Architecture (building)

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The Ancient World

For the convenience of Western readers, the architecture of the ancient world, of the Orient, and of the pre-Columbian Americas may be divided into two groups: indigenous architecture, or ways of building that appear to have developed independently in isolated, local cultural conditions; and classical architecture, the systems and building methods of Greece and Rome, which directly determined the course of Western architecture.

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Indigenous Architecture

The oldest designed environments stable enough to have left traces date from the first development of cities.

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Mesopotamia

This region, the greater part of modern Iraq, comprises the lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Assyrian city of Khorsabad, built of clay and brick in the reign of Sargon II (reigned 722-705 bc), was excavated as early as 1842, and much of its general plan is known. It became the basis for the study of Mesopotamian architecture, because the far older cities of Babylon and Ur were not discovered and excavated until the late 19th and 20th centuries. See Mesopotamian Art and Architecture.

Early Persian architecture—influenced by the Greeks, with whom the Persians were at war in the 5th century bc—left the great royal compound of Persepolis (518-460 bc), created by Darius the Great, and several nearby rock-cut tombs, all north of Shīrāz in Iran. See Iranian Art and Architecture.

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Egypt

The urban culture of Egypt also developed very early. Its political history was more stable, however, with strong continuity in the development and conservation of tradition. Also, granite, sandstone, and limestone were available in abundance. These circumstances, in a cultural system conferring enormous power on rulers and priests, made possible the erection, over a long period, of the most awesome of the world’s ancient monuments.

Each Egyptian ruler was obsessed with constructing a tomb for himself more impressive and longer lasting than that of his predecessors. Before the 4th Dynasty (began 2575 bc) Egyptian royal burial took the form of the mastaba, an archetypal rectangular mass of masonry. This form evolved into the step pyramid and finally into the fully refined pyramid, of which the largest and best preserved are those of Khufu and Khafre, both dating from about 2500 BC, at Giza near Cairo. These immense monuments testify to the pharaohs’ vast social control and also to the fascination of their architects with abstract, perfect geometrical forms, a concern that reappears frequently throughout history.

Egyptians built temples to dignify the ritual observances of those in power and to exclude others. Thus, they were built within walled enclosures, their great columned halls (hypostyles) turning inward, visible from a distance only as a sheer mass of masonry. A hierarchical linear sequence of spaces led to successively more privileged precincts. In this way was born the concept of the axis, which in the Egyptian temples was greatly extended by avenues of sphinxes in order to intensify the climactic experience of the approaching participants. The temples also introduce the monumental use of post-and-lintel construction in stone, in which massive columns are closely spaced and bear deep lintels.

The best-known Egyptian temples are in the mid-Nile area in the vicinity of the old capital, Thebes. Here are found the great temples of Luxor, Al Karnak, and Deir al Bahri (15th-12th century bc) and Idfū (3rd century bc). See Egyptian Art and Architecture; Temple.

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India and Southeast Asia

Hindu traditions are rich in visual symbols; the early stone architecture of India was elaborately carved, more like sculpture than building, especially as the designers did not emphasize structural systems and rarely faced the task of enclosing large spaces.