Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir: A Study in Early Mohammadan Architecture

by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

[95] Idem, vol. i, pp. 254 et seq.

[96] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i, p. 127, and vol. ii, p. 260.

[97] I must refer briefly to his new work. Das wieder erstehende Babylon, wherein the question of Babylonian vaults is fully discussed on pp. 90 et seq.

[98] Delbrück, Hell. Bauten in Latium, vol. ii. Table A, p. 64. The widest span is found in the cisterns of the theatre at Delos; it is 6.55 metres.

[99] Early Hellenistic barrel vaults in the Mediterranean coast-lands. Delbrück, op. cit., pt. ii. Table A, p. 64. Cut stone vaults showing characteristics of brick construction, such as vaulting in concentric courses, vaults outlined by mouldings, vaults with uncentered joints, and a single example of the horse-shoe vault at Chiusi, idem, Table B, p. 67. In Egypt and in western Asia solutions were sought to further problems of stone vaulting, the intersection of stone barrel vaults, vaulting in inclined planes, the stone dome with or without voussoirs. At first these were in general confined to the East; the evolution in the West begins in the Roman Imperial period. Delbrück, pt. ii. pp. 77-80. Development of the Egyptian cut stone vault out of sun-dried brick construction, idem, pp. 80-3.

[100] Delbrück, op. cit., pt. ii, Table C, p. 70.

[101] Bridge at Pergamon, Delbrück, pt. ii, Table D, p. 72.

[102] Andrae, Hatra, pt. ii, p. 2, assigns it to the second century, after Trajan and before Septimius Severus; a more accurate dating is not possible without excavation. The largest of the palace vaults spans 14·80 metres.

[103] Choisy, L’Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 154.

[104] Podium of the altar and of the upper gymnasium at Pergamon, Delbrück, pt. ii, p. 104. The whole subject is admirably handled by him, pt. ii, pp. 108-11, where the accounts left by Diodorus and by Strabo of the substructure of the Hanging Gardens are examined, and the mutual interaction of India and western Asia is considered. See Koldewey, Das wieder erstehende Babylon, p. 90, for a description of the vaulted substructions which he believes to have supported the Hanging Gardens.