ANCIENT ENGINEERS

• Persian
• Greek
• Roman
• Indian
• Chinese
• African
• American
ANCIENT ENGINEERS

• Influencers / persons

• remarkable contributions
in civil engineering
PERSIAN ENGINEERS
 Cyrus the Great

cyrus the great - Bing images

• Around 550 BC, founded the Persian Empire, modern Iran, which
ruled the Near and Middle East for more than 200 years.
Darius, his son Xerxes, and his grandson Artaxerxes
• labored for decades in the 5th century B.C. to create a magnificent
royal center at what the Greeks named Persepolis, ‘‘Persian City,’’
one of the four capitals

persepolis the ancient city of persian - Bing images

Persepolis : The Ancient City of Persian

Alexander the Great

alexander the great - Bing images

• burned Persepolis and it was abandoned (331 BC).

The Persians spread ideas about building,

such as a system of irrigation

GHANAT / QANAT
 Ghanat / Qanat
• a sloping tunnel that conveys water from an underground source in
a range of hills to a dry plain below
• less water is lost to evaporation than in an open-air aqueduct

To construct :

• a line of vertical
shafts is dug

• the bottoms of
these shafts are
connected by the
continuous tunnel
• to allow
workers to
maintain the
tunnel or to
draw water,
other shafts are
dug at an angle
from the
surface to the
tunnel

• the water is
distributed into
irrigation channels
when the tunnel
reaches its
destination
Ghanat
 image.png (402×280) (jimcdn.com)

Persian Ghanat
The Persian Qanat — The Underground Water Transport System -
YouTube
Military bridge-building
• one of the major feats accomplished by Persians
• Persian engineers constructed a pontoon bridge over the
Hellespont, a narrow straight dividing Europe and Asia Minor.

The price of failure for many early engineers was quite high
• the first bridge was torn apart in a storm and the engineers
were beheaded.

• the new engineers built a bigger bridge with larger factors of

safety.
Pontoon bridge

The new bridge was constructed of 674 galleys anchored in a

double row connected by two enormous flax cables and four cables of
papyrus. Planks were laid at right angles over the cables, brush was piled
on the planks, and finally soil was piled on the brush.
Xerxes I of Persia - YouTube
persian pontoon bridge - Bing images

Persian Pontoon Bridge

persian pontoon bridge - Bing images
 persian pontoon bridge - Bing images

Xerxes’s army of perhaps 150,000 soldiers and an equal number of

noncombatant camp followers marched over the bridge.
Civil War Pontoon Bridge - Bing images

Civil War Pontoon Bridge

persian pontoon bridge - Bing images

Modern Pontoon Bridge

persian pontoon bridge - Bing images
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKqEAbYDvUU
Phoenician, Carthaginian, Lydian, Hebrew, Assyrian, Minoan
• other ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean
• accomplished major feats of engineering

Over 3,000 years ago on the island of Crete

• seafaring kings built exquisite unfortified palaces with stone walls
and post-and-lintel colonnades

• ceramic drain pipes carried water away from baths and toilets,
creating some of the first sanitary sewer system

• the palaces were destroyed by earthquakes and were rebuilt more

splendidly.
Around 400 B.C

• the Minoan civilization collapsed and these magnificent buildings

with their advanced sewer systems fell into disrepair.