How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

PTOLEMAIC AND ROMAN PERIODS

During the period of political decadence the building of temples declined, but it was renewed under the rule of the Ptolemies and continued during the Roman occupation. While, notwithstanding foreign domination, the Egyptian type was in the main adhered to, an important change of detail was adopted in the manner of lighting the hypostyle hall. The light was admitted from the front, over the top of screen walls, which were erected between the columns to about half their height. A celebrated example is at Edfou, the most perfectly preserved temple of this period, which also conforms most closely to the old type. For in other instances there was a growing tendency to introduce novelties of detail, characterised by greater elaboration and ornateness. It is signally represented in the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae, for here the shape of the site has produced irregularities in the planning of the various buildings, which enhances the general picturesqueness of the whole group. Unfortunately, in consequence of the erection of the Assouan Dam, these temples at Philae are submerged for the greater part of the year.

How far the Egyptians studied orientation, or the placing of a temple with reference to the points of the compass, is uncertain. But there are grounds for supposing that in some cases they orientated the principal entrance toward the sun or a certain star, the exact position of which on some particular day would indicate to the priests the exact time of year.

Palace and Domestic Architecture.—Of palace architecture the only conjectured remains are the buildings erected in the rear of the Temple of Karnak by Thothmes III and the pavilion of Medinet Abou on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes; the unsuitability of which as royal residences has already been noted.

A clue to the laying out of a town and the character of domestic buildings has been found at Tel-el-Amarna and at Kahun, in the Fayoum. On the latter site Petrie discovered the walls of a town which was erected for the overseers and workmen employed in the construction of the pyramid of Illahun (2684-2666 B.C.) and abandoned after the completion of the work. The streets ran at right angles; and the houses were built around open courts, whence the light was derived, for there were no windows giving on to the streets. The houses varied in size from the one room hut of the labourer to the group of rooms with their own court occupied by the overseer, while a still larger group in the centre of the town was the residence of the governor.

From these remains and from pictures of “soul houses,” found in the tombs, it is concluded that the houses of the richer classes corresponded to a Roman villa; consisting that is to say of detached buildings built within enclosures, which were surrounded on the interior with colonnades and were laid out with groves, fishponds, and other ornamental features. The material employed in the walls and buildings was sunburnt brick which was overlayed with stucco decorated in bright colours. The walls in the case of the residences were carried up through two or three stories with windows in the upper ones and a verandah under the flat roof. The latter, constructed of timbers, supporting smaller beams, filled in with mud, was reached by a staircase in the rear. When the rooms exceeded nine feet or so in width, their ceilings were supported by columns or posts.

CHAPTER III
CHALDÆAN, ASSYRIAN, AND BABYLONIAN CIVILISATION

Rooted deep in the recesses of the past was the ancient civilisation that flourished in Mesopotamia. Some latest scholars are disposed to believe that it even preceded the civilisation of Egypt, with which it has some features in common. For this strip of territory, extending from near the Persian Gulf in the south to the mountainous country of Armenia in the north, is an alluvial plain, made and nourished by its rivers—the Tigris on the east and the Euphrates on the west. The latter is a shallow stream, except at the annual flood, when it sweeps over the low banks and innundates the flat lands. Thus the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, like the Egyptians, early learned to control the river with drains and dykes and to construct canals and systems of irrigation. And on a par with their engineering prowess became their achievements in building.

Like Egypt also, Mesopotamia came to have its upper and lower kingdoms. The former, the Biblical Padan-Aram, became associated with the history of the Assyrians; the latter, the Plain of Shinar, with that of the Chaldæans and Babylonians. It was the lower or southern part that seems to have been first occupied, by a people apparently of non-Semitic stock, whose origin is unknown. Named by different scholars Akkadians or Sumerians, they were an unwarlike race which early attained a considerable degree of civilisation. Their chief city was Babylon, whence the country derived the name of Babylonia. It is supposed that these people invented the cuneiform system of writing, which was later employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians, while its use spread to the other nations from Persia to the Mediterranean.

This wedge-shaped script was in its origin a form of pictorial or ideographic writing and developed its peculiar character from the fact that the writing was done on tables of soft clay. Pressure was needed to make the marks and accordingly the stylus came to be formed of three plane surfaces, meeting at a point like the angle of a cubic triangle. As the system grew the ideogram from merely picturing the object was used to denote the first syllable of its name and then by degrees to denote that syllable in whatever word it might occur.