologists' theories give us only a hazy view of ancient architecture. But just as the arch opened up ceiling vaults, technology, coupled with imagi-nation, opened up new vistas for the roof above our heads.

4 ANCIENT WORLD: THE BUILDING BLOCKS

PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE: ROCK Or AGES As soon as human beings emerged from caves to live in huts, two basic drives— aggression and religion—dictated the forms of the first permanent architecture,

The ancient city of Jericho (in modern Jordan) was built 9,300 years ago surrounded by a wall of rough stone blocks to repel marauding enemies. Rem-nants of the wall, 14 feet high and 10 feet thick, still stand. Its most impressive feature was a tower more than 25 feet tall, presumably to spot approaching invaders. These defensive fortifications tell us that, from the end of the last Ice Age, large-scale warfare was a fact of human existence.

Judging from other early relics, the flip side of the coin of human nature was spirituality. Neolithic monuments created 6,500 years ago had nothing to do with a practical matter like survival. The massive stone formations scattered across western Europe, from Spain to Scandinavia, were erected with incredible effort to meet emotional and spiritual needs.

STONEHENGE: IF STONES COULD TALK. Built over the course of a thousand years, possibly from as early as 3000 B.C.E., Stonehenge sprang from both rational and irrational concepts. The stones' site is linked to precise astronomical observa-tion. Arranged in concentric circles around an inner horseshoe shape, on the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year), the sun rises exactly over the apex of the Heel Stone. One theory considers the group a giant stone computer—about as hard as hardware can get—to predict solar and lunar eclipses.

More than a passive sundial, however, Stonehenge was almost certainly used for ritual religious practices. At its center is an altar, with the tallest stone (28 feet high) behind it.

Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, c. 3000-1500 B.C.E., aerial view This monument may have been a solar calendar to predict the seasons, instructing ancient people when to plant crops.

More than 900 stone circles, called cromlechs, have been identified across the British Isles, but Stone-henge's construction is the most sophisticated. In its earliest incarna-tion, workers, using bone antlers, dug a circular trench (or henge) in the white chalk bedrock. A break in the circle faces a tall sandstone pil-lar, called the Heel Stone, outside the ring. In the center of the ditch, a dou-ble ring of bluestones was placed. These rocks weigh up to five tons each and were quarried hundreds of miles away in the mountains of Wales.

At a later date, five sets of megaliths (from the Greek megas= great and lithos= stone) were arranged in a U shape, with the open end fac-ing sunrise. These huge, 40-ton stones were combined in threes to make trilithons, in a post-and-lintel setup. An outer round of thirty 15-foot-high megaliths was once a continuous cir-cle of trilithons. Lintels fit together end to end in tongue-and-groove joints to form a smoothly curved arc.

Stonehenge exemplifies basic principles of all architecture. Its cre-ators understood the fundamental ele-ment of support and load, where vertical pillars bear the weight of hor-izontal crossbeams. The monument clearly owes a debt to wood con-struction, for the stones are linked with a carpenter's mortise-and-tenon joints, (On top of each upright is a projecting knob of stone that fits into a matching notch in the lintel.)

Prehistoric structures

demonstrate a fundamental

characteristic of architecture.

Monuments play symbolic and

practical roles.

STONED SENTINELS

Stone alignments, Carnac, c. 4500 B.C.E.

Myths abound to explain the origin of these rocky rows. In one, the slabs are Roman soldiers, petrified by a local saint. New Age sorcerers consider them Stone Age landing lights to guide extraterrestrial visitors. They are not, as another expla-nation would have it, connected to the Druids, who came along two thousand years later and preferred worshipping in oak groves.

In England, local people have not always been kind to their prehistoric legacy. At dusk, horses were said to shy at the giant stones and bolt down hills, so one notorious "Stone-killer" took it upon himself to knock down countless monoliths, smashing them with a sledgehammer.

For six or seven millennia the stones have stood the test of time. Daniel Defoe wrote in the seventeenth cen-tury, "All that can be learn'd of them is, That here they are."

PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE: ROCK OF AGES 5

NEOLITHIC CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE

Post and Lintel. The post-and-lintel system of

construction uses vertical supports spanned by

horizontal beams. The heavier the load (beam),

the stronger the supports.

Carnac, France, stone alignments, third millennium B.C.E., aerial view Around Comic on the Atlantic coast of France, an army of more than 10,000 granite slabs marches toward the sea over an area of nearly 5 square miles. The avenues of 12-foot-tall stones are arranged in ten to thirteen straight rows called alignments. No one knows why these megaliths were erected.

HOW THEY DID IT. For a people who lacked bronze or iron tools and the wheel, the amount of work involved is nearly inconceivable. With only the crudest picks, these determined Neolithic workers quarried and shaped boulders weighing up to 50 tons. They transported the stones by barge or sled, probably dragged by large crews on log rollers. A team gradually levered the slabs into a ver-tical position and planted them in holes. Raising the huge, 7-ton lintels up 20 feet to the shoulders of the standing stones was done in stages. By prying the ends up and inserting tim-ber beneath, they added layer after layer of logs to make an ascending palette. After they reached the height of the top and shoved the lintel side-ways onto the uprights, the elevating scaffold was removed.

No one quite understands how our primitive ancestors pulled off such a feat. The secret is likely the limitless time and labor devoted to construc-tion. The "how" we can begin to grasp. The "why" remains a mystery.


MESOPOTAMIA: THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATIOil The natural resources they started with—mud and water—were not very promising. But what the ancient Mesopotami-ans constructed from such meager means was nothing short of a civilization. With mud bricks, they erected massive tow-ers, the first monumental buildings designed with artistic intent. And on the arid plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (Mesopotamia means "between rivers"), in the area that is now Iraq, they founded the first cities.

Along the way, from about 4500 B.C.E. to 539 B.C.E. (when the Persian king Cyrus seized Babylon to end the Mesopotamian Empire), they developed writing, invented the wheeled vehicle, studied the stars, wrote epic poetry, and compiled the first legal code.

Mesopotamia is most celebrated for inventing the city. When Europe was still scrabbling in the Neolithic dirt with stone and bone tools, Mesopotamia enjoyed what has to be called culture. Their society was rolling in wealth derived from metal working, organized food production, and trade. The Greek histo-rian Herodotus, a gadabout who left records of many sites he visited, said in about 450 B.C.E., "Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world."

SUMER: THE BEGINNING. Near the Persian Gulf in the area known as the Chaldees, early Sumerian culture developed, reaching its Golden Age around 33 00 B.C.E. They had no timber or stone, which meant their buildings of unfired, sun-dried brick, mortared with earth, had a distressing tendency to dissolve. Not much is left. Yet, since brick is structurally weak, walls were made extra thick (up to 20 feet) and reinforced with buttresses, so parts of some buildings remain.

The major innovation of Mesopotamian architecture was the ziggurat, a tall, terraced tower with up to seven successively smaller stages, placed one on top of the other, and a temple at the summit. (Think of a square, multitiered wedding cake.)

One thing architecture makes clear is that size and grandeur are manifestations of power. Ziggurats trumpet the king's clout. They were conceived as artificial mountains, which the priest-king climbed to commune with the gods.

MARTIAL ART. As the king became more powerful, his royal palace became the most sumptuous monument. When Sargon II built a citadel at Khorsabad (c. 706 B.C.E.), his palace dominated the complex, intimidating potential foes. Remains of the mile-square city show muscle-flexing decor. In the throne room, larger-than-

Ziggurat of Ur-Nammu at Ur-of-the-Chaldees, c. 2000 B.C.E., reconstruction drawing The ziggurat form came into being inadvertently. Since new temples were built on the ruins of old, terraced levels grew successively higher until the stepped form became deliberate. Each block was smaller than the one below, and all were con-nected by monumental staircases. More than thirty ziggurats have been excavated.

The Mesopotamians invented

large-scale architecture,

equating extreme height with

political might. Their buildings

were the first designed for

aesthetic effect.

Citadel of Sargon II, Khorsabad, 742-706 B.C.E. The capital built by Sargon II of Assyria occupied one square mile. The royal palace (center rear), with private temples and small ziggurat, dominates the city.

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Tenochtitlan, Mexico, 1325-1521, reconstruction view The Aztec City. In another era, another early civilization established a sophisticated urban civilization. In 1519, Montezuma's Aztec capital was the size of London. "Never will a city such as this one be discovered again," wrote a Spanish soldier. The Venice of Central America, Tenochtitlan was built on an island in the middle of a lake, with canals for thoroughfares. One palace held cham-bers built entirely of silver and gold.

Ishtar Gate, Babylon, c. 575 B.C.E. Recon-struction in Pergamon Museum, Berlin The Ishtar Gate is the most magnificent remnant of the Oz-like extravaganza that was Babylon. The Mesa-potamians introduced the use of colorful tiles as orna-ment. A veneer of blue enameled bricks adorns the four-story-high gates, with tiers of hundreds of almost life-size gold bulls and dragons.

MESOPOTAMIA: THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION 7

life alabaster relief sculptures of the king in his war chariot, triumphant atop a heap of enemy corpses and decapitated heads, made a ferocious wall treatment.

BABYLONIAN SPLENDOR: THE ZENITH. The most famous ziggurat, the Tower of Babel, was supposedly 300 feet high. The Book of Genesis quotes King Nebuchadnezzar's order "to raise the top of the Tower that it might rival heaven." Herodotus described the tower as seven-layered, each level faced with glazed tiles of a different color. Twenty-six tons of gold furnishings and sculpture filled the interior of the temple.

Babylon (located 25 miles south of Baghdad) reached its peak of lux-ury from 605 to 562 B.C.E. The city is renowned for two of the most famous architectural achievements of antiquity—the Processional Way and Ishtar Gate. The vast processional avenue, 73 feet wide and paved with white limestone and pink mar-ble, ran north to south through the city. On either side, colorful walls rose 23 feet high, decorated with glazed blue tiles and red and gold relief . enamels of lions.

In Mesopotamia, we see the first phase of an urban revolution. Public structures such as streets, squares, walls, gates, temples, palaces, canals, homes, and shops—what we would call "mixed use" zoning today—served a population of perhaps 50,000. By 200 C.E., "that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls," as Revelations puts it, was in ruins. Today all that's left is a mound of mud.

Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, 2570-2500 B.C.E.

The pyramid's extreme simplicity and the stability of its geometric form reflect the concepts of permanence and eternity. After thousands of years, more than eighty pyramids still stand south of Cairo. Pared down to minimal form, they have the durability of bedrock.


EGYPT: ARCHITECTURE TO DIE FOR

obelisk; and (4) fine craftsmanship, part of the aesthetic whole. of Egyptian landscape—the flat planes nd flood of the Nile River—may have

An ancient Arab proverb goes, "All things dread Time, but Time dreads the Pyra-mids." Unfazed by erosion, pollution, or aging, the pyramids have endured for almost 5,000 years. They are the only example of the seven won-ders of the ancient world still around today, and it's likely they'll remain at least several more millennia.

Ancient Egyptian civiliza-tion flourished for 3,000 years, from about 3100 B.C.E. to 30 B.C.E. It ended with a dramatic flourish when Cleopatra, last of the Ptolemies, pressed an asp to her bosom, choosing death rather than the dishonor of marching to Rome as prisoner. In the long interim between the rise and fall of Egypt, through the reign of thirty dynasties, the most notable buildings were reli-gious and mortuary monuments, built of stone to last forever.

Among Egypt's contribu-tions to architecture are: (1) the first large-scale, dressed stone buildings; (2) pure, geometric forms, such as the pyramid (the first abstract art); (3) invention of the column, capital, cornice, pylon, and including carved bas-reliefs as an integral

What's called the "grand monotony" of the desert and repetitive cycles of ebb a

Construction Secrets of the Pyramids

They had to clew and.level the site, survey it for a perfect square base, and orient its sides pre-

cisely without a magnetic compass. Then they quarried millions of stones, transported them hun-

dreds of miles, and lifted them to heights more than forty stories high using levers but no cranes

or pulleys. They dressed the blocks with only stone and soft copper tools and fitted them together

in exact masonry courses without mortar. And the work—carried out over decades—had to cul-

minate in a perfect point at the peak. Now did the Egyptians ever manage this

epic undertaking?

One secret was that for three months every year when the river flooded, no farming

was possible. The pharaoh had a huge labor force at his disposal. They quarried stones, some up

to 200 tons, at Aswan and floated them up the Nile on barges. They hauled the stones on huge

earthen ramps that wrapped around the pyramid as it rose, then were removed after completion.

One mural shows a team of 172 men hauling a 60-ton statue, with an overseer marking rhythm

for pulling and another dripping liquid on the romp to lubricate it. The gilded capstone and man-

tle of limestone could have been applied from the top down and mortared into place above the

substructure. A system of bronze mirrors reflected light to the interior of the pyramid so

tunneling workers could create,passages deep inside. After the coffin was placed in the heart of

the pyramid, props were knocked away and giant blocks crashed down the corridor to seal

the entrance.

Although this how-to theory is feasible, the biggest secret will probably never be solved.

Why, if they were built as tombs, does the trio of pyramids at Giza contain no bodies or inscrip-

tions? Enigmatically, the empty monuments are all dressed up with no place to go.

SCHEMATIC DESIGN OF THE PYRAMID

The inner design of the pyramid included two burial chambers (1 and 2), which were left incomplete. The final chamber (3) was reached through the Grand Gallery (4) and was ventilated by two narrow air shafts (5 and 6). After the Ascending Corridor

(7)was sealed from within by stone plugs, workmen in the Gallery escaped

down a shaft (8)and up the Descending Corridor (9).

EGYPT: ARCHITECTURE TO DIE FOR 9

shaped Egyptian style. Cultural con-servatism finds a visual equivalent in linear works with an emphasis on mass and permanence. Looming over the sands, huge stone monuments rival in scale and ambition the river, desert, and mountains. It's as if their creators intended them to be not just objects in space but in the fourth dimension of time.

EVOLUTION OF PYRAMIDS: SOLID LIKE A ROCK. The embryo of the rev-olutionary pyramid form originated with the mastaba, a flat-topped rec-tangular tomb. Resembling a bar of metal bullion with sides that slope inward toward the top (mastaba means "bench" in Arabic), the tomb was made first of mud-brick, then solid rock, with shafts and passages leading to a subterranean crypt.

- The impetus for lavishing such effort on what was basically a grave came from Egyptian religion. Immor-tality depended upon adequately pro-viding for the deceased. (They were convinced that you can take it with you.) Tombs were designed to protect

the mummified corpse and its posses-sions until the end of time.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN: THE STEPPED PYRAMID. After mastabas, the next phase was the stepped pyra-mid of Zoser (c. 2700 B.C.E.), designed by the first known architect, Imhotep (see page 162). It consists of a receding stack of six stone mastabas rising to a height of 204 feet. Perhaps the form was intended as a concrete image of a staircase, which the departed king would ascend, as an inscription put it, "so that he may

mount up to heaven thereby."

SUCCESS AT LAST. Just about 100 years after the first Egyptian stepped pyramid, Cheops built the stunning Great Pyramid, which was joined at Giza by two others erected by his suc-cessors, Chephren and Mycerinus. Perfectly proportioned, each consist-ing of four equilateral triangles; they were originally encased in gleaming white limestone, with a gold capstone. To travelers in the desert, they seemed

like shafts of light made manifest. The engineering involved in

their construction was impressive. For the largest, or Great Pyramid, 2,300,000 blocks of granite and lime-stone, each weighing about two tons, or as much as an elephant, were stacked in 201 ascending tiers. The base, which covers 13 acres, or ten football fields, is an exact square, so level that one corner is only a fraction of an inch higher than its opposite cor-ner. Each side is oriented precisely to a point of the compass.

Before its capstone was stripped away, the Great Pyramid stood 481 feet high and weighed 6V4 million tons. Hundreds of feet of stone are piled atop the burial chamber, cut into the middle of the edifice. To prevent the ceiling from collapsing under such weight, the architects created a partitioned ceiling, with lay-ers of slabs weighing 400 tons in five separate compartments to relieve the stress. A triangular arch deflects the load into the mass of the pyramid itself.

More remarkable than their technology is the pure geometric form of the pyramids. The architects cre-ated an austere symbol of the concept of eternal life. The pyramid, the most stable geometric form, also serves as an abstracted image (like the obelisk) of rays emitted by the sun god Ra.

CAVEAT VISITOR

A note in the 1908 edition of the guidebook

Baedeker's Egypt warned visitors to the pyramids:

"Travelers who are in the slightest degree predis-

posed to apoplectic or fainting fits, and ladies trav-

elling alone, should not attempt to penetrate into

these stifling recesses."

Hypostyle Hall, Temple of Amon at Karnak, c. 1350-1280 B.C.E., "Touring Egypt" painting by Jacob Jacobs (1812-79) The huge scale of the hall, crammed with bulbous columns, creates an effect of grandiosity. Sixteen rows of 134 columns, each column up to 12 feet thick and 69 feet tall, were densely painted with hieroglyphics.


TEMPLES. The pyramids were part of a linear ensemble of buildings, includ-ing a square-pillared temple near the Nile and a causeWay leading to another temple at the base of the pyramid The processional aspect of alternating open and closed spaces was paramount. After it was evident that pyramids could be looted by grave robbers, pharaohs began con-structing temple complexes with tombs cut directly into cliffs.

KARNAK AND LUXOR: AMBIANCE OF OVERSTATEMENT. In The Iliad, Achilles called Thebes "the hundred-gated city." Two temple compounds near Thebes were similarly profuse. Luxor and Karnak temples bristle with a plethora of fat carved columns, huge portals, and avenues lined with ram-headed sphinxes. Surfaces were covered with incised, painted hiero-glyphics, like the tattooed man at a

Living with Landscape: Two Approaches

Abu Simbel, Egypt (c. 1301 B.C.E.); Mesa Verde, Colorado (c. 1200 C.E.); Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona (1937-38) by Frank Lloyd Wright

How a structure relates to a site varies according to its builder's attitude. Some, like the Egyptians, sought to dominate the surroundings, while others—like the Pueblo Amerindians and the "organic architecture" of Frank Lloyd Wright—blended with the environment.

King Rameses II's temple at Abu Simbel, cut into 1,000-foot sandstone cliffs, was adorned with four massive statues of the king, each seven stories high. Instead of building a solid pyramid-mountain, he hollowed out a mountain and carved his image on its face.

In contrast, the pueblos of the American Southvhst echo the form of the landscape. At Mesa Verde, 500 cliff dwellings housing 1,200 people nestled in the cliffs, a perfect example of symbiosis between architecture and topography.

Wright's studio/home, Taliesin West, seems an extension of its environment. Desert rubble incorporated into the masonry makes the structure and landscape almost a continuum. Its canted form reflects the angled profile of neighboring mountain ranges. "A struggle against nature never appealed to me," Wright wrote. "The struggle for and with nature thrilled me and inspired my work."

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EGYPT: ARCHITECTURE TO DIE FOR 11

COLUMNS AND CAPITALS

The Egyptians pioneered various fanciful forms of

columns, all based on natural prototypes.

(1) Fluted columns resembled tied bundles of

papyrbs reeds. The tops, or capitals, of the

columns were patterned on papyrus or lotus flow-

ers, the symbols of, respectively, Lower and

Upper Egypt.

(2)Tree-trunk pillars with palm leaves,

(3)papyrus flowers,

(4)closed papyrus buds, and

(5)tied bundles of lotus flowers were some of

the shapes freely mixed in temple compounds.

circus. A forest of pillars clogged inte-rior spaces. So ornate is the temple at Luxor that, when Napoleon's troops first spotted its ruins, the entire army, agape, halted spontaneously and grounded their arms to stare.

Built by successive pharaohs from about 1530 to 320 B.C.E., the complexes included enormous pylon gateways, colonnaded courtyards, hypostyle halls, and inner sanctums hiding gold-sheathed statues of the deity Amon, The series of spaces grad-ually became darker and more con-stricted as the interiors became more sacred and inaccessible to the public. The architecture mirrored the pro-gression from earthly to supernatural realms and from life to afterlife.

Imposing pylons (146 feet high and 50 feet thick at the base), cov-ered with painted reliefs, formed mas-sive entrances and recurred at intervals in the processional. A peri-style (area surrounded by columns) court was open to the sky, with rows of lotus-topped columns and gigan-tic statues of the king at the sides. Most remarkable was Rameses II's Hypostyle Hall, a room crammed

with enormous, thick columns with papyrus-blossom capitals. Since the Egyptians lacked the arch, many sup-ports were needed to support stone lintels. (Hypostyle means "resting on pillars" in Greek.)

The first clerestory windows at the top of the central nave walls admit-ted dim light, which increased the impression of claustrophobic seclu-sion. Colossal mass rather than refined aesthetics seems to have been the dec-orating aim.

Running the gamut from the pyramid's ultimate simplicity to the gaudy excess of late mortuary temples, Egyptian architecture had one com-mon thread—an obsession with death and the need to house the immortal soul. The word for "temple" meant "house of death," but what the Egyp-tians really created were dwellings that would live forever.

The First Architect

Imhotep, designer of the stepped pyramid of Loser,

is history's first named architect. Like the multital-

ented Michelangelo and Leonardo in the Renais-

sance, he seems to have been a man for whom the

word versatile was invented. Grand vizier (or coun-

selor) to the king, Imhotep was also a great magi-

cian, priest, scholar, astronomer, and physician. Two

hundred years after his death, he was worshipped

as a god of medicine and learning. Constructing

Loser's tomb seems to have been a stepping-stone

to fame for Imhotep. If inscriptions can be believed,

the architect was a national hero—a sage, diplo-

mat, economist, and poet. One wonders when he

had time to supervise the stonecutters.

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