Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
h ere are conl icting explanations for this, but none has been pursued in detail.
Perhaps the last words of this outline of ancient building construction may be
focussed on this issue.
A survey of dif erent modes of building found across the ancient world gives
rise to the same issues endemic when other material remains of the past are con-
sidered comparatively across broad i elds—the perennial question of evolution
versus dif usion. When similarities are observed between dif erent building styles
sometimes the evidence suggests the origin lies in independent evolution, some-
times it indicates dif usion—and remarks in this connection are ot en conl icting
and inconclusive.
As an example, a small block “bastard ashlar” masonry strikingly present at
Saqqara in the funerary complex of Zoser ca 2650 BC is derived in the ultimate
instance from the brick building tradition of Mesopotamia. On the other hand
what was the origin of the so dif erent Pharaonic type large block masonry which
soon ousted it in large measure? h e only prior mode of building construction
which resembled Pharaonic building was the Megalithic building mode originat-
ing on the Atlantic coast of Western Europe, which certainly extended its i eld
to the eastward, a development notably manifested in Malta. But to what degree
can it be imagined that Egyptian Pharaonic masonry construction derived from
the example of Megalithic masonry? Only perhaps the idea that it was possible to
build monumental structures using very large units of stone—and also perhaps that
methods of raising up and installing these large stone units in place might have
been in some measure derived from knowledge of practices in Megalithic masonry.
In all other respects the two systems of large unit stone masonry building dif ered
completely, e.g. in the winning of the stone, its dressing and its setting together.
In similar fashion the dramatic development of classical Greek ashlar building
construction during the later 6th Century BC has always been referred back to
the Pharaonic building in Egypt at the time experiencing a renaissance under the
Saite dynasty. However when details of construction are compared, they appear
to be pointedly dif erent. What then can be said was dif used from Late Dynastic
Egypt to Archaic Greece. Again the idea, the concept that it was possible to build
monumental temples out of sizeable blocks of i nely dressed stone. h e detailed
expression of the idea is for the most part pointedly dif erent.
h ese observations relate to the geographical transfer across the ancient world
of building construction procedures. Similar rel ections are possible in connection
with the transfer across time of building construction procedures. It was individual
elements only which may have been dif used, and the same can be said regarding
transfer over the ages. h e mode, the school of building construction had a lim-
ited time span, but this does not mean that when the mode lapsed, all technical
procedures appertaining to it disappeared from men's knowledge. In fact many
