Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
material is again demanding. h e most appropriate material statically (i.e. strong in
compression) available in the ancient world was stone, and the question was how
stone could be given the form of a tall shat with a height something like 10 times
that of its diameter. In basic terms there were three (or perhaps four) solutions:
Mono-
lithic
columns
(i) as a monolith
(ii) as a vertical succession of drums (i.e. units the height of which was not greater
than their diameter)
(iii) as several (e.g. three or four) frustra (i.e. incomplete portions of shat )
h e two schools of building in the ancient world where stone columns (piers,
pillars) were important constituents were Egyptian building and Classical (Greek
and Roman) building. A survey of the construction of Egyptian and of Classical
columns gives a coverage of the issues involved—and it is of interest to note how
parallel were developments in the two i elds. h e developments were manifested
in two closely related instances: the nature of the units and the manner of their
erection.
It stands to reason since the prototype of stone columns was the tree trunk,
that the earliest stone columns should be in the form of monoliths—which in fact
was the case both in Egyptian and in Greek building. Early palmiform columns
in Egypt of the pyramid age are monoliths, whereas other very similar columns
of this type in a later age are built of ca 8 drums (Jequier, i gs 121-25). Equally
some early stone Doric columns in Classical Greek building are monoliths, e.g. at
Corinth, ca 540 BC or earlier; while later columns of similar design are constructed
of 8 or 10 drums, but cf early examples with drums, e.g. at Paestum and Selinus
(v Robertson, p. 88; Durm, pp. 84-86, i g 65).
h e size and mass of the early Egyptian and of the early Greek monolithic
columns are reasonably comparable—
viz
height ca 8-9 m and burden ca 20-30
tons. h e production of such monoliths demands developed quarrying expertise
together with practical transport devices. Some record of these matters subsists
for both Egyptian and Greek columns. Whereas the characteristic practice of
Pharaonic masonry was to get on site and set the masonry blocks with as little
dressing as possible, the opposite practice was apparently favoured for monolithic
columns. h ey were i nely dressed to i nished form in conjunction with the quar-
rying process and transported to the site ready for erection (v Isler, MDAIK, 48,
1992, pp. 45-55). Numbers of ancient representations show such i nely dressed
columns on transport sleds and also, together with sled, on Nile boats (Arnold,
i g 6.37). Concerning Greek monolithic columns, ancient literary references sub-
sist of “inventions” to facilitate the transport of such inconveniently long burdens
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