History of Architecture

Lecture 2- Mesopotamian Architecture

Excerpted from A History of Architecture on the comparative Method , By Sir Banister

Fletcher (1905)
And
•Historical Dictionary of Architecture, By Allison Lee Palmer (2008)

Department of Architecture and Urban Planning

Instructor Wondwossen M.
 Key terms from Previous Class

• Courtyard
• Megalith
• Menhir
• Timuli or burial mounds
• Hearth
• Mesopotamia (Greek between the rivers)
• between the river Tigris and Euphrates.
• Mesopotamia, located in a region that included parts of what is now
eastern Syria, south-eastern Turkey, and most part of Iraq, lay between
two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
• The earliest literate civilization developed in independent urban
communities
• Agriculture and irrigation started on alluvial soil of Tigris and Euphrates
• The soil, containing no stone and bearing no trees
• As a cementing material, bitumen or pitch, applied in a heated state
• The people were worshippers of the heavenly bodies, such as the sun and
the moon, and of the powers of nature, such as the wind and thunder.
• Emergence of society with ruling class and social stratification
 Climate and Geography
•Sevier flooding during the rainy season

•swarms of aggressive and poisonous insects attack the entire region during the
long summer
•The unhealthy exhalations from the vast swamps
Historical periods
Early civilization flourished here:
1. Sumerian 4000 –1275 BC
2. Babylonian
• 1st and 2nd cities
• 1st –Khammurabi(1762 –1750)
• 2nd -Nebuchadnezzar (605 –562)

3. Assyrian (1275 –538)

Cities include –Nimrud, Korsabadand Nineveh
4. Persian Period (BC 538-333)
Susa, Perspolis,
Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes
Alexander the great –west Asia became a Greek province
Sumerian (5000-2000B.C)
•The earliest city-state

•A political and religious center devoted to serving gods based on natural elements

•the invention of the wagon wheel helped to trasport buiding materials

•They archived the written language (cueniform )

• The urban communities develop around the religious shrines.
• monumental temple complexes were placed at the heart of Sumerian cities
• Most Sumerian buildings were built from sun dried mud bricks ,
• This was due to the scarcity of wood
• Improvement in agriculture lead to surplus of grains need to be stored

Early sumerian temple

Sumerian
 Architectural Character
• Fortifications
• Rooms were given by preference long rectangular form.
• Great aggregation of rooms and courts rather than isolated blocks
• Gloomy view of a future life gave no encouragement to the building of
elaborate tombs, rather palaces for life on the earth
• The arch was applied to important openings
 Architectural Character

• The environment is influential factor for shaping Architecture

• Corbelling or projecting horizontal courses.
• Because it was unable to support walls above opennings
• The Persians used it for walls and columns
• The use of the arch, both circular and pointed, was practiced by the Assyrians.
Examples
White Temple
• Built by Sumerians
• Stood on the platform with sloping sides
• may be the origin of ziggurats
• White washed temple with a span of 4.5m
 Ziggurats
• Artificial mountians
• on the Stepped platforms designed to elevate temples to the gods
• a temple room at the top
• Commonly constructed with sun dried brick bonded
• with bitumen ,reed* matting or rope
• Were finished with weather resistant external layer of kiln* fired brick

Reed* -tall water plant kiln* -furnace

Ziggurats

• Access to the uppermost shrine was restricted (only for elites)

• The rectangular shape was oriented to the points of the compass,
• suggesting its use as an agricultural calendar.
Ziggurats
The palace of Sargon
Korsabad (BC 722 –705)
•Assyrian Palaces
•contained 700 rooms (300 x 400 m)
•15m above the plane –a platform of sun dried brick faced with stone with
stairways and sloping ramps
•The three entrance portals to the principal courts were flanked with great
towers
Nebuchadnezzar’s “Hanging Gardens of Babylon”
•one of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,”
Ishtar Gate,Babylon 575 BC
•use of painted glazed brick to decorate the exterior