Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
With the standardisation of units of measurement it is possible to calculate
(1) the number of bricks required for a building of given dimensions. With the
standardisation of labour output it is possible to calculate (2) the number of man
days work required to manufacture and set place that number of bricks. h is in
turn gives the choice of adjusting (3) the labour force or (4) the time schedule
for completing the building in the most desirable (or necessary) way. With the
establishment of standard wages (in money or in kind) it is possible to calculate
(5) the total cost of the building project—i.e. to provide a Bill of Quantities detailing
the building materials required (in Mesopotamia very largely bricks), the labour
force required, the time required and the total cost of the project.
It also should be noted that Mesopotamian scribes had evolved some ready
reckoning rules of thumb for approximate estimating—e.g. the number of batches
of bricks (a batch = 720) in the unit volume of a wall (= 18m
2
), the proportion
that bricks occupied in the volume of a wall (5/6 , i.e. discounting 1/6 for mortar,
binders etc.), and the proportion of wall area to the total area of a building (1/3)
(cf M. Sauvage, “La Construction des Ziggurats,” pp. 55-60; E. Robson, “Building
with Bricks and Mortar,”
pass
).
Some remarks concerning Egypt may serve as a background to quantity survey-
ing in Ancient Mesopotamia.
Probably no other building in the world has been subject to such repeated quantity
surveying as the Great Pyramid at Gizeh. But these surveys are modern ones of a
standing structure, not ancient ones of a projected structure. Nonetheless they show
that the purpose of estimates for pyramid building is dif erent from the normal.
h e quantity surveying of the Great Pyramid is not directed towards costs. h e
construction of this monument had i rst call on the total revenue of the land, and
costs were not of great concern. When quantities are reckoned up and discussed in
modern enquiry into pyramid construction the purpose is the same as that of the
ancient Egyptian project directors “Can the monument as designed be completed
in a time limit which will accord with a reasonable regnal period for the Pharaoh
in view of his age at accession?” h ere are no surviving texts which throw light on
how the project directors based their estimates of quantities in order to arrive at
the overall time required for the completion of their project. And thus the ques-
tion is not discussed here.
Common sense says that they used appropriate global measures and reckoned
the time required for these on the basis of recent experience. h ey had to hand
the knowledge of the time required for the construction of the pyramids of Zoser
and Sneferu, and they used this as a basis to extrapolate the time required for the
larger project.
For a modern attempt to answer this question using estimates of quantities based
on unit values derived from modern physics v S.K. Wier, “Insight from Geometry
Quanti-
ties in
Mesopo-
tamia &
Egypt
