A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE Settings and Rituals SPIRO KOSTOF‘Oxford University Press Osird_ New York ‘hens Auckland Bangkok Bombay Caleuta Cape Town Dares Salam Delhi Florence "Hong Kong anbul Karachi Kuala Limur Mads Madnd Melbourne ‘Mexico City Navobi Pars Singapore Taiper Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Bern tadan Copyright © 1985, 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc Published by Ostord University Pres, Ine, 198 Maio Avenue, New York, New Yr 10016-4514 Oxiordi 2 registered vademark of Oxiord Univesity Press Al sights reserved. No par of his publication may be reproduced, sored ia teieval syste, o wansmited in any orm ot by any means, ‘econ, mechanical, photocopying, recording. o otherwise, without the prior persion of Oxird University Press Library of Congress CatalognginPublcation Oats Kost, S040. | histor of architecture: stings adits / pio Kostot conginal ramings by Richard Tobias 2nd ed. revision by Greg Castil, Pam. Includes index. 'SBN-13 978-0-19-508578-1; 978-0-18-508379-6 (pbk) 1. Architecture History 1. Casilla, Greg. Tite Naz00K65 1995" 720'9-de20. 9438787 coms 10 Protein the Unitas States of America ‘on acc-ree paperPREFACE ‘This book is something of a compromise. Ieis a general survey of architectural his: tory that tries to reconcile the traditional grand canon of monuments with a broader, ‘more embracing view of the built environ ment It does so by making no strict distinc tions between architecture and building, between architecture and urbanism, bs ‘ween high cultures and low. Hagia Sophia and Versailles are here, but so ate igloos and nineteenth-century malt-kilns; the du: ‘al palaces of Urbino and Mantua ate dis: ccussed within the larger frame of the city tommy; the Romans share their chapter with their “barbarian” adversaries, the Dacians, and the tribes of the sub-Sahara, | wanted to tla story—the epic story of humans taking possession of the land and shaping, communities through the act of building. The aims are set out in Chapter 1, al inclusiveness is not one of them. | had to confine mysel 10 a relatively small number Of sites and buildings in order to be able to ook at them in some detail. It was impor tant that this treatment of selective places be full. Architectural style comes in of course; that was the core of my training, But Tam as concerned with use and structure and urban process, with motivation and ritual sequence. 1 would not be at all un- happy if the book were to be seen as an ‘offering of cultural history Despite its seemingly ecumenical reach, this cannot claim to be a world history of architecture. That task would entail a fat balance in the account of architectural 13 ditions in all ages and on al continents. We are preoccupied with our own Western tradition. ven with the most permissive attitude, other cultures stand as foils to this, perhaps inevitable sell-absorption, My lin ‘ted goal was to resist presenting the West- fer achievement as if it were an insulated and wholly logical progression, We have always been bound up with other lands; and the order we have created gains in un. derstanding when itis assessed in the light of alternate orders. As a symbolic recog tion ofthis interdependence, | have avoided discussing non-Western traditions tidily in their own individual chapters. It seemed to me that the excitement of controntation might outweigh the obvious advantage of Separate linear nartaives. So | have brought together medieval Florence and Cairo, Pal: ladio and Sinan, ‘ have also committed one further breach ‘at historical practice. In order to keep the discussion of one place intact, | have into: ‘duced some architects ahead of their sect chronological slot. | hope old hands will not bbe unduly distressed to meet Giulio Ro- ‘mano at Mantua belore they meet Bra ‘mante in Rome. Through the years, Richard Tobias has been a steady collaborator. This is as much his book as itis mine, His drawings go be: yond mere illustration. They strengthen and any the approach of this historical sur. vey, ad they convey information far in ex cess of the limits of the text We agreed on some things at the begin- ing and stayed with them. Except when they remained diagrammatic, all plans would be oriented toward the north, They ‘would also indicate setting—land contours ‘or neighboring structures. Where possible this setting is original to the building. In cases where we could not reconstruct what was there at the time, say for Chaves Ca- thedral or the imperial kullies of istanbul, ‘we settied for the best premodern context ‘we could find. Finally, we wanted to con- vey the sense of the siow, accretive devel- ‘opment of familiar monuments and sites by showing in sequence the principal sages in their planning history. The multipart draw- ings of Karnak and the Piazza San Marco are examples. It should be self-evident that a history of this kind reaps the collective effort and wisdom of schelars in several fields. Since the mature of the book precluded the cus- tomary apparatus of notes and extensive bibliographies, 1 must acknowledge my fenormous debt to them all here, a debt which in a number of cases approaches dependence. | must also single out atleast some among he many colleagues and friends who offered help at various stages ff the project: Mare Teeib, Andrew Stew: art, Walter Horn, Stanley Saitowitz, Hsia CChu-loe, and lan’ Roberson-Smith. Readers (of drafts include Christian Ono, Richard C. Carrot, Osmune Overby, Christopher Mead and Henry A. Millon, A most patient and sym pathetic review came from Elizabeth M Brown; her serutiny improved the book tang bly, and 1am de-ply grateful to her. The long process wore out several assist: ants. will always remember them with gratitude: Wendy Tsuji, Deborah Robbins, Michael Brooder, Carol Silverman, who valiantly tackled ‘the index, and. D'vora Treisman, In the final stretch, Mari Ade- ‘gran and Susan Shoemaker lent their skill Yo the complet on of some of the draw: Ings. To Doughs MacDonald, | owe the most. He has worked long and hard on sources, illustraions, and the glossary, and ably served a liaison withthe publisher. On that side, our maim ally was Kathy Kuht2. My fond thanks alse to my editors, irs, James Raimes, who took the project through its critical starting phase almost ten years ago, and, more recent, Joyce Bey To my student, past and future, this book {is fondly dedicat-d: it was weitten with them foremost in mind Berkeley Sk. October 1988| | PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In May 1991, Spiro Kostof delivered his last lectures for ""A Historical Survey of Architecture and. Urbanism’—the lang running course at the University of Cali fornia at Berkeley that some twenty years earlier had provided a springboaed for the first edition of this book. The final lec- tures, covering the state of affairs from after World War Il to the present, had been thoroughly revised 2 year earlier, land Professor Kostof felt that they were 2 ‘great improvement. His enduring goal had been to construct an architectural history that avoided “strict distinctions between archirecture and building, between archi tecture and urbanism, between high cul: tures and low.” The closing chapter of the first edition of A History of Architecture, written in the early 1980s, fell short of that resolution, having shrunk in scope to 2 review of “the works of the masters,” just the kind of history he had set out to challenge Inthe years following the publication of this book’s first edition, Professor Kostof undertook projects that confronted archi- tecture’s current events head-on. These included America by Design, a 1987 PBS series and a companion publication of the same name, as well as The City Shaped and The City Assembled, a two-volume study of urban form and its social mean ings. Both efforts sent him traveling 10 sites that embodied the exceptional as well as the ordinary in late-twentieth- Century environmental design. The surer footing gained from this research was evi dent inthe updated lectures for Berkeley's survey course, and a revised edition of A History of Architecture incorporating these changes was put on the calendar as his next assignment. In June 1991, Spiro Kostof was diag- sea. nosed with cancer. He died six months later at his home in Berkeley. As his re- search assistant of five years’ standing, | was asked to prepare the manuscript of The City Assembled for publication, Soon aterward, | decided t0 take on, as well, Professor Kostot’s planned revision of 4 History of Architecture. In both cases, | have attempted to chart a conservative ‘course, limited wherever possible to re constructing his arguments and the spir- ited style with which he addressed them. Professor Kostof’s working methods ‘greatly simplified my task. His habit was to prepare complete scripts for his lec: tures, which he then would commit to memory. These typescripts established the narrative framework and basic text for the final chapters of this edition. Another use- {ul resource was the collection of lecture Videotapes now archived at Berkeley's Bancroft Library. Kostof’s lectures were recorded in 1990 and 1991, ostensibly for the benefit of students who had missed class, but just as much to give him the opportunity to review and fine-tune his performance. More than one digression from his script, as documented on tape, has found its way into this edition. None- theless, the text of a lecture, however pol: ished, is not that ofa textbook. Whenever a site or atopic glossed in class demanded more detailed description, | have added it, following the vector and tenor of Kostof's argument to the best of my abilities. For their help in refining the finished text, | must thank Karl Weimer, as well as Gary Brown, Marta Gulman, Kathleen James, Roger Montgomery, and Steven Tobriner all at Berkeley's College of Environmental Design. Richard Tobias, Professor Kostat's original collaborator on illusteations for this publication, again contributed his skills and patierce. | also owe a debt of iratiude to Nezar Al Sayyad, Travis Amos, Ken Caldwell, Sam Davis, Diane Favro, Alan Gottlieb, Alan Hess, Carol Hershelle Krinsky, Emily Lane of Thames and Hudson, Nina Libeskind, George Loisos, Christopher Mead, Jean-Pierre Protzen, Matyly snow and Ciaire Dannen- baum of Berkeley"s Environmental Design Slide Library, Stephen Tobriner, Susan Ubbilohde, Dell Upton, and Fikret Yegul for their help in assembling photographs for this second edition. Kathryn Wayne land Elizabeth Byrne of the Environmental Design Library at Berkeley were, as al ‘ways, generous with their assistance. And Joyce Berry of Dxlord University Press, now @ veteran of three Kostof publica: tions, again proved her considerable edi torial and diploriatic talents. Every effort ofthis sort deserves a dedi cation. In keeping with my role as the facilitator rather than the author of this volume, I will defer on that count to Pro- fessor Kostof, whose meditations were captured on videotape in May 1991 in one (of hi final public Fectures. Last week was the last lecture of the great Vincent Scully: a trie mind, 3 terre image nation. His coutse closed after being taught Since the early 1910s, He retired unvilingly He wanted 10 g0 on and on until he dies, 35 most of us do. For whatever it's worth, | dedi ate these final lectures to him, my one-time teacher, longtime adversary, anda man who Aid more for archi ectural history than most of 1s put together Berkeley Cctober 1994 9CONTENTS PART ONE A Place on Earth ‘THE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT, 3 The History of Architecture, 3 8 The Total Context of Architecture, 7 THE CAVE AND THE SKY: STONE AGE EUROPE, 21 The Beginning, 21 Old Stone Age Architecture, 23 The Cave at Lascaux, 23 9. New Stone Age Architecture, 26 The Temples of Malta, 32 Stonehenge, 37 |. THE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA, 43. The Urban Revolution, 43 Slirrings of Urban Consciousness, #4 The Cities of Mesopotamia, 50 10. THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT, 67 The Land of Egypt, 67 Tre Burial of Kings, 71 Tre Time of the Gods, 79 Survival of the Egyptian Temple, 88 BRONZE AGE CITIES: THE AEGEAN AND ASIA MINOR, 91 Asia Minor, 91 Mycenaeans and Minoans, 99 The Closing of the Bronze Age, 112 THE GREEK TEMPLE AND “BARBARIAY 2 ALTERNATIVES, 115 The Passing of the Bronze Age, 115, The Emergence of Greece, 117 The Greek Temple, 120 POLIS AND AKROPOLIS, 137 Athens and Her Empire, 137 The Shape of the Polis, 138 Athens—'The Eye of Greece,” 146 ‘THE HELLENISTIC REALM, 161, The New Order, 161 The Hellenistic Temple, 168 Religious Settings, 170 The Noble Metropolis, 174 ROME: CAPUT MUNDI, 191 Early Roman Architecture, 191 Components of a Roman Town: Pompeii, 194 The Look of Empire: Rome at the Millennium, 207, THE WORLD AT LARGE ROMAN CONCURRENCES, 217 The Roman Cosmos, 217 Beyond the Empire, 219 The Other Ancient World, 225 ‘A Continent Alone, 233 PART TWO, Measuring Up THE TRIUMPH OF CHRIST, 245 ‘The Turning Point: Third-Century Rome, 245 Housing the Kingdom of Heaven, 253 The Primacy of Constantinople, 260 THE MEDITERRANEAN IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES, 209 The Decline of the West, 269 Carolingian Restoration, 274 The Empire of Muhammed, 28416, v. 18 19, THE BIRTH OF NATIONS EUROPE AFTER CHARLES, 295 Europe from Charles to Otto, 295 The Eleventh Century, 298 ‘The Romanesque Church, 305 Halian Counterpoint, 314 THE FRENCH MANNER, 323 ‘The Romanesque and Opus Modernum, 323 Chartres, 333 Gothic Abroad, 341 THE URBANIZATION OF EUROPE, 1100-1300, 349 The City Returns, 349 Bourgeois Architecture, Public and Private, 355 ‘An Urban Contrast: Cairo and Florence, 363 EDGES OF MEDIEVALISM, 375 Florence at the Crossroads, 3 The City Center, 376 Europe in the Fourteenth Century, 386 ‘Aging Traditions Abroad, 394 THE RENAISSANCE: IDEAL AND FAD, 403 The First Advance, 403 The Prince and the People: Patronage in Northern Italy, 412 The Italianate Craze, 428 SPAIN AND THE NEW WORLD, 433 The American Scene, 433 The Spanish Scene, 442 ISTANBUL AND VENICE, 453 A Turkish Renaissance, 454 The Consummation of Venice, 468 THE POPES AS PLANNERS: ROME, 1450-1650, 485 Making the City Whole, 485 A Pasture for the Bodily Senses,’” 496 ABSOLUTISM AND BOURGEOISIE: EUROPEAN ARCHITECTURE, 1600-1750, 511 ‘The Roman Baroque, 511 France: The Grand Siécle, 527 ‘The Face of Protestantism, 538 CONTENTS 2B, 27. 28. 29. PART THREE The Search for Self ARCHITECTURE FOR A NEW WORLD, 5 Europe in Ferment, 547 A World to Choose From, 553 Form and Reform, 565 ARCHITECTURAL ART AND THE LANDSCAPE (OF INDUSTRY, 1800-1850, 571 ‘A Matter of Styles, 571 The tron Age, 594 THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, 605 Colonial Dependence, 607 Architecture for a Nation, 617 Greece for All Seasons, 629 VICTORIAN ENVIRONMENTS, 635, The Gilded Age, 635 Victorian America, 647 THE TRIALS OF MODERNISM, 669 Urban Choices, 669 Toward a Twentieth-Century Architecture, 680 ARCHITECTURE AND THE STATE INTERWAR YEARS, 695 The 19205, 695 ‘The Other Side, 707 ‘The Language of Power, 717 THE ENDS OF MODERNISM, 721 Reconstruction, 721 Postwar America, 724 DESIGNING THE FIN-DE-SIECLE, 745, Success and Failure, 745, Recovering the Past, 748 Illustration Credits, 763, Glossary, 767 Index, 776PART ONE A Place on EarthTHE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT The History of Architecture A history of architecture is both less and more than a grand tour. It does not have the immediacy of walking through the streets and public places of towns as diverse a5 Isfahan and London, or stepping into Covered spaces that range in mood from the dappled, swarming tunnels of Muslim suqs to the single-minded sublimity of the Pan- theon in Rome. (Figs. 1.1, 1.2) That is how architecture is meant to be known. As the material theater of human activity, it truth isin its use. ‘Although a book such as this cannot stand in for “the foot that walks, the head that turns, the eye that sees,” as Le Corbusier ‘once described the experience of architec- ture. if has its own deliberate advantage. For fone thing, the book is a compact word. It lets one shift in minutes from Mesopota- ‘mia to Peru. Then, it is panoramic. The jeer who leats through its not unlike the fone figure in this nineteenth-century painting by Thomas Cole entitled The Ar chitect’s Dream. (Fig. 1.3) The figure re lines luxuriously on top of-a column of Classical inspiration; before him, past tra- ditions of buildings are composed grandly, like a hybrid movie set. Time isthe river that flows toward him, and om its banks are ined the familiar forms of his professional vi- sion: the pyramids, battered walls, and plant columns of Egypt; Greek temples and Ro- man aqueducts; and closer still, outlined against the glow, the pinnacles and lance- like towers of medieval Christendom. He is an architect, and what he looks upon is the idealized heritage of his craft. He could ‘draw from this vast and varied wealth, as hineteenth-century architects did, to give Shape to ‘contemporary buildings of his like him, the reader of an architectural history is alone among the built riches of the past, put in order, illustrated, and ac- counted for. He or she can learn the names ‘of buildings and their makers, and when ind how they were made, and other ready information that is not akways at our dis- posal when we travel. A visit t Rome or Istanbul 's bound to be confusing. There is so very much to see, and it seems to lie about unsorted, helter skelter. A group of temples from the time betore Christ is ringed by recent apartment houses: brick- and-concrete clumps refuse to yield their Identity. The historian brings time under control; isolates random scraps and ar- ranges them ioto a trenchant sequence; sets up relationships among farflung structures, through the hindsight of this day and the collective knowledge of the discipline. What isa ziggurat and how was it used? What sort ‘of people built it” How does it compare with fn Old Kingdom pyramid or the stepped platform of a Meso-American temple? The historian does ths, first, by insisting ‘on the recapture of the true physical realty fof things built, whether they have since been altered, damaged, or destroyed to- tally, This is a primary task, akin 0 ar- chaeology, and makes use of material that is both visual and literary in nature. And then the historian must go beyond this es: tablished realty of the buildings to under. stand what they are, how they came to be, and why they ace the way they are. The Pictorial Ev.dence Buildings are otten born of images and live ‘on in images. Eefore there is a foundation tuench oF a single course of stone, a build- ing has to be conceptualized and its form may be represented in models and draw- ings. Models of the building in small scale, in day or wood or plaster, give a full impression in three dimensions ofthe final product that is being projected. Pictorial Views might present the future building's ideal appearance: on commemorative ‘medals, for exzmple, struck at the time of the laying of the cornerstone, or on pr sentation drawings elaborately rendered in perspective. And there ate other, more ab- Stract drawings. Plans show in two-dimen: sional pattern the horizontal disposition of Solid parts, like walls and columns, and the voids of eniramed or enclosed space. Sec: tions slice theough the building vertically at some imaginec plane to indicate the se- uence of rooms in length and the super. imposition of tloors and roo in height; they also indicate openings, whether they ate physically accessible or not, and so help, to explain structure. Elevations, using a vertical plane, ilatten out one face of the building to incicate schematically the or der of its parts To the initiate, a ground plan of the church of Hagiy Sophia in Istanbul tells at a glance that strings of columas alternate with heavy piers to describe a large squareA PLACE ON MhTig, 13 Thomas Cole, The Architects Dream, 1 The point to remember, then, is that graphic and plastic images are indispens- able in the making of architecture—and for its understanding after the fact. They are the conventional language through which the architect communicates with his partners in the act of shaping our daily enviconment These are the patron oF client who employ the architect to mold their architectural wishes, and the many hands involved in building the structure. That same language assists students of architectural history to Beto know structures they have never seen fr hive seen and not comprehended in tll and one of the earliest tasks for them is 0 learn to read architectural drawings and mocels with ease. ‘Once a building is up it becomes a live presence, to be reproduced at will. I might figure on paintings and sculpture in reli fon prints, maps, or photographs. Models of it might be made to serve as votive of ferings to a germane cult, for example, oF to be sold as mementoes to visitors or pil aries. For the history of architecture there fs valuable information in all of these re. productions. But we have to be cautious in THE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT interpreting the evidence they provide, be- ‘use the conventions of the various me- dia employed are peculiar to themselves. A photograph is a faithful record that regis- ters all incidents of form, however teifing, that fll within Inthe hands of a painter the same building may be pictured less clinically, its mass {generalized and rendered in sharp, simple Suriaces of shadow and light. (Fig. 1.6) This is testimony of a different kind. Yet it can be just as usetul as the photography; for ar chitectural reality has more to it than stick and stone, and the history of architecture more dimensions than just the categorical We range of its fixed frame The literary Evidence like images, yield much fessential insight for our study of archite ture. The birth of most structures of con: sequence assumes the existence of written documents, some of which may come to be preserved by design or accident. At times, patrons may express their wishes to the ar chitect in writing. The architect, in turn, may have passed on written instructions to sub- cordinates. Legal contracts delineate the precise responsibilities of the parties con ‘eemed. The erection of public monuments necessitated whose tral can be followed in the minutes ff their deliberations, reports, and records fof payment. Beyond this immediate con: text, architectural production would have been affected, sicectly or indirectly, by the buildirg codes, building trades and guilds, theoretical wea tises, and mancals of construction “Again, as with visual representations, the building may live in literary sources long past its comple ion, First, there is sel-ser ing advertisem:nt after the fact. Patrons often sing the praises of their creation in dedicatory or cammemorative inscriptions oF tablets. It was the function of court his: torians to extol the building program oftheir employer, We also have to heed descrip tions of past buildings in old travel ac- counts oF in an als and local chronicles. In all of this, historians of architecture need to borrow the philologist’s discipline, But Janguage, the agent of expression, is also the hotbed of ambiguity. And the transla tion of words irto the physical substance of architecture is peculiarly open to conten We might illastrate this point by focus- ing om one mo wment of antiquity, the fa mous tomb of King Mausolos of Caria at Halikarnassos that gave us the word mau: soleum., it was considered one of the seven wonders of the Classical world. It disap. peared long ag» with hardly a trace except for. fragments of its sculptural decoration, now housed in the British Museum in Lon- don, and odd bis of the structure that were built into the castle of Bodrum which oc: cupies the site. The Mausoleum of Halikae fnassos lived on in memory through men- tions of it and its creators in later Latin ‘administrative committees literature, of which the most detailed is a passage from the Natural History of Pliny the der This isthe tomb that was bul by Artemisia for her husband Mawolos, he viceroy of Cai, who cin the second year ofthe 10°Uh Oltnpid [BSI ec1. Cn the north and south sides i extends for 63 fet, but the lengths of the facades less, the toa length othe facades an sides being 440 tee. The building rises to a height of 25 cubits and is enclosed by 36 columns Above the coloneade there isa pyramid as high again the lower structure and tapering 24 Stages tothe topo its peak. At the summit thereFig, 15 Dacea (Bangladesh), National Assembly Bulcing, 1965-78, Lous Kahn (a ground pla (b) sketch plan, 1963, THE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT iss fourhorse chariot of marble, and this was Image by Pythis. The addition of this chariot founds off the whole work and brings it to 3 height of 140 fet Recreating the physical appearance of the Mausoleum on the strength of these words is an exceedingly dificult procedure, First fone has to establish the accuracy of the words themselves, Pliny lived two thou sand years ago. His book came down to us ‘in various texts, in Latin and Greek; these Contain disparities or alternate readings because of different copyists—and the interpretation of moder scholars. This is ‘no ‘trivial matter. Dimensions, whether written in Roman numerals or sna letters and accents in the Greek manner, are eas- ily miscopied or misread. And yet they have to be the basis of any reconstruction. Transpose the two inital letters of the word and altitudinem becomes latitudinem, ‘changing the meaning of “a pyramid as high again as the lower structure” to "as wide’ both readings have their adherents ‘There were four centuries between Mau solos and Pliny. The description itself may therefore be inaccurate and Pliny may have erred in writing. At least one scholar be- Tieves that, when Pliny gave the width of the rhorth and south sides as 63 feet, he really ‘meant to say cubits, a unit of measurement that is one half of afoot longer: there is no other way in which the dimensions of the ‘original foundations as they have been ex: tracted trom the site could be reconciled with such a small figure. And of course the passage in question does not furnish all the particulars. It does not say, for example, hhow high the pedestal was of how the col- ‘umns that surrounded the building were arranged. Historians must juggle all these variables and come up with a building that is a fir interpretation of the literary and archaeo- logical evidence—and a credible form ar chitecturally. They must deduce from the fone surviving column the style of the bases And the cornice of the surrounding colon: nade, relying on the current knowledge of the general development of Greek archi tecture. It should not surprise us, then, that two versions of the Mausoleum of Halkar- nassos as different as the ones we illustrate Could be spawned by the same data. (Fig, w The Total Context of Architecture The effort to establish, through the scru tiny of visual and literary documents, what past architecture really looked like will have already involved us with questions not Strictly pertinent to physical form. These might include the identity of the patrons, particulars abot the motivation for the buildings commissioned, the identity and careers of the architects, the nature of the ‘materials of construction and their prove- hance, matters of finance, and so on. But teven this is not the outermost limit of the legitimate concn of architectural history We have to push further stil, to the broader frame of general history, for those strands fF patterns that illuminate the total setting fof architectural production, Architecture, to state the obvious, is a social act—soci:l both in method and pur- pose. It is the outcome of teamwork; and itis there to be made use of by groups of people, groups as small as the family or as Targe as an entice nation. Architecture is a costly act. It engages specialized talent, ap- propriate tech ology, handsome funds Because this is s0, the history of architec: ture partakes, in a basic way, of the study of the social, economic, and technological systems of human history. To understand the Carson Pirie Scott department store in Chicago fully, we must know something of late-nineteenth-century American capitalist enterprise, the philosophy of consumer- ism, and the business ethic; the urban his: tory of Chicago since the Fire of 1871; cor- porate financing and land values; the {genesis of the department store as a novel concept in commercial architecture; the elevator and the early history of steebframe skyscraper construction. (Fi. 1.8) This approach should be kept in the foreground as te ideal way to learn about four built envircrnment. f we are to be sat: ified with less, as we must, it should be on the condition ‘that we agree on what the total context of architecture is. Every build Ing represents a social artifact of specific: impulse, energ., and commitment. That is {ts meaning, and this meaning resides in its physical form. Neither material realty alone nor general background of culture wil uf- fice to explain the peculiar nature of the building. And the task of the architecturalA PLACE ON EARTH historian, in the long run, can be nothing. less than the seatch for the peculiar nature of those artiacts of place that constitute our architectura! heritage Let us describe plainly at the outset the thinking quity. [tis nota uni architectural Selection for emphasis among the many specimens of architecture, the arrange ment and interpretation of facts known about them, the personal judgment of each historan, the vantage point ofthe time and histonan’s purpose These are four premises that undelie the scope and treatment of our survey. Fist the material aspect of every building should be looked atin its entirety. Second, the build ing should be thought of in physical framework and not itsell, Third, all buildings Considered indopenable to heir oppee The Oneness of Architecture The tangible presence of a building is in divisible, The structure that holds it up, the sthetic refinement of s -coration and furnish Fig tab &THE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT fig. 17 Hallarnassos Bodrum, Turkey), tomb of King Mausolos, 2. 355-350 2c, Pyhios and Sa architectural frame as such, it is best dealt with independentiy by art historians. Not ‘only are Byzantine mosaics physically in separable from the architectural frame of their buildings, their placement takes ad- vaniage of this frame to set up a ceremon- {al hierarchy of parts basic to the theater of liturgy housed therein, and their subject informs this theater with precise theolog cal meaning. (Fig. 1.9) For similar reasons, we cannot divorce the structure of a building from the aesthetic Conventions that shape its appearance— ‘what we call its style. Buildings are neither primarily structural frames, nor primarily envelopes of form: to write a history of a- chitecture from the perspective of one of these in favor of the other would be pre- ‘yros; eeconsiacton drawings: (a) By K leppe sen, 1958; (by | | Stevenson, 1056, cisely to deny the physical integrity of the buildings. Preoccupation with structure leads o technological determinism, the kind ‘of thinking that is attempted to explain all major characteristics of the form of the Carson Pirie Scott store in terms of the el- evator, prelabrication, and the steel frame. The contrary preoccupation with the ele iments of design—the interweaving of ver- tical and horizontal members, the rounded comer at the crossing of State and Madi= son streets, the rich ornamentation of the entrance pavilion—would tend to equate skin with substance and dilute the fact that Louis Sullivan's is not exclusively an ab- stract mold of visual order but a construc: tion of enormous scale that has managed to stand up and to remain standing 9 ‘And yet hete, as in many other build ings, the special excitement of architec tural intention resides inthe tug of war be- tween the structural and formal systems. ‘One or the other at times may seem to take lover openly and condition the final effect the building will have on its users. The Es fel Tower, for example, seems structure triumphant. By contrast, the simple under- lying construe! of uprights and lintels transforms the Greek temple, at least sus" perfiily, into something approaching pure form. But if for the fille! Tower the ex: posed tangle of metal struts is the better part of the form, for the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis the clear statement of form, the exte-ior colonnade with its ga bled ends, is also an appropriate diagramships more intricate. ja Sophia, and you will no the archit set piers detectable on the plan, to men: tion only one point, are veiled in three di e, so that allowed beyond the colum the nave from the Tightly on a ing, soaring with its fa weight teem piers. But what un. der close analysis seems at odds—struc tural fact and aesthetic intention —is in ac tuality an integral fabric that cannot be judged but as an entity 2. The Setting of Architecture No building isan isolated object, sufficient ‘unto itsel. It belongs in a l within a bit of nature ora ‘ther buildings, or both, and derives much, ofits character irom this natural or manu: factured envionment that ef Parthenon does not exist witho phatic outcrop of rock called th fon wrich it perches and the visible range ‘of mountains beyond, which rings the arid bowl of Attica, The setting of Chartre: thedral or the Carson Pirie Scott iment store is quintessentially urban. (Fig. 1.12) The scale and authonty of both build ings depend on the stamp of surrounding consteaction—smal-scale residences in the case of Chartres, tall commercial develop: ‘ment in the case of the store, Change this urban situation during the course of time will promptly affect the character of the ‘two buildings. We must, then, consider past buildings not as permanent bodies ina vacuum but, instead, components ofa varie gated arrangement subject to constant Change. From this perspective the history of architecture may be said to be, in par, the study ofthe interaction of buildings with nature and with one another A PLACE ON EARTH, ig. 18 Chicago inom, Canon Pie Seon de The way we experience architecture also works against the notion of buildings as fixed objects. Tools of design such models and draw architecture, a se 10 sil H. Burnham and Co.) stumble on the building unexpectedly, or approach it from the back or from the sides ‘We might catch glimpses of it at sunset or in a winter storm oF look down on it from taller in the vicinity. Trying to account for this arbitrariness, to be con scious of setting, environmental circum: stance, and kinetic vision, brings architec: tural history within the fold of architectural ‘experience, so that buildings of the past areduring the Middle Ages. This is what the Parthenon looks like today, the authors are saving: and this depiction carses at once the Guairt appeal of an exotic land and that Sense of the vanity of things which comes ver us atthe sight of the sad dilapidation of onstime splendor. But when they turn from romance to ar chaeclogy, the task of showing the Pac thencn not as it 6 now but as it was then, Stuart and Revett restrict themselves 0 the measured drawing, They te-create, in im macuiate engravings of sharp clear lines, the brigiral des gn of the temple in suitably re duced scale and with a careful tally of di: ‘mens ons. We are confronted again with the tradit onal abstractions of the architect's those architects who, in trade Indeed Subsequent decades, wished to imitate the Parthenon as a venerable form of rich as sociational value could do so readily from these precise plates of Stuart and Revett, without once having seen Athens themselves. In nineteenth-century. Phila delphia, for example, the disembodied fa cade of the Parthenon is reconstructed as the Second Bank of the United States in an urban milieu that is completely alien to the setting of the prototype. (Fig. 1.14) [Against the engravings of Stuart and Rev- ett, we might pt two pencil sketches of the Aktopolis made by Le Corbusier during his apprenticeship travels in the early years of this century, (Fig. 1.15) The close-up view is neither picturesque nor archaeological I does not show us the ubiquitous tourists scrambling over the site, for example, nor any ether transient features of local rele: Nor is the sketch a reproduceable paradigm of the essential design of the Parthenon. Instead, we see the temple the way Le Corbusier experienced it, climbing toward it up the steep west slope of this natura citadel, and catching sight of it at 3 dynamic angle through the inner colon- nade of the Propylaia, the ceremonial gate ft the Akropolis. The long view shows the building in relation to the larger shapes of ratur2 that complement its form: the ped: testa of the Akropolis spur that hits it up like ' piece of sculpture and the Attic mountain Chain on the horizon which echoes its mass And when Le Corbusier draws on this ex: perience later in his own work, itis the memory of the building as a foil to nature that guides his vision. (Fig. 1 APLACE ON EARTH ILE tings and Kalikas This environmental approach is new 10 architectural history. It responds primarily to the increasing concer within the archi tectural profession for a sympathetic coex istence between new structures and the ‘older neighborhoods within which they are planted. The move lately has been toward respecting the built fabric of our commu: nities a it stands; avoiding egocentsc forms for monumental gestures that would dis rupt its tone and quality; stving for the enhancement of physical continuities in our cities; and, finally, using nature as partne in the act of building rather than as adver: sary. Such an inclusive concept of the en: vironment carries a double promise: soli ‘tude for older buildings ot any period and any style; and tolerance for the presence of humbler stretches in the built fabric. Both hhold important lessons for the history of architecture, 3, The Community of Architecture This is what our third premise is all about that all past buildings, regardless of size 2 status, oF consequence, deserve to be studied. It has at always been so. Histo Fians have chosen for the most part to-con- centrate on buildings of evident sub: stance—imposing, public monuments, religious architecture, and rich, stately res: idences. The preterenc® is not hard to under stand. It is on such important or grand structures that a culture expends its great fest energy. Built of costly, durable mate rials, they last longer than their immediate environment because they are meant to, They are associated with notable patrons and architects of rank, They are the subject of comment in thee time and later, and thus provide the historian with sufficient raw ‘material to make a case for them, But there is mere to it than that. The is torian of architecture has effortlessly come e architect, an, ike him for her, has accepted the teactional distinc tion between architecture and building Architecture in tris polarity i high art, 2 conscious creation of aesthetic form thattranscends the practical requirements of function and. structure. quality is what Vitruvius, the Roman archi tect who wrote around the time of Christ. called venustas (beauty); he distinguished it trom the other two, matter-of-fact com: Ponents of architectute, utitas unction) And firmitas (structure). This architectural trinity is best known tothe English This preeminent speaking world in the famous phraseology fof Sit Henry Wotton as commodity, frm fess, and delight HE STUDY OF WHAT VE BUILT Now delight, venustas, makes building an art, the art of architecture. Delight is ‘cured through the offices of the architect a professional person whose trani talent equip him or her to enhance what will be built with aesthetic appeal. To insist on ive, architects. distinguished in the modern period from en: gineers, who lay roads and ford rivers with the primary aim of solving technical prob: lems, as well as from builders, merchants (of new construction who are motivated by B profit. In addition, many buildings come about extemporaneously without the roots Froduction of shelter Users themselves Since delight, this scheme of things, is luxury, and since it assumes the tication to feel the need fort and the wealth to afford it, architects have traditic served the highest strata of society. state, the religious establishment, the up- per classes. Thus, in accepting the dichotA PLACE ON EARTH,HE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT “distant view! (by Parthenon as seen trough The Prope, touched by aesthetic concetn or devoid of aesthetic appeal. To be sure, this isan ins rnocent son of visual order, There i no conscious theory behind it, no intellectual: ized system of form. But it demonstrates that delight isan elusive thing that may ap- ply 2s readily to the random and unstudied sit does to the calculated designs of the professional There is perhaps 2 more basic considera tion for resisting the distinction between architeéture and building. The general pur: Fig. 1:16 Le Corbusier, sketch of Assembly Buileing, Chandigaeh Ina, 1958 pose of architectural history is to examine the constructive impulses of distant and recent cultures. As with all investigations of the past, the belief persists implicitly that, through a proper understanding of the act fof making places, this most essential skill ff all without which life cannot, literally exist, we come closer to. understanding ‘ourselves, When we exhort historians to be objective, we mean not so much that they should be unteeling or uncommitted, but that their assessments should be full and representative. And so it would be as im- proper to evaluate the constructive im: pulse of a nation exclusively through its lit erate architectue—public monuments and buildings of prestige—as it would be to de- termine its socisl character on the basis of its leading personages alone. To the extent that American society atthe time of George Washington de vended on slave labor, 10 pick one random instance, the architec: tural history ofthe period must include sive cabins as well as Mount Vernon, The truth is that modest structures in the periphery of menuments are not simply of Intrinsic value; t ey ae also essential to the correct interpretation of the monuments themselves. Slave cabins, outhouses, herb gardens, and ater vats complete the ‘meaning of the alantation house. This may seem obvious 10 us because Southern plantations are a familiar institution of our Fecent past. If trey were not and we sub- scribed to the avistocratic view of architec. tural history, the neglect of the subsidiary buildings might well have contributed to the misreading of o.1 focal object, the planta- tion house iselt. ‘Our appeal, therefore, is for a more inclusive defini ion of architecture and, consequently, a more democratic view of architectural hist ty. The aim isto put aside the invidious d stinctions between archi-tecture and building, architecture and er ginecring, architecture and speculative de elopment, to treat buildings with equal Curiosity whether they are religious in in tent, monumental, utilitarian, or residen: tial; 10 diseriminate carefully among styles fr conventions of form without discrimi hating against any of them; and 10 have a genuine respect for the architectural Achievement of cultures regacdless of their place of origin and their racial and theo: logteal identities. The last lwo observations deserve a fur ther word. f historians have been partial 10 high-class buildings as the subject of their scrutiny, they have not always be tial in their treatment of impar high-class buildings. They have turned on occasion into active champions of one style at the expense of another, justiving their prefer tence in tees of aesthetic, structural, oF feven moral arguments. At other, Renaissance atchite tolled over Gothic; Baroque architecture d as excessively gaudy: and the dominant Beaux-Arts cla Hic buildings in America at the turn of the Century was minimized in favor of the oc tasional unorthodoxy of design that pre: saged new directions The historian must attempt to speak of architecture as it was, not asi should have been. We have no further control over what has happened. We have the duty to under ic sympathetically how it was and why it happened. To scold the nineteenth cen: tury, say, for what it did oF did not do for the historian, no more than personal indulgence. To insist that it should not be repeated is useful and the proper function of the critic History has no alternative but to accept that matters of quality are not absolute, that the terms of quality are set by each period ino: by each building. Ornament, 1or ex ample, has had wider acceptance at certain times in history than at others, but there is ‘no universal law regarding the propriety of formament in architecture. Vitruvius de votes a learned chapter in his book to “The Ornaments of the Orders.” To Adolf Loos 38, "Ornament is crime.” We should 1 have to decide between Classical a chite:ture and the work ot Loos on the ba sis of some presumed immutable principle ff “correct” design A PLACE ON EARTH This is not to say that in writing about the architecture of the past we can forgo the exercise of critical judgment, It means merely that we must litst establish the at govern a style or the form of 2 particular building, and then proceed 10 judge the siyle or the building in the con- text of these premises. Whereas the com petitive juxtaposition of the Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral would serve no useful purpose, it would be quite legitimate to Compare critically the Parthenon with its 16 ‘exact contemporary in Athens, the temple (of Hephaistos wiich overlooks the market: place. (Figs, 1.1, 7.18) What we have just said has special per tinence tor our attitude toward 1 Western tradi tecture. In our these traditions have always held a secondary place. This imbalance is natural given the preoccupa tion of each cu ture with itself. But it be- comes reprehensible i the relative inatten general schem tion to non-Western achievement is justified‘non-Western architecture than the token chapter or ‘wo allotted to it in surveys of this kind, Not only is more space devoted to the subject than is customary, but the Content of these alien traditions is brought at lesst cursorly, into the discussion of Western traditions, Although the architec tural interdependence of fast and West is far from being documented exhaustively, or ‘even adequately, cross-cultural chapters throughout the book rely on the artless principle of simultaneity to draw together All significant events of architecture in sev feral cultural areas that coineided at specific points in human history. Our esteem for Chartres Cathedral will be more balanced if we were made aware that this master. piece of medieval Christianity rose during the same decades in which Indochina saw the specter of the great temple complex at Angkor Wat, the empire of Islam under took the mosque and mausoleum of Sultan Qala’un in Cairo and the great Seljuk car avanserais of Anatolia, and. the. Meso- American cultures of the Toltecs and the Maya produced enduring monuments of stone like the ball court and observatory of Chichén Itza 4. The Meaning of Architecture The fourth and final premise of this book concems the meaning of buildings. Build ings are not only physical presences. To study as fully as we can what they are does not exonerate us from asking why they are there. and why they are the way they are. These questions must be answered, of at least asked, and they must be answered in Felation to two extramaterial concepts: time and purpose Time implies sequence. Every building is ‘aught in the web of the fourth dimension. Threads extend from it backward and for ward, to other buildings whose. existence has touched it or been touched by it Buildings, 10 say it differently, are based on buildings. As a building goes up it cannot ignore the millennial landscape of form into which it will soon emerge. Once itis up, it will itself be irrevocable, however long its natural life, as a sound is irrevocable once ithas been uttered. The building may de- light or disgust us: we may grow to revere it or make fun of it, cross ourselves as we go by itor call it by an unilattering nick name. But we get used to it, It becomes A PLACE ON EARTH Fig 119 Gea (Gqyp0, pyramids of Mykennos, Cheops, and Chetten (non 3,2, and 1 espe: tradition, a fixture in the continuum of form Which new buildings are forever replenish. ing. This is not to imply a historical determin: ism of form, whereby each building must be considered the ineluctable offspring of its predecessors, There are many factors that condition sequence, not the least of which is the intention of the patron and the ar chiteet. But tradition is there: itis a lan guage, a source, a challenge. Its the great Container of architectural experience, and no building can live outside of it. Behind What we call architectural revivals lies the desire to emulate the architectural mode of another place and another time, not only to show esteem for the older tradition, but aso in order to associate ourselves with the spirit and values that we think were preva lent there and then. The rule of Charle ‘magne made a conscious return to the ar chitecture of Rome and Ravenna in ordet to inspire its beliet that it was reviving Ro- rman rule; the'age of the Renaissance sought {to design its own aspirations based on the ‘model of Classical antiquity; and, closer to 8B ‘hel, on Fig 41, 2570S wc) ew from four time, the nineteenth century went through a whol series of revivals—the Gothic, the Greek, the Egyptian, the Ro- rmanesque, the Fxotic—each with its own rationale of form and association, But there is at least one further motiva tion for sequence: the sheer competitive rive that prompted patrons of architec ture, time and again through the ages, to Create monumen s that would outshine the splendor or outs'ip the size of some leg fendary masterpiece of the past. What is being recalled in these is not the physical form but the fame of the prototype. There is no evident simarity between the temple ‘of Solomon in Jecusalem, as we might re Construct it from he description of it in the Book of Kings, and Hagla Sophia in Con- stantinople. And yet it was this biblical splendor that Emperor Justinian had in ‘mind when he stcod in the nave of his new church on the day of its inauguration, 27 December A.0. 5:7, and said, Nenikika se Solomon, “I have’ surpassed thee Solo- ‘mon. Six centur es later the abbot Suger, obsessed with the eputation of Justnian’smasterpiece which had established itself as the greatest church of Christendom, took this fame as his special challenge in under taking to rebuild the abbey church of St Deis. Purpose refers to Watton’s commodity, the way in which a building accommodates its prescribed function. Perhaps a better ‘word would be ritual, for function tends to luncermine and mechanize the concept of purpose. The function of a tomb isto house the dead. But how adequate a purpose is this for the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops! Why the stupendous bulk of this pyramid, the megalomaniacal pile of ma- Sony that weighs millions of tons and rises ‘mountainlike toa height of 143 meters (470 feet Why al this forthe tomb of one man? (Fig. 1.19) Why Hagia Sophia, with a dome 35 meters (107 feet in diameter, swelling to & point some 55 meters (10 feet) above our hheads, if all that is really needed is a capa- ious hall to contain large congregations of Byzantines? (Fig. 1.28) “all architecture,” John Ruskin wrote, “proposes an effect on the human mind, not merely a service to the human frame. Ritual may be sad to be the poetry of func- tion: insofar asa building is shaped by it ual it does not simply house function, it comments on it. The pyramid of Cheops tensures the safety and longylastingness of the pharaoh’s corpse and makes tangible 10 his people the hope that resides in his per- petuity. Magia Sophia sings the ineffable- hess of Christian mystery in providing a space of which one user is man and the other user is unseen and unpredictable. To the extent, then, that architecture is the useful art that lays ready the stage for Further Reading 3B. Alsopp, the Sud of Arttecural History (New York: Praeger. 1970) B.Fache, A History of Architecture, 18 ed, rv (New York: Scribner, 1975). 5. Kestol, The City Assembled The Cements of Urban Foe Tough History Bose Lite, Brown, 1992) THE STUDY OF WHAT WE BUILT human activities, the history of architec ture is inevitably linked to the pageantry of human endeavorsgovernment, religion, ‘commerce, knowledge and its’ preserva tion, justice and its administration. I tis also true that architecture expresses hu: ‘man needs as much as it contains the var fous functions of our daily life, the history ‘of architecture should try, before its done, to look at buildings as palpable images of the values and aspirations of the societies that produced them, This final challenge is the most funda- mental, but also the most dangerous. It tenters the seductive reaches of interpreta: tion where proo! is never positive. Reading buildings as the embodiment of the social forder that produced them is no easy mat ter. For one thing, buildings do not always passively reflect society. Sometimes they Seek to mould social atitudes, or to spell ‘out what there ought to be, Do the pyrar mids of Gia truly express the absolute power of the pharaoh, or were they built to help create this impression among the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom’ For, as Lewis ‘Mumford once observed, itis often the case that "the more shaky the institution, the ‘more solid the monument; repeatedly civ ization has exemplified Patrick Geddes’ dictum that the perfection of the architec- tural form does not come til the institation sheltered by itis on the point of passing away." ‘Architecture is a medium of cultural expression only to the extent that we are fable to absorb its messages, And these Te Cay Shaped: Un Patens and Mean ings Though History Boston Lite, Brown, 1980 ed, The Architect: Chaps inthe History ‘ofthe Poiesion (New York: Osord, 1977) A Mainsone, Developments in. Svactra Form (Cambridge, Mans MIT Press, 1975, messages are elicited through the ques: tions that are p eoccupying us today. The ‘way we interpre’ the culture of a period or 2 nation tough its architecture may tell us a8 much about i as about ourselves. But this sno :rave danger. Its true that for all our quantifiable information about the pyramid of -heops, for all our know: edge of Egyptian religion and the beliefs of the afterlife, we will never know what that colossus of Tura limestone and granite ‘meant to the pharaoh and his court, to the priests who officiated at his burial rites and his subsequent cult, to the Old Kingdom peasant who tilled the mud banks of the Nile. But we can be sure that they were not indifferent, any more than we are incitier- tent to the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memor That much has remained constant in the Jong history of sur built environment: the ‘involvement we fel withthe houses we live in, the sanctuaries we pray in, and wheee We are buried, the quarters of our oppres- sors and benela: tor, the places of our im- prisonment and our healing. For this rea- Son if no other, we must conclude the long process of studying the architecture of eras that have gone Ey withthe fundamental and dangerous ques‘ion: "What did it mean In the impossibie answer may lie the hu: manity of past cultures and ours; for it should be “the task of the architectu historian,” to quote an architectural hist Fian, "to prove that there is no past in man’s concern for the environment af man.” HAL Millon, Ky Monument inthe History of “Archteure New York Abrams, 1965) N. Pevaner, A Hit yo Baking Types Princeton: Princeton Unverty Pres, 1976, . Wain, The ie of Archtectral History (Loe ‘don: Archie Press, 1980),THE CAVE AND THE SKY: STONE AGE EUROPE The Beginning ‘Where do we start with a history of acc tecture? When did architecture begin? Human beings, in their own distinctive form, have been inhabiting the earth for more than one million years, For most of that time they were unaware of architec: ture, if by that term we want to understand the ambitious creation of an environment separate from the natural order, But if, as we suggested, architecture describes sim ply the act of making places for ritual use, it was one of the earliest human needs, Indeed, architecture may be said to have beer there from the beginning, in raw foe as it were, in the very arrangement of na ture. For only if we conceive of the earth a5 a vast and featureless plain stretching Uunendingly in all directions would we have the total absence of architecture. Once there are ridges and rivers to divide this expanse, hills to punctuate it, and caves 10 gouge it, the business of architecture has already begun. That is what all architecture provides, regardless of its complenity. It marks off one area to distinguish it (rom ‘others. It raises solid masses that blot out as much space as their bulk, And it rears about our heads barriers, to contain shel: tered space The last ofthese isthe easiest to see. We are accustomed to thinking of architecture a5 shelter: a home to live in ("a root over ‘ur heads,” as we say, offices and shops to work in, cool places of worship to step. into from the crowded streets of 2 hot day. The sense of refuge is instinctive, It seems natural to build to attain it Bur architecture is more than protective shells, In seeking to bring about places for fitual action, it must set out to deine the boundless, that is, to limit space without necessarily enclosing it in all three dimen sions, It does this in two specific ways through circumscription and accent. In the fist, i artests and patterns the flow of ‘ground. This we might call architecture as boundary; examples are a “plot” of and or walled town. The second way involves the Setting up of free structures that, by theie very mass and height, might focus an oth fenwise undifferentiated stretch of open space—architecture as monument Boundary and monument both imply a determined marking of nature. Humans impose through them their own order on ture, and in doing so introduce that te $f balance between the way things are and the way we want them to be. Now the frst human generations lacked such conti- dence in their own standing within nature. As they moved about in search of tolerable climate and food, the special environments they gave shape to were tentative and un- obtrusive, an architecture of shelter con- tained in the pleats of the earth The shelter, for the most part, was there ready to be used, in the caves that had to bbe wrested from Savage predators such as bears, lions, and the giant hyena. We have proof, however, of huts in the open, like the ones atthe encampment of Terta Amat near Nice in southern France, dating back to about 400,000 years ago. (Figs. 2.1, 2.2) But whether shelter was natural or manu: factured, the inhabitants transformed i into architecture through purposetul use, They a made of it the stage of their progressively ‘organized life. "hey turned a spot of earth into a special place And here a chief invention, lire, proved to be a great plece-maker. it drove the wild beasts from the caves and kept them at bay, it made the home of the moment safe. But beyond this, the burning fire molded an ambience of companionship, a station for the hunter to pause, cook his game, harden his tools, and communicate with his band of fellows. The earliest hearth known to us, fat the great cave of Fscale in. southern France, goes bark more than 500,000 years, That may well be our first documented piece of architecture—a bit of nature in- formed with the daily tual of Homo erec Terra Amata holds the oldest artical structures of which we have evidence. The site was discovered accidentally in 1966, during construction at the cliff road to ‘Monte Carlo. It as a stone age camp, used for a number of years, it seems, ahvays brietly during the late spring. Ina cove by the beach, traces of some twenty huts were found, often disposed on top of one an- fother-—on a sardbar, on the beach isel, and on a dune. They were oval in shape and ‘measured about 8 to 15 meters (25 to 50 feet) in length and 4 to 6 meters (13 10 20 feet) in width. Sinall bands of about fitteen persons built and occupied them for hn ited hunting forcys; the huts then were left to collapse and new huts put up aver them, or else nearby, by next year’s party The huts were made of branches or sap- lings set close sogether in the sand asaTHE CAVE AND THE SKY: STONE AGE EUROPE fig 22 Terra Amata France), prehistoric Fut $000 6. reconstruction drawing palisade, then braced on the outside by a ing of large stones. Within, the long axis vas lined with larger posts to help hold up the roof—just how we do not know. We do know something about building tools gen: erally. The digging was probably done with fireshardened wooden spears; the pruning and trimming, with hand axes made of pieces of flint or limestone, What is significant isthe way in which the hunters made use of the enclosed space. The hearth was in the middle, protected from the prevailing northwest wind by a screen of pebbles. The immediate area around it was free of litter, indicating that there the band must have slept. Further out from this social focus of the hut there were work spaces and, in one case, a kind of Kitchen, to judge from the large smooth stone that was marked by tiny scratches, most likely resulting from the cutting of meat. In another hut, fossilized human ex: ‘crement indicates a toilet area Old Stone Age Architecture Both ouilding technology and the ritual use fof architecture became increasingly so- phisticated as the millennia went by. Dur ing the litespan of the Neanderthals be- tween 40,000 and 100,000 years ago, and of their successors the Cro-Magnon people, stone tools noticeably improved and now Included cutting knives, sharp and easy to grasp. The frame of the huts was sealed ‘against the draft by an exterior sheathing of Animal skins, At the same time, the hunt fers’ dealings with nature became formal ized into what can only be seen as reli- gious observances. What might have been ‘tes to ensure the hunters’ quarry let their ‘mark here and there for us to puzzle over But the hunters were concerned t00 with their own related destiny. It was not only surviving day after day that mattered. Death ‘was mysterious and frightening and might hot constitute the end, These anxious thoughts, and the cults that ‘grew up to appease them, complicated the concept of architecture, The role of the shelter was pushed beyond mere housing, The cave became a sanctuary. AV its mouth the hunter might still live, but the dark in ner recesses came to be reserved for cer- temonies of life and death and aterlite. The cave at Monte Citceo, a limestone hill south fof Rome, contained a unique chamber B where a single battered skull was stood in 4 trench along the farthest wall, with stones arranged around it in an oval ring. At La CChapelle-aux-Saints in the Dordogne re- sion of southwestern France, a bunal had taken place. The dead man had been laid out in a shallow grave filed with tools and animal bones. Cn his ches a bison leg had been deliberate'y placed, perhaps as pro vision for the world he had slipped into. Sometime fairly late during this long search for elerrental beliels, the hunters started using art as a tool of expression. It appears likely that, for the communities that produced the splendid cave murals, en ‘ravings, and sculpture, the image did more than stand for wat it depicted. Art too was reality. It ditfered from the physical world In that it was free of erratic movement and the biological dictates of growth and death, The mammoth cr woolly rhinoceros, fixed to the wall by the artist in a mixture of ground mineral earths and charcoal com- pressed into bone tubes, stayed there, the Sure target of tie disabling spear. These images of magic compulsion, if such they were, reintorcec the strange power of the cult and quickened its sense of mystery. As ritual use had transformed caves into rel gious architecture, so art now made tang ble a range of meaning in these hidden sanctuaries of the earth The Cave at Lascaux We can see all this in the celebrated cave at Lascaux. It was discovered on a Septem beer day in 1940 by five boys from Monti- |gnac out rabbit hunting in the woods rearby—the latest and most remarkable of 4 group of pairted sanctuaries that have ‘come 10 light in the southwest of Europe since the early niveteenth century. They had been created tcward the end of the last slacal period. Europe at that time, about 10,000 to 20,000 “ears ago, had roughly the Same Mediterran-an coastline, but the great Scandinavian ice sheet reached out to cover, most of Ireland. all of Scotland, and the Baltic. There were smaller glaciers in the |Aps and the Pyrenees. Hunters followed in the wake of the herds, across the bitterly Cold steppes of contral Europe and into the milder climate ct present-day France and Spain, They brought with them an extraorinary git for art and put it at the service fof a fath that centered on the animal The animal, in the hunter's view of the must have appeared strong and i Sependent, (Fig. 2.3) The hunter was the dependent and weak one, moving at after his prey—the reindeer and bison, the “deer and the horse—in the hope of lun and killing it. The tal. The animal must be killed to suppor Ht was the great adversary the hunter deadly in attack and hie-sustaining in death. The hunter must preval he knew, would be bound up with deteat 4 to kill Fo animals he man the feaer of them there were and theretore the magic that secured the t Of the quarry must also advance its abun dance And so, in these deep caves of France and Spain, the hunter painted the anima truthiully, in the context of this par adox of life and death, of fertility and ex tinction, Plentiful game was the boon of fertile. natu repre sented in sculpture as an ample female tire with giant breasts and hips, and com forting recesses ike the cave-shelters of the earth, In her hand this mother goddess Sometimes holds a horn, the through which the beast’s force is ex pellec. (Fig. 2.4 This sort of reasoning, we think, must have notivated the makers and users of caves like Lascaux. The paintings convey, across millennia, a striking sense for the build and habits of the sented. The attitude towaed them seems feverent. According tone of animal spirit, and the hunter's guarantee ff participating in the special power of the animal. The painted image is hope Piation in one—the hope of drawing the Animal to the kill, and expiation for having To kill i Weapons themselves were often carved into animal forms, and men dance in animal masks. At some time, the very The ‘animal came to be a s artists exploited the natural architec ture of each cave and conjured an inseps rable whole between this and their own images. There was no attempt to change the given contiguration, by dropping the tl level, for example, passages. On the contrary, the difficulties or expanding narrow A PLACE ON EARTH were scrupulously respected and the art ists skilfully set out to complement the pe- ular properties of the cave. At Laseaux, not only wer hands busy working on the ca of images and the too that tuncertain limits of the cave imph ished thing. We may be dealing with man imprint to the existing de making and the pre magical environment wwas a community pject; and in "com munity” the present merged with the tu ‘We enter the cave now, as pethaps one did then, through a hole that was the sult of the collapse of a bit of the lime forming the root of the cay g. 25) About 20 meters (65 feet) in, the total width, and path constricts 10 hal framatically into. an oval Bulls, A dark room, the so-called Hall of th led rates the lower walls trom an upper level, which includes the ceiling, and by a thin coat of calcite on which the paint was applied. Th he led The far end of the Hall is taken up by a of four immense bulls in thick black the fourth Three are in Indian file faces them, its huge horns extended across tempty space. (Fig. 2.6) The spa ‘snot altogether empty. Here and all along the remaining walls of the rotunda there is a seemingly random arrangement of smaller and bears, But the hat the ds a single a delineate groupings ences even where superimposed on others of ) ‘Weadhenge —“-"| 37tegic sites would suggest, temporary gath fering places for nomadic tribes of herds men in times of general celebration? At any rate, they are older than Stonehenge—the ‘oldest surviving structures in England. Then there are circles marked by uprights: either stones, as at Avebury 27 kilometers (17 miles) north of Stonehenge, with two huge interrelated circles; or else wooden posts, as at Woodhenge, closer still, about 3 ki- lome:ers northeast. Over 500 stone circles are known today all across the British Isles— jn northeast Scotland and Ulster, in Corn: wall and Wales. 'At Stonehenge, the first stage of building produced the earth circle, 97.50 meters (320 feet) in diameter, that remained constant through all subsequent rebuildings. (Fig, 2.22) It must have been described by an immense compass, probably a stretch of ‘oxhide rope attached to a wooden peg at the cirle’s center. To mark the circumter: fence, a ditch was dug through the solid chalk, with the usual tools—digging sticks, picks of antler, and shoulder bones of oxen for shovels, The dazzling white earth was piled up on two banks. The circle was bro- ken at one place only, in the northeast quadrant. There, beyond two small up: Fights that flanked the break in the circle, 4 tal pillar, of a distinctive grey sandstone from Mariborough called sarsen, was ‘erected. It stood just off the centerline of the break, next to a wooden gateway of four posts, and it stands there stil tited to one side. The point of this arrangement was frst surm sed in the eighteenth century. A per son standing at the center of the white ci le on the morning of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and looking in the direction of this so-called Heel Stone, would have seen the sun rise alittle tothe left of its imposing mass, on axis with the break. It must have been a simple but pro- found experience, and it happened in a simple but bold-spirited setting of bound: ary architecture—a round embankment on the broad plateau of Salisbury Plain, at the confluence of many lines of hills along ‘whose ridgeways the people came for the great day, This seems to have been all hat was done in the opening phase of the monument, ‘except for four station stones inside the APLACE ON EARTH chalk palisade that describe a rectangle perpendicular to the axis of the midsum- mer sunrise, and the ring of 56 Aubrey holes, already mentioned, that may have been meant to hold uprights but were filed Lup again soon after being dug. The date of this frst scheme, known as Stonehenge I 's now thought to be around 2750 s.c ‘Then, perhaps several centuries later, the sacred site became the scene of an ambi tious new building campaign—Stonchenge I Pairs of chalk banks, like those of the circle, defined an &meter (35-f00t) wide avenue along the crucial northeast axis. It fan on straight for a while, and then curved Fight to reach the river Avon a short dis- tance away. A narrow embanked enclosure about 3 kilometers (175 miles) long to the forth of the sanctuary seems to belong with the avenue. Its known as the Cursus. Inthe middle of the circle a double ring of bluestones began to be set up, with a ‘marked entrance in line with the avenue What is remarkable about these bluestones ‘5 not their size, although they weighed up 105 tons each, but where they were brought from. AS it happens, this particular rock {formation is to be found in one place only in all of England, the Prescelly Mountains fof Wales. Unless the bluestones were de- posited in the area by glaciers, the teat was amazing. The shortest possible route in- Volves a distance of almost 500 kilometers {God miles). That would entail hauling the bluestones fist to Milford Haven in the west ff Wales, then moving them by sea to the ‘mouth of the Bristol Avon and, then, by a Series of rivers with brie! overland hauls in between, reaching the general area of Stonehenge. It seems probable that the a fenue af Stonehenge Il commemorates the last stretch of portage. (Fig. 221) For all this, the stones were put aside shortly, even before the rings were com plete, for a third rearrangement of the pre: ‘inctStonehenge Ill. Now saesen mega liths several times larger than the bluestones were brought in feom nearby Maribor ‘ough, perhaps on a movable track of oak rollers. The naturally irregular blocks had to be cut first, at their place of origin, to uniform size, a procedure that may have \cluded alternate heating and cooling to split the rock along the desired lines, Within the great chalk cic, the sarsens 38 were tied with prodigious effort into a ring ‘of pits, straightoned, and stabilized. To ‘consolidate the sarsen circle at the top, Curved lintels were placed aver each pair of Uprights, cut and ited together so that they ‘would form an integral crown about 6 me- {ers 20 feet) off the ground. The design was completed by a sirsen horseshoe inscribed withii, “compos d of five separate trl thons—that is, groupings of three slabs, two upright ones and she crosspiece that bridges them, The horseshoe opened up toward the avenue and the sacred path of the mid- Summer sunrise. (Fig. 2.22, C) The sarsen circle and horseshoe of Stonehenge ll ate remarkable pieces of architecture. Monumentalized boundaries like the alignments of Carnac differ trom them because at Stonehenge the spatial Units were cast nto total frames through the added definition of the lintels. But the dit- ference is more fundamental, For the builders of Stonehenge Ill, architecture implies a weldig together of units that Would read 2s a ingle sustained arttact. OF Course, Ggantia and the megalithic tombs, too, were complicated assemblages. of stones. But as architecture of shelter, they molded interior spaces where incidents of detail were not crucial to the enveloping Impact of the steme fabric. The stone core ff the tombs let sland impertections ot joining. At Ggantija, dressed stones and Slabs of decoration heightened surface ap- peal as an applied, rather than inherent, bffect of the ste.cture The refinements at Stonehenge belong inseparably to the structure. We have here 4 skeletal construct, like a stone dance. The ‘are ofthe details important, not so much for its own sake, but for the convincing grace of the construct, For ponderous though the specter of Stonehenge un doubtedly is in the openness of Wiltshire tunder the vast ae ofthe sky, the rough and. tumble look is tempered intentionally wath sophistication, The sarsen stones, for one Fig, 222 Stonchen plan of four sages ol con third millennium wc. (C) Stonehenge il: (D: Stonehenge IV ca, 150 tcFO Mo 5000 25A PLACE ON EARTE fig. 223 Stonehenge thing, were leveled with heavy stone mauls, and smoothed by grinding. Uprights were tapered toward the top, to make them look sprightlier under their burden. For similar Visual spruceness, each lintel widened ou Upward and gently curved inward on the two circumferential surfaces, Those lintels had te be curved along their entire length 50 that, joined tightly together as they are in a woodworker’s technique known 3s tongue-and-groove, they would produce a smooth arc both within the circle and with out, At the top, the uprights were slightly dished, and the lintels made correspond ingly convex, to avoid slipping le knob of stone was left proj top of each upright, so that if could be in serted into a matching hole i the lintel. Thi too is a familiar system of joining used in Cabinetmaking, called mortse-and-tenon— perhaps to recall the wooden prototypes of The precinct was reorganized one time. The bluestones, which were boeing moved back during the building of Stonehenge It! and into. the -monumen 40 set up in front of horseshoe and the were dug, pera Fig. 222, D) Was Stoneheng tions, solely int ‘midsummer’s day eral scholars, itn the horseshoe triithon interposed between the sarsen circle, Further out $ for holding stones—the holes. This last arrange possibly a late a in these final incar In the opinion of se er was, Always, there had mic implications. To pusimply, Stonehenge was an open-air ob- sematory where a wide range of astronom- ‘eal phenomena could be predicted with ‘marvelous precision. So much so that one ‘event student of the monument refers 10 tas “a Neolithic computer.” According 10 this theory, the 56 Aubrey holes may relate to the 56 days’ difference between five so- lar years and five lunar years; the 59 ¥ and Ziholes, to the 59 days in two lunar months; the 19 bluestones within the horseshoe, 10 the 18year cycle of the moon, crucial for the prediction of eclipses; and so on. Even were this true—and much of it has been disputed—we must be careful not 10 confuse our own modern demands on sci- fence and the more elemental needs of pre storic farmers and herders for celes- tial indicators of the seasons. Furthermore, we must not confuse function and ritual, as Wwe Fave distinguished these in our inteo- ductory chapter. Function in architecture is, Further Reading RI. Atkinson, Stonnhonge (Harmondsworth and Baltes Penguin 1960), A.B, The Stone Circles ofthe shes (New Haven: Yate Unvesty Pres, 1976) {G. Dari The Megan Builders of Western Europe london: Hetchison, 1963). The Prehstrc Chamber Tombs of France {Wondon: Thames and Mldson, 1960) 1B. Evan, Malia London: Thames and Hudson, 195. A Laing. Lscaue tans. & F Amstong Har ‘mondsworth and Baltimore: Penguin, 198) THE CAVE AND THE SKY: STONE AGE EUROPE {a prosaic program. It is an abstraction in that it applies to an activity without reference to human involvement. Ritual is the tran- scendence of function to the level of 3 meaningiul act. It may indeed be true that Stonehenge ‘was designed to plot and anticipate some alignments of the sun and the moon. That would be its function, But the meaning of Stonehenge resides in the ritual, tis ths that humanizes this calendar of stone and earth in the open countryside; itis this that explains the prodigies of engineering and labor that went into its making. Function did not demand the choice of bluestones and igrey sarsens and their transport from long distances away. For the effectiveness of this ‘Neolithic “computer,” any convenient stones would have been satisfactory. The ‘materials and the size of the project were Lurged on these early peoples ofthe British Isles so that the structure could be a cele- |. MeMann, Reds ofthe Stone Age: Rock Carvings ‘of Ancient Europe (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980 Scieniie Amentcan, Old World Archeology: Foun dons of Civiheaton (San Franc: Foe Pv. D. Ste, Prehistnic Europe tom Stone Age ‘Man tothe Early Grek (New York Nor ton 1969), 41 bration of celestial events and not merely a ‘method of predicing them, To this end, the painful sophistication of detal was counte rranced—the stamp on uncouth rock of the csiiing will of humans Stonehenge was a sacred center of com: munity for the tribes that used it—a mon lument 10 their social cohesion apparent both in their spt of labor, when they toiled together to set up the megaliths, and dur- ing thei ritual gctherings, when an eclipse for a spectacular rising of the sun, havin bbeen predicted by the priestly powers, would summon the community t0 con. verge on the precinct 10 witness the event in unison, (Fig. 223) Public architecture at its best aspires to be just this: a setting for situal that makes of each user, tor a briet ‘moment, a larges person than he or she is in daily lie, filling each one with the pride of belonging LE Stover and 8. Kraig, Sonehenge: The Indo furopean He tage (Chicago: Neon Hal .H. Trump, The Pehistory of the Mevieraneon (New Haven: Yale Univerty Pres, 180), G. Wainwright, the Yenge Monuments. Ceremony ‘3nd Society in Presto Ban New York “hares and akon, 1990,THE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA The Urban Revolution eho dthebondottesvenandtarth thecity Behod Nippur, the city Beno‘ the kinaly wall the city is pure sver its quay where the boats stand Behold the Pula, ts well of good water Behold the nunbirdu, Hs pure canal This is the opening of a Sumerian myth about the moon-god Nanna, and it dates from the beginning of the second millen: nium a.c.—the time of the third reatrange- ment of Stonehenge. There are two. note. worthy things about this bit of poetey trom Mescpotamia. First, itis a written record: a distant culture speaks to us through it di= rectly. This is a very different relationship to the ‘past than the one we had estab lished with the Britons of Salisbury who. coule reach us only through the mute tes timony of their stones. And second, the ppassoge sings rapturously of a thing called the cty, set on a river, serviced by canals, blessed with good freshwater. So atthe very same time in history in two separate corners of the ancient world, dit: ferent patterns of community were in ex istence. While Neolithic Eurape carried on a stone-using peasant economy well into the Secord millennium 8.c., in two spots of the Near Fast there were contemporary literate cultures that knew how to work metal, oF- ‘ganize food production as an industry, and Keep written records of theie transactions and beliefs. They had leit their Neolithic past behind them long before Europe and had gone on to forge a complex society of reat technological achievement and ma: terial wealth. With these two literate cul tures, Egypt_and Mesopotamia, history proper s sai to begin, as distinct from the documentree prehistory of the Stone Age. Writing helps us to draw the line benween civilized and “barbarous” societies, and tor this reason, among others, we have cus: tomarily called the Near East “the cradle of civilization, ‘The word “cwilization” derives from the Latin cvitas, which means city. This gives Us the other accepted characteristic of cv lized humanity—that it has for its theater ‘of activity an intricate artifact, the city, that sets it apart from the basic life of the vi: lage or the pastoral tribe. To be civilized is to be urban; civilization, inthis strict sense, is “the art of living in towns.” Traditionally the molding of the city as a social and ma terial concept is credited to the same era. dle of civilization that invented writing, specifically to the southern region of Mes. ‘opotamia, Sumer, sometime in the early fourth millennium a.c. (Figs. 3.1, 3.8) {1 boundary-tixing and stone monuments represent the architectural response to the Neolithic revolution, the ingenious fabric fof the city corresponds to the second ma jor upheaval in the human scheme, the ur- ban tevolution. How was this fabric wrought? What were its components? Physically, what is it that differentiates the ty from the village? The city,is an involved organism under constant change. (Fig. 3.2) In its living mesh, public structures are bonded to the places ‘where people live, and these, in turn, are B bbonded to each other, in a rich anitice of contiguity. The city presents us with a new set of enviconmental ideas, such as the street, the public square, the deensive wall and its gates. Itcromds our discussion with 4 score of building inventions—tor exam- ple, the canal and the granary, the palace and the bath, the market, the bakery, shops, Festaurants, and ibraries, The urban revolution difers from the Neolithic revolution in one essential way. It does not atfect the basic relationship of people to nature, as the passage from hunting to food production certainly di Agriculture and animal husbandry survive asthe principal modes of subsistence inthe urban period. Even trade cannot be credited exclusively t0 the ise of cities. OF course, both agriculture and trade were intensitied and regimented -vithin an urban economy: the one, profiting from irrigation, crop ro- tation, and the use of fertilizers, 10 pro- ‘duce a surplus c* food: the other, enlarg ing its scope to include, besides pottery and stones like obsidian, the metals required by the new urban technology and the con- stimption of luxury goods, But this is more a matter of disciplined efficiency than a radical turn in the exploitation of nature. The city, above ail ese, typified a social process. The revolution it brought about ‘was embodied ia the interaction of people with each other Since this is so, we should not be sur- prised that recen’ archaeological discover. ies have shown he city to have emerged long before the tourth millennium 8.c., inareas identified with the Neolithic age. The Settlement at Jericho about 9,000 years ago. was a well-organized community of about 3,000 people, in contrast to the normal Neolithic village with its population of sev- eral Hundred. Catalhoyuk in southern An- tol, a Thectare (32-acre) Neolithic set- tlement ofthe seventh millennium #.c, with shrines and quarters for specialized crats, a clever residential layout, and the produc- tion of wall paintings, textiles, copper and bbone artifacts, patently merits being called (One further corrective should be offered to our thinking about the urban revolu- tion, It is possible to make entirely too much of the city. It appears that in coere- Iating urbanism and civilized history, we have imbued the city with positive qualities the absence of which, at least by implicar tion, has tended to downgrade other social ‘organisms. The term urban has turned into 2 Value judgment; rural or pastoral, in con- trast, carry with them a note of regression or conservatism This bias is unfair. To hold that civilized Iie cannot exist outside of cities belitles the ‘genuine achievement of much nonurban Culture and may distort the view of a total environmental order where the cities and the countryside are locked in mutually fructfying intercourse. It is not enough t0 grant the truism that cities, for the most part, could not survive without the sustain ing labor of peripheral fields and pastue. There were moments in history when the turban and pastoral modes of lite wore competing high cultures. There were mo- ments, 100, when the collapse of an urban civilization ushered in, after a period of painful adjustment, an equally viable social structure that made do without cities. Be- ‘cause of our preconceptions about the pu: tative superiority of cities, we have too easly seen these nonurban sequels as the inevi table troughs between the peaks of human genius and enterprise. We are given to falling them the Dark Ages. But i we Strain our enthusiasm for the glamor of fies, we might profitably reassess the con- ‘ribution of the centuries that came ater the destruction of Bronze Age city-states in Greece, for example, or the time after the deterioration of Mediterranean urbanism that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire A PLACE ON EARTH Stirrings of Urban Consciousness, ‘The chemistey of early cities relied on three active properties: people, productive re Sources, and ambition. The city-form a pired to be compact and versatile. And the future of this proud amalgam of people and buildings could be secured only through faultless detense and aggressive progress. 'A city presupposed a concentrated pop- ulation, beyond the intimate congress of farming homesteads and tribal families, The land it occupied had to be able to do more than feed its crowds. Food surplus ensured {stable way of lite against the fitful behav jor of nature; it also supplied a source of ‘wealth to pay for importing what the city needed and did not have. Alternatively, the tty might derive its strength from some raw fr crafted resource, such as animal fur oF ‘metal, attractive to markets beyond its lim its, tn either case, the city proved that it could not, as the village could, remain set: Contained. The Lieal interaction among its people, complicated by numbers, was only fone dimension of its social mobility. Out- side, there were other centers of closely controlled resot ces that envied it or re- plenished its wants. To defend itself against the envious and till carry on trade, the city formed a larger sphere of social contact. The citizenry -vas forced to organize it self in a way that could contend with the diversified tasks fits supple existence. The population fissured into specialized groups Besides the grea’ peasant mass, some were trained to fight, others to build. There were {ullstime craitspeople of metal and stone, as well as priests and merchants. And spe- Cialization went hand in hand with social Stratification. Sonve groups acministere ‘urban territory tat stretched far beyond theTHE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIAtity. The gods looked after the entire citizenry, both the humble and the high: the temples solemnized pious community The ring of wals expressed the fears andthe strer gthof acommoniate. Even the opulence ff the rich redounded all the way t0 the simple peasant, for the peasant could boast ‘of Belonging fo the community that diss played such wealth. Jericivo Precisely how it all started is unclear. Rev- olution implies a sudden break, but it may have been in several places at once, and with varying motives, that the idea of the ty gradually took root. At this stage of our knowledge. we must assign the origin of the ity-orm to western Asia; and Jericho would seem 10 qualify as the earliest surviving The site today is a great mound near the ‘oasis of the: modern town, on the left bank ff the river Jordan. It holds a series of Jer- ‘chos, each built on the ruins ofits prede- cessor. This clinging to a place of birth wil prove a durable habit for cities, Time and again until our own day, cities ravaged by Conquest of natural disaster will elect t0 rebuild on theit ashes, fully aware that they will 9e vulnerable anew. In large measure itis tradition, the genius of the place, that accounts for this stubbornness. The ground {s hallowed. It has the imprint of time-hon- free cults and generations of inhabitants, Besides, there is invariably a tangible ad- vantage’ to the site that prompted occupa- tion in the frst place In the case of Jericho, this was a reliable source of freshwater that now gushes from the place called Elisha’s Fountain. The life- giving value of such a spring, inthe desert, ff the Dead Sea, is obvious. Here by the welling water, where their quarry came to drink, hunters had pitched their tents on bedrock and reserved a small plot of land a8 a sanctuary: and here, within a thou- sand years, the transition had occurred to a settled lite based on agriculture. The frst Permanent settlement had solid domed houses of muct:brick, with an entrance porch and curved walls, probably in irita tion of the round tents of the nomadic hunters. The floor was sunk below the ‘ground level and was reached by means of wooden stairs. Underneath it, the dead lay buried APLACE ON EARTH ‘The date ofthis activity is about 7500 8.c ‘The settlement covered about 3 hectares (8 acres) and must have therefore been un- commonly populous. (Fig. 3.3) Moreover, ‘once it had reached its optimum spread, the settlement was fortified by a fine stone wall ‘of cyclopean masonry that guarded the people and their precious substance, the Spring water, for more than a thousand years. The fort was overseen by a massive round tower, also of stone, built against the inside of the wal. (Fig. 34) In its hollow core, a staircase of single stone slabs had been constructed, either to man the tower fF else to reach the source of the spring, ‘perhaps both. That water had something 10 do with the curtain of defense is suggested by the fact thatthe tower was intimate with a series of mud-brick enclosures, unlike any ‘of the houses, that have been interpreted as water cisterns ‘About 6500 8.c., this Neolithic strong: hold, perched between eastern nomads and the fertile plains of Palestine, was success fully overrun. The houses were now rec- tangulae, with slightly rounded comers. They were arranged. around courtyards where the cooking took place. Each house Consisted of several rooms, interconnect- ing through wide doorways. Sitting among the houses were several buildings Set aside for worship; they shared features of resi dential architecture, such as rounded doorway jambs. Like the townspeople they displaced, the newcomers were also compelled to use earth as their main building material, but they went to some pains to improve its look. Stone was in short supply; what little could bbe found within easy portage was used for defenses, the substructure of houses, and for other extraordinary purposes. A shrine ina private house features a dressed pillar ff volcanic rock set on a stone pedestal in 8 semicicular niche. It brings to mind the pillar in the terminal apse of Maltese tem: ples ‘The rest had to make do with mud, which has advantages’ as well as drawbacks. It is ‘of course easier 10 work with than stone, since it requires no cutting and dressing. But mud has its own problems. Although itis feminently plastic, it has t0 be shaped somehow and stiffened so that it will stand. Second, it has to be protected from damp: ress, And because itis a drab material that 46 yields lackluster surfaces, the urge is keen to do something more with it—whitewash it, liven it with volor, or modulate it for ef fect. One clever expedient is to devise a sheathing that both protects and embel- lishes—for example, sheathing like tle that will be hard, water-resistant, and colortul But the invention of tile lies several thou- sand years ahead in time. The polished reddish plaster >f Jericho used on the walls. and floors is i-If a notable antecedent. There are several ways to build with ear all of them ancient, The crudest is to mix together soil, water, straw, reeds, leaves, and whatever cise of this sort of material ‘comes to hanc and pile it up to form a wall—the technique known as “cob.” The Wwattle-and-daub technique makes use of sn ‘upright frame cf wating, on both sides of which the wet mud would be applied. But the two most satisfactory variants of eatth Fig. 33 levcho (haaeh, frst setlement, 7500 1c. site and excivated portion of wall: planFig. 34b Jericho, wall and tionperspectve(Fig. 3.9) The two monumental centers were the Ziggurat complex with its own deten- sive wall, overseen by 2 powerful pres. hood, and the palace of the king. Lesser temples were sprinkled here and there within the rest of the urban fabric, which ‘was 2 promiscuous blend of residential and commercial architecture. Small shops were at tines incorporated into the houses, but the norm was to have structures devoted exclusively to commercial or industrial use interspersed throughout the city. In the later Sumerian period at Ur, an example of abi zaar was found: a concentration of litte boot's along a narrow passage, probably sheltared by awnings, with doors at ether fend that were closed at night. At Tell As: ‘mar, a large building once thought to be 3 palace has recently been reinterpreted as an industrial complex housing a aumber of concerns, such as a tannery, a smallscale ironworks, and, ata later date, textile weaving exclusively Traffic along the twisted network of un- paved streets was mostly pedestrian. The 2385, that classic beast of burden, navigated easily enough. At Ur, one sees on occasion, low flight of steps against a building from which riders could mount, and street cor- ners were regularly rounded to facibtate passage. Street width, al the very most, would be 3 meters (9 feet) or so, and that only forthe few principal thoroughfares that led te the public buildings. These would be bordered with the houses of the rich Poorer folk lived atthe back, along narrow lanes and alleys. It is hard to imagine much whee'ed trafic in this maze, though both Service carts (with solid wheels) and char tots had been in use trom an early date. The ilemade tracery of public ways resulted un- plex was the hub of an economic system that has been described as “theocratic so- Cia ism.” (Fig 3.14) With its own wall around it it formed the last bulwark against the City’s enemies; when it fll, it was all over {or the city, and the patron deity, deprived ‘of s home, would wander aimlessly, as one Inscription puts it, like the bird that fies about wity no place to alight. ‘There were two ways in which this tem: ple ditfered from others in the city. I stood fon a tremendous platform called the zig gurat, and being free of the pressures of density in its ample precinct, its form could afford to be both regular and open. It seems that standard temples as well as ziggurat temples grew out of a common archetype. We have a glimpse of this prototype at fr ‘dy, considered in Mesopotamian history to hhave been the birthplace of kingship. There, 2 series of temples was buill on sand dunes lover the years. (Fig. 3.15) ‘The earliest to leave a trace was a small, thin-walled rectangular enclosure with projecting piers within. Two circular tables for burnt offerings stood outside. When this \was overwhelmed by wind:-blown sand, oF pethaps purposely buried, a sir | Courtyara 4 Prwate Chapel 7 Staircase 2Entry Vestibule 5 kitchen 8 Oran 53 Reception Room (Liwan) 6 Lovatery 9 Shop) SS kN ae SIA 55 ture was stood over it, but with some cru ial modifications. One side of the rectan- gle broke out inte a projecting bay Containing @ podium or altar; a second po- dium, most likely an offering table, stood in the middle. door led into the enclo- sure from the side opposite the altar bay ‘The next phase wes an oblong scheme with a central nave disposed longitudinally and flanked by subsidiary rooms somewhat in the manner of aisles. The corner rooms formed projecting bastions. A cross-ax's was set up by an oblong room in the middle of each aisle. These acted as vestibules to doors cut into the long sides of the tem- Fig. 3.11 Ur, residential quarter bewween the gurat precinct and the West Harbor pan Num ber Ill Gay Steet isthe plan of the upper-class toute shown in Fig. 3.1 Fig. B12 Ur, Number Wl Gay Sweet, cour Feple, of which one, to the southeast, was approached by a formal stat. There was also 4a double entrance on the short side oppo- site the altar. The walls were now thick and buttressed all along the exterior periphery. Inside, spur walls and buttresses, were spaced in relation to the ceiling beams and rafters that would rest along the tops of the walls At this point the temple form began to diverge. At Warka (Uruk), the biblical Er lech, we have an early classical example of the ziggurat temple, while the develop: ment of the standard temple can be fol- lowed in three successive buildings in honor Cf the moon-god Sin at the northern town ‘of Khafa. At the White Temple of Warka, dating from the Protoliterate Period, the corner bastions were dropped, and the exterior ‘outline was neatly pleated in a uniform ar- rangement of buttresses that created wall niches ard reveals. (Fig. 3.16) Cleary, the initial structural logic ofthis distinctive fea ture of Mesopotamian temple architecture had already been transmuted into a system ‘of aesthetics. What started asa support for the mud-brick walls became, in addition, the means of their plastic articulation, The White Temple sat on an artificial ‘mountain. oF ziggurat, of itregular outline, rising 12 meters (40 feet) above the fea. tureless plain. The ziggurat had swelled to Brandiose proportions in stages by absorb ing the frames of earlier temples, which in accordance with local practice would be filled solid after serving theie time, to be used as terraces forthe replacement struc ture, The walls of the zigaurat were sloped and striped with diagonal luting. Access 10 the top was by means of a stair and ramp built against the northeast face, The tem: ple stood toward the southwest, uneneum bered by parapets. Its four corners pointed toward the main directions of the com. ass, the standard orientation for religious architecture. Whitewashed and lofty. it ‘would be visible for miles aroun above the fing of the city walle—a landmark that placed Waska in the vast stretches of fields and marshes and announced its divine pa tronage, The case of the urban temple was dtfer lent. Dedicated 10 lesser deities, it was built APLACE ON EARTH Fig. 3.33 Nippur Wraq) ea 1500 #1) map On day tablet closer to the living space ofthe city and was surrounded by common structures. Sin Temple It at Khafaje, roughly contempo- rary with the White Temple of Wark, illus trates the result of this crowded condition (Fig. 3.17) The temple proper was sealed light om three sides and could be entered Conly through an ieregular forecourt. Cult ‘observances cartied out in the open air at Warka were here relegated to this odd space. One of the aisles of the tripartite temple plan now housed a narrow stat. case leading up to the flat roof, a usable space in the summertime. At Sin Temple V 4 later stage of the same building, the stat \was removed from this aisle, perhaps to discourage excessive tattic through the temple, and set up outside along one wall ff the forecourt. Additional courts con: tained the bread overs associated with the daily meals of the deity, and offices. and storerooms lined up zlong the south side. ‘These practical adjustments to the urhan fabric affected the exverience of the tem. ple. Rather than beirg an abject in mide Space with openings cn three sides, as was the White Temple at Warka, the temple now became the innermost af a series of em closed spaces witha single entrance in one of its long sides. By the time of Sin Temple VI, in the Early Dynestie Period, the one main entrance to this introverted complex was flanked by massive blocks of masonry and approached by = monumental state ‘ase; the courts were consolidated into one functional space; ans the temple was tightened further through the suppression of one aisle and the rigid reordering ol the‘THE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA, Temenos Wall (utside foce) FO ® uo Fig, 316 Ur, tggurat preci, Third Dynasty (211-2006 a.) and later, plan ‘other so that it formed a single antecham= ber to the holy of holi ‘The urban temple, now formalized, would retain this program even when, as with the nearby Temple Oval at Khafaje, the demo: ltion of houses opened up a large enough area for @ major temple precinct. (Fig. 3.18) ‘The court of the urban temple had a well and circular basins for ablutions. Work: shops, bakeries, and storage rooms ar- ranged themselves on four sides, while the temple was lifted on its own platform at the far end. In front of the court, there was a more public area with the offices of the temple administration to one side. A high wall wrapped around the entire precinct, which had to be en ‘ered through a single Substantial gate flanked by towers. Here at this fortified gate the transition was made from the profane world of city streets into the sacred world of the temple complex. The worshipper's axial progress moved through the outer and inner courts toward the elevated sanctuery, ina controlled ex perience of augmonting privilege and Sanctity The experience of the ziggurat temple, in contrast, tested on reverential climbing. Godhead in the urban temple resided in 2 remote and guarded sanctum at the end of 2 planned sequence. In the ziggurat com- plex, godhead was lited up above the city, hovering between the heavens and the daly sea. In nature, this intermediate territory was represented by the mountain. It was in the mountain that the earth and the sky were united. Earth deities dwelled inside i and the deities of the sky could make its ‘summit their halting place. The very form fof the mountain suggested a setting of rec- Conciliation between “he two prime motives fof prehistoric religicn, the comfort of the earth and heavenwar'! aspiration. Rooted in the depths of the earth, the cradle of life and death, the mourvain thrust upward like solid prayer to a region that the sun’s path circumscribed and the stars populated. It ‘married in its shape the dark cave below and the dome of heaven above. It became the traditional stage of communion between gods and chosen mertals. n every religion lof the past, processions of pilgrimages make their way up these natural ladders; they were, and still are, among the most ele: mental rituals of faith The ziggurat was conceived as a substi- tute mountain. (Fig. 3.19) The Sumerians who galvanized the first towns of Meso- ppotamia had come down from the moun: fainous north, probably from the area around the Caspian Sea. In the mud plain (of the south, the need to re-create the nat- ural architecture of their homeland must have been keenly felt. This atavistic urge i, evident in the naming of ziggurats: one of them, for instance, is called "House of the Mountain, Mountair of the Storm, Bond between Heaven anc Earth.” The essence of the ziggurat is that it be high. AC its skits wil be arrayed the fullPanoply of theocratic socialism—store. rooms and workshops, offices and priestly quartets, and a temple where the statue of the deity will stand for his or her epiphany, since the unshielded radiance of divinity “not commonly bearable. Up above, he oF she will appear in person to those entitled to witness the deity’ full glory. The zig {uratis a ladder, then, as much for the de. ity's descent into the city as for the cere. ‘monious cimb of human servants—the king and the high priest and the pure virgin ‘whom the male god would have chosen for himself and whose union with him would bring about, for one more year, fertility and abundance in the land. The ziggurat tem- ple was, among other things, marriage bed. We recall the Greek historian Hero. ddotus’ description of the ziggurat at Baby. lon, (On the topmost tower there i spacious te Ble and inside the temple stands 4 couch of un sual size, richly adoemed, with a golden table by is side. Theve smo statue of any kind setup in the place, nor isthe chamber accupted by any ‘one buta sre ative woman. wh fe choy ‘sen for himsel by the deity ut of all the women ‘ofthe land. They also declare thatthe od comes ‘iown in person into this chamber. and sleeps ‘upon the couch, ‘The commission to build the temple came from above. Precise measurements were spoken to the king in secret, We have the account of King Gudea of Lagash and how he first realized that something was ex- pected of him when the Tigris refused to rise during the normal period of inunda. tions; how tre god then told him ina dream that he wished to be established, @ clear reference to the preurban period when nomads and farmers would consecrate 2 forest or a mountain ora cavern to the gods in retura for the use of the remaining land. ‘When this land was made to carry cities, and the cities became magnificent, a new house for the gods had to be undertaken. We en. ‘counter simi ar feelings in the nomads who Tig. 3:35 Enu Wraqy, ground plans of soperim: Posed temples: (A) Temple XVI ca, 500 te (8) Temple XV, ca 48008. 1) Tempe Vice 300m nc PLACE ON EARTH A Temple Xvi — below 8 Comer of later Ziggurot| | ‘now livee in an architectural environment, as reflected in the Old Testament; King David, o obliterate the deplorable contrast between his luxury and God's ouseless: ness (See now I dwell in an house of ce- dar, but the Ark dwelleth within curtains.” 11 Samuel 7:2) announces the founding of a temple that would be a permanent sanc- tuary for ‘he hitherto portable, peripate Tabernacl ‘But what form should the house of god take? Gudea was given appropriate instruc- tions. He then alerted his people to gather ‘materials. The city was purified, At the site fof the future temple, the soil was swept ‘away until native rock was reached: offer- ings were laid out; the foundation trenches were filled with purified earth. Then the piling began. The king himself and his fam- ily led the community in this ritual ofl bor. A later Sumerian relief trom Ur de- Picts King Ur-Nammu’s involvement in temple architecture. (ig. 3.20) At the top, the king is pouring libations before an en. throned deity who is shown holding meas- turing rod and line. In the next register, the ing. is carrying. builders’ tools on. his shoulders--pick and compasses and mor- tar basket—assisted by a priest and led by the god. Bolow this relief the construction ‘of the temple was begun; a ladder remains {rom the otherwise destroyed scene. We hhave alate cuneiiorm tablet that testifies 0 the king's active role The Lord Warduk commanded me concerning temenanki, the staged tower of Babylon that 1 should make its toundations secure in the ‘bosom ofthe nether world, and make it sum. mit ike the heavens. caused baked bricks to be made. ASW were the rains trom on high which are measuroess oe great torent eased streams of bitumen to be brought by the canal Arahtu..- 100k a reed and myself measured the dimensions. . For my Lord Marduk | ‘bowed my neck, | took of my robe. the sign of iy royal Bleod, and on my head | bore Hicks and cath, The wore “staged” is accurate. In con- trast to the ziggurat at Warka with its single stair, later ziggurats were usually towers Fig. 3.17 Khataje iraq, ground plans of Sin term ples: ‘Al Temple tc. 000 w.¢ 1B) Temple V, a, 2000.6. () Temple Vl, ca 2750 8 APLACE ON EARTH | Sonct ary 2 Couvars 3 Ato 4 Hearty Skins 6 Bean 7. Vesse! 8 Tobie 3) 9 PratfomTHE RISE OF ig 318 Krste, Oval Temple ca 20 with several dstinet terraces, The most fa ‘mous amang them, the great ziggurat of Ure [Name at Ur (ea, 2000 #.€.), was a stepped pyramid in three stages. (Fig. 3.21) The core wes of mud:brick, and the thick facing of baked brick was setin bitumen mortar. The approach was on the northeast side, Here, thee sta rcases led upward: one of them seat right angles to the building, the other two leaning against the wall. They con- verged in a great gateway trom which a Single fight of stars ran steaight up to the {door ofthe temple. None ofthe lines of the iggurat 's straight. The sloping walls are, fin addition, slightly convex, The wall line on the ground plan is similarly curved out- ward. These calculated diversions were in tended to correct the look of stifiness and tenervation that strict rectilinearity tends to induce in steutures of this size. ‘We must complete the picture of the Mesopotamian ziggurat with calor and some vegetation. At Ur it seems evident that the Upper terraces were planted with trees that formed verdant hanging gardens. Since ex posed soil at these points allowed damp- ‘hess to seep into the core causing the mud Dicks to swell, narrow sis or "weep-holes" were regularly cut through the baked:-brick ‘casing to drain the interior and prevent de- formed walls. The color was supplied by tiles, The earliest trace we have of this re finement is at Warka. Glazed bricks come ‘much later; they were widely used in the Assyrian period, the technique having been brought over tram Egypt where it had lone been known, (Once the ziggurat and its temple were complete, the remaining question was Would the god be pleased with it and come to reside there? It is the anxiety that king Solomon feels when the Temple he had built was ready for use: "But will God in. deed dwell on earth? Behold the heaven {and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee: how much less this house that | have builded” (I Kings 8:27). The hope isin rig- ‘orously upheld ritual. One false step on the part of the people or their rulers, any gross Iereverence or neglect of the proprietes, and god will abandon the city. The Moun. tain of Heaven, venerated and ascended in humility, will remain a beneficent tower reaching up toward divinity. Used for sin ister purposes, to reach the gods rather than reach up to them, it will urn into a tower ff enormity. To the inhabitants of Meso- ppotamian cities, the ziggurat had always a THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA been a ladder of humble reverence, a way to come into contact with the superhuman power that held the secret oftheir destiny. To the Jews who arrived on the scene with their own jealous Lord God, it was sacrile- ious. The 2iggurat c! Babylon became, for them, the Tower of Babel, an overweening, structure that God had no alternative but to imtereupt. Fig. 3.22) Palaces ‘This view of the Tower of Babel is of course that of a rival religion that sees in the ruins of the culture itis displacing the just de- serts of a wanton community. But internal re-evaluation of the viggurat in the course fof Mesopotamian h story is also evident From being the undisputed center of the ty atthe beginning, the ziggurat in time lost some physical prominence to other fo cal points of the urban fabric, the principal fone being the palac of the king. At one lend of Mesopotamia history, the king lives in the precinct of th god and may in fact bee the same person as the high priest. At the other end, during the Assyrian period, the tiggurat becomes a mere adjunct to the: king’s palace, which now completely dom= imates the cityscape. ‘Fig. 3.23) The stages of such 1 development ate not clear, i indeed they constituted a method- ‘cal process. At Ur, the famous ziggurat of the Thitd Dynasty slescribed above had Fig. 3:09 A aiggurat depicted on an Assy relict trom the palace =f Assurbanipal oF Nine eh, severth century. (Fragments inthe Br ish Museum, London, én the Louvre, Pais)A PLACE ON EARTH‘THE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA Fig. 323 Scetch plans showing the reavonship (of ziggurat and royal palace: (AI at Ur, ca. 200) cB) at Assur 2. TANO wc: (C) at Assur, 120) mc. and (0) at Khorsabad, ca 700 #.c. The lighter haiching indicates palaces; the darker -tching 2a, ae ; ti i | Fig 3.24 Man (Tel Horn, Syl royal palace, ca ’ / 150m. ground plan, 1 = sss functionaries and petitioners, was ap: proached through a devious, nonanial path from the only outside gate at the northeast Corner. Semicrcular stairs on the south side of this vast court led up to what may have been an audience hall. The public sector of the palace centered around the second court, immediately to the west. Its walls were decorated with paintings represent. ing scenes of sacrifice and the investiture lof the king of Mari by the goddess Ishtar The palace archives were kept in a room between the two courts. On the south side of the second court was the Throne Room approached by a magnificent set of stairs, ‘The private living quarters of the royal fam ‘occupied the northwest section of the 6 palace. Around a small court, with walls painted to imitate marble encrustation, it is possible to recognize bedrooms of lavish design and the king’s own hall. Adjacent to these royal apartments was 2 service wing Containing kitchens and bathrooms (one of them displays two terra-cotta tubs and a “Turkish” lavatory), as well as a school for scribes with rows of benches sil intact, leis not difficult to see the layout of the Palace as an elaborction of the private house. The organizing principle of 2 cen. tal court surrounded ty rooms isthe same, 50 isthe tightly sealed periphery with the single door from the outside and the non axial entrance path. (Fig. 3.11) But the size, mixed program, and security of the palacelimit the comparison. Hundreds of rooms have to have access to natural ight. The movement of servants and troupe must be kept separate from the royal path; the king's must be separate trom his public presence. And in is frame, the pal- ‘ce mus: be able to accommodate a variety ‘of functions related to the king's double ‘existence as a family man and head of state. In all this, the palace behaves as a micro- ‘cosm of the city, with its walls, residences, temples, offices, schools, barracks, work shops, and so on. But it has litle of the physical dynamism of the city-form, ite of its vital untidiness, litle of the sacial flexi bility of streets. 111 a regimented city, avast rectangle divided and subdivided into units ff orthogonal geometry, large and small ‘open and closed, ornate and plain. And the strict relation on paper of one cluster of these units to the next bespeaks a hieratic code of dehavior on the pat of the thou sands of users within, (Figs. 3:10, 3.24) The next complication in the relationship ‘of tiggurat and palace was thatthe ziggurat multiplied. At the Assyrian capital of Assur the main ziggurat had stood alone next 10 the Old Palace. But a double temple to Anu and Hadad (Heaven and Storm) between two squete ziggurats rose in time next 10 the larger New Palace. (Fig. 3.25, B and C) What is more, the ziggurat in Assyian hands became ard to climb. Means other than stairs and! ramps began to be employed, at the cost of the symbolism of the Ladder of Heaven. The two ziggurats of Anu and Hadad were presumably accessible only from the temple roof. At the same time, the ‘classic hierarchy of a deity as the overlord ff the city and the king as the steward of the divine estate had been upset as early as 2000 8.c. Some kings, for example those of the Third) Dynasty of Ur, were deified in their own lifetime and were adopted as pa- tron deities of vassal cities, ‘The final debasement of the ziggurat oc- curs at Khorsabad. This city was a royal As: sytian foundation, begun in 706 8.., and abandoned, unfinished, shortly alterward. (Fig. 3.25) covered 2.5 square kilometers {almost one square mile). There were two arched gates on each side of the square. guarded 2y stone demons in the form of hhumansheaded bulls. On the northwest side fone of the gates had been replaced by a APLACE ON EARTH Fig. 3258 Khorsabad the ancien Dur Shark Ira), Assyrian cy founded by Sargon I 221-705, ei plan bastion that served as a platform for the royal palace, Rather than being sur rounded by the fabric of his city, the king ‘now had his back to the city walls. The cit adel that contained the palace, ostensibly 8 point of last defense against an outside en femy as the ziggurat complex once had been, can also be construed as a ring of protection around the ruling monarch to ward against internal uprisings The palace at Khorsabad is similar in ‘general layout 10 that at Mari, The admin: istrative court of hon is here at the top of the plan, with the g eat Throne Room on the left. The entrance court is associated with a number of temples grouped along the west side. They were all served by single ziggurat that was like no other ex ample of this Mesopotamian building type Small and laced with recesses and crenel lations, it looked more like a fancy reli ‘quary than the robust manmade mountainTHE RISE OF THE CITY: ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN ASIA. Fig. 3.25b Khorsabad, citadel with royal palace; (of the cities ofthe plain. A continuous ramp wound around the exterior, from the base to the surnmit The approach to the palace was through the city, past the citadel gate, and across 2 large open square, A broad ramp which could accommodate chariots ran up from Further Reading J. R Bartlet, fencho (Guilford, Surtey: Lutter M.A. Beck, Alas of Mesopotamis (London and Thomas Nelson and. Sons, HH. Franklor, The Art and Architecture ofthe An ‘ent Orient (Harmondsworth and Balt Tne Biahot Cation in the Near East the square to the main gate of the palace One passed through it, crossed the first court, and through a small passage at the northeast comer was ushered into the court ‘of honor. This was an impressive, indeed terrifying, waiting room for those who had been granted a royal audience. The walls (Bloomington: Indiana University Pres S. Giedion, The Ftemal Present The Beginnings ‘of Architecte, vol. I {New York: Pan J. Hawkes, ed, Als of Ancient Archeology [New Yorks MeGraw-Hil, 174), ‘were revetted with stone slabs carved in relief. They showed the king and his cour Uiers, over life size, all facing toward the Throne Room. Once admitted through one ofits three doors, the petitioner or ambas sador stood in the brilliantly painted space of an oblong room. The throne, as at Mari, was set against one of the narrow walls, Its base was of stone ard carved upon it, asa suitable warning to those within who might contemplate rebellion and. to enemies without, was a relief showing King Sargon. the founder of Khorsabad, “in his war chariot above the bodies of the slain while soldiers piled up pyrimids of heads before him, The Throne Room at Khorsabad is a fit ting testimonial to the warlike Assyrian kings who had ruthlessly forged an empire out of the city-states of Mesopotamia and struck terror among neighboring people. With the slow erosion of urben integrity and of the allegiance of the cit: to a single superior deity, the palace as » building type arrives here at its grim apogee. It had started out as an accessory to the ziggurat—the ad ministrative headquarters and official res: dence of a pious king who supervised grain distribution, the mai tenance of dikes and canals, and the preventive rites. against floods and outside attacks. But the palace ‘grew at the expense of the ziggurat, as an increasingly autocretic sovereign ruled heavy-handedly over noth church and state And it developed, finally, ito a theater of absolute power and_ntimidation, the sym bol of a city whose picty now existed in the shadow of a fierce wir machine S. Lloyd, H.W. Muller and R. Martin, Ancien [A Parrot, Tomer of Babel rans, E. Hodson (New York: Philosophves! Library, 1 CL Woolley, fxcavatons at Ur London: &THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT The Lard of Egypt The ancient Egyptians were ie all likelihood an indigenous people, though they were not 2s isolated from the test of the Mediterra hhean world as it has sometimes been ‘aimed. From the beginning they traded ‘withthe communities of Western Asia ross the Sinai Peninsula, and with the ibyan tribes to the west across the Delta Trey imported cedarwood trom Lebanon and expoited the gold mines of Nubia (Eihiopia to the south, Asin Mesopotamia, the story begins with the village ile of farming and animal hus- bandry, in the highlands above the Valley, which was transformed in time into 4 sophisticated pattern of river settlements based on controlled irrigation. The polit ‘al authority that rose in the Land between the Rivets to oversee the network of canals and dykes functioned through a number of independent cities. Neolithic village hte along the Nile developed instead into two broad polities: Lower Egypt, which in cluded the whole Delta area until the neighborhood of Memphis, and Upper Egypt, southward from this point as far as ‘Aswan. tach had a separate ruler and 3 separate capital—Pe (Buto} in Lower Egypt and Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Upper Egypt. (Fig. 41) Then, atthe start of recorded his- tory, King Menes of Upper Egypt invaded the north and unified the country, an event which made a deep impression on the col- lective memory of the people of the region and became the pivot of political, and hence architectural, symbolism ‘This unification and the setting up of a ‘capital at Memphis coincide with the very tend of what we had called in the last chap ter the Protoliterate Period, that is, about 3000 #.c. By this time some basic schemes had already surfaced in the vernacular id om of reeds and mud—tor example, the battering of walls and plant-based up- rights—that will become standard features ff the monumental architecture to follow. (One of the most characteristic aspects of Egyptian culture is conservatism, of rather the balance it always sustains between in: novation and tradition During the Early Dynastic Period in Mes. ‘opotamia, Egyptian building displayed great advances. Beginning with impressive pal: aces and tombs in brick which leaned on the vernacular idiom and aggrandized it, the country developed an articulate stone ar- chitecture, the great examples of which, at Saqqata and Giza, we soon willbe looking at. Egyptologists reler to ths stretch of time {6 the Archaic (or Thinte) Period, roughly 3000 10 2665 0.c., and its sequel the Old Kingdom, down to about 2150 6c. It is marked by the emergence and consolida tion of absolute kingship. The indesteucti ble monuments that still tower over the riverscape south of modern Cairo were in tended to commemorate the rule of the pharaoh, divine and all-powerful, and to fensure the perpetuity of his cult. (Fig. 410) This unchallenged central power was dissipated towaed the latter part of the third rrillennium, but was reinstituted, after a spell of political and social chaos, in a: more tempered guise. In the period called Mi dle Kingdom, about 250 10 1570 8.c., power ‘was shared by provincial governors, or no- rmarchs, and the priesthood of important deities. In the bewildering crowd of local o gods and goddesses. each with his or her ‘own geographical sphere of authority, the royal cult in the Old singdom had stood out as the national religion that absorbed c« iegiate divinity and transmitted ts hope 40 the masses. Now the pharaoh had to ac knowledge the power of some priestly fra terities to act as intrmediary between the people and the protagonists of the official pantheon, headed Fy the sun-god Re and the tenily of the netherworld, Osiris, his Wife Isis, and their -on Horus. The king's funerary settings carne first to accommo- date his divine colle: gues more generously and, in time, their own temples loomed large on the banks oi the Nile. The actual flourishing of monumental temple architecture in Egypt, as distinct from environments of roy il burial and attendant practices, belongs "0 the so-called New Kingdom, especially setween 1600 and 1300 8.c. (Fig. 420) This period opened with the expulsion of an alien invasion force, the Hyksos people, out nf the Delta, which in volved Egypt in a new policy of conquest A vast Egyptian empire came to embrace ‘much of the Sudan and subject states in Palestine and Syria, There is no neat correlation inthe devel ‘opment of the first two literate cultures of the Near Fast; no historical coincidence of their high points ans! nadis. Ia the struc ture of their physica setting, in the build ing materials they used, in political orga nization and attitudes toward lite and death, the two regions are also not comparable. Although both were river environments disciplined early by a network of canals and dykes, Egypt's single river was never tur iiiFig 41 Maps Ancient Fayptbulent like the Tigris and Euphrates. 1 was a temperate, steady line of water, naviga- bile throughout, and subject to unfailingly regular and benign flooding. From July to October the low-lying banks were inun- dated, the waters leaving their deposit of rich black silt which could be sowed with lite plowing, This narrow strip of valley, the Black Land, was rigidly divided into fields, the boundaries of which had to be ce. established after every period of flooding. Egypt's early mastery of geometry and its ainity for the right angle (curved walls or circular buildings are almost unknown inthe ancient architecture of Egypt) owe a debs to this annual survey. The Nile in fact was the great axis. For 500 niles it sretched, the country’s hguid spine, a band of blue and arable green hemmed in by parallel lines of elf in Upper Feypt and fanning out further north to form the broader frame of the Delt. Beyond, to east and wes: was the Red Land, the desert, death. Except for the Delta folk, most Egyptian: knew no citcular horizon, Things ran along the Nile, mostly north and south, for at right angles to it, in the direction of the rising and setting sun. Orthogonal planning came naturally both in the field division of the Black Land and in the de- sizn of cities. We have only to compare the tangled leyout of later Sumerian Ur with the strictly orthogonal “pyramid city” of Se: Sostris (1897-1878 fc.) at EI Rahn, its insin streets running precisely north-south, to grasp the dilference between Mesopo- tamian and Egyptian order. (Figs, 3.10, 4.2) ‘Ths difference is between an organism that ‘grew loosely through time in response to paters of mixed use, and the predeter- ‘mined plan of EI Kahun, laid down at one time, with standardized buildings grouped Into special zones—brick row houses, often ig. 4.2 Ckahun Lower Egy, the workers town atthe pyramid site of King Sessts I (097-1078 The Top, te pan. wih pyramid indicated 3 te far Fett andthe valley temple with ite causeway tthe for right, jst ek the town mide, plan OF the excavated section: botiom, 2 detall pan ff the northwestern strip, showing, worker housing te the let—the darker lines indicate house types—and the ampler quater for gov cxnment oficial tothe right THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT 69| back to back, for the workers and cralts: imen, a quarter of large mansions for gow temmen’ officials, and the enclosed com pound ‘or the king next to the northern wall This is not to say that Egypt was without its orgaric urban clusters, expecially i older cities like Thebes or Memphis, of which Unhappily very little has survived. But geo metric master plans are unique to Egypt at this earyy date. There were the so-called pyramic cities created by individual phat= ‘ohs, like Sesosiris Il, to house the work force of their burial complex, the priest hood of the royal cult, and tenant farmers: and the string of planned fortress towns builtin Nubia by the kings of the Twelth Dynasty, The earliest hieroglyphic sign for “province,” or nome, was a rectangle di vided irto four by intersecting lines: the sign for “town” showed a circular enclo- sure around an orthogonal street system or a dominant cross-ais. Even a seemingly random arrangement lke the capital of King Akhenaten, Amarna, reflects its sensitivity toward the river axis by having three main arteries that run inline withthe bank curve, ‘fig. 43 The lineat stretch of the land is perhaps ‘evoked in one other aspect of the buil en vironment. Egyptian design conceived of major architectural programs as a series of episodes along a predetermined path. The pyramids of Giza appear today like three splendic objects in mid-space atthe desert ledge. In fact, they were the culmination of an architectural sequence that began at the west bank. New Kingdom temples were themselves channels of passage like the river along which they stood, (Figs. 4.20, 4.22) The grea: pylons may have encapsu: lated this correspondence by ther form —a central trough above the entrance and ‘massive flanking towers, hike the rock clilfs that bounded the rivotvalley. The clus tered columns of the courtyards and hall, with the r plantinspired capitals, conjured up Nile groves. ‘Once again, the comparison with Meso: potamian temple precincts 1 instructive, (Figs. 3.14, 4.19) At the ziggurat compound ‘of Ur, a number of independent buildings, ‘each with its own boundary wall is grouped tidily, but with no unifying axes, The zig: ura itself has three approach stairs that eet ata single gateway some way up the PLACE ON EARTH, northeast slope. At Karnak, thé temple of ‘Amon marshals all iis component units slong a straight path, and a cross-axis that takes off halway down the middle of the south flank leaves the precinct of this cen- tral group to line up with the Mut complex to the south, Even within the experience of 2 single temple unit, Khataje on the one hand and Luxor on the other, the headlong, course of an Egyptian axis is distinctive (Figs. 3.18, 4.18) Not only is the Mesopo: tamian axis bent, but the terminal sanct ary space, an oblong transversely laid in felation to the ditectional line of the ap- proach toward it, slows down the momen tum of the sequence. At Luxor we ae pulled deeper and deeper toward the core of di: Vinity asthe spaces along the axis constrict, beyond the courts and the level rises, heightening through physical means the wonder and privilege of heading toward the holy of holies. Inne sense, everything along the banks was linked to everything else by the Nile axis. That was the major highway of the ‘country. It brought together the villages of Upper Egypt and the cities of the Delta it ‘artied northward the granite of farott As- wan, and the fine limestone of Tura upriver to southern building sites: and for the lowly fellah it provided food and also the build ing material for his house and boatmaking needs—reeds and plants, and silt for daub- ‘ng walls and stiking brick. The river's ‘majestic calm and the reliable perioicity of its behavior must have projected a setled, eternal order. The Nile flooded when it was expected to, several crops were raised, then fame the dry season, and then, with un- failing regularity, the Nile flooded again, as ithad for centuries, and the cycle was re- peated. Such ageless. patterns have no. foreseeable end and present no choices. It 's not surprising that the Egyptians of an- tiquity should stake their all on a belief in Unrated stability, on a wold view in which death was not 2 final thing but merely the passage to another region where, speaking not 100 metaphorically, the Nile flooded and crops were raised and the dry season came and people did what they always did and hhad about them what they always had: the pharaoh according to his station, the hum= ble felah according to his. One's tomb was Tike one’s house, but built to last for eter: nity: its forms logically recalled, through 70 direct imitation oF symbolic shorthand, the architecture ordinary residences, palaces, and even city walls. Funerary art, Ina literabminded way, provided magical replicas of the buried person's wants and possessions. In this, 100, Egyp' is very different from ‘Mesopotamia. When King Ur-Nammu dies, there is sorrow and weeping throughout the land. The “wail of Sumer” reaches him after ‘many days in the dim and sad netherworld, The walls of Ur which he started are left Unfinished; the new palace is unpurified; his wife is left behind and he can no longer press her to his bos.im. The Egyptian Book ff the Dead has no such worries about ‘death, Fig. 43 Amara (Upper typi, the new capital of King Akhenaten (1791362), ighteenth Dynasty: diagrammatplan of layout, showing the flationsip to the Nile an the course ofthe ames " 2KILOMETERS. ‘(© King N! You ate not gone dead, you are gone alive. you go in, you come out while your near is gad in the lvoe of the Lord of Gods. Ht se happe%s that you te again... Your oul Ul not be kept away from your body.» » You receive wiat upon earth You Rave wate, you Sreathe the at, you dink to your hears con: Not surprisingly, for the first fiteen hundred years of its existence as a high culture, Egypt was obsessed with the pres tervation and provisioning of the dead body It lavished its finest efforts to that end, on the theaters of the afterite, It put up mon: ‘umental tombs, often built of lasting stone loshich, in contrast ance more to Mesopo- tamia, was plentitl), and decorated them prodigiously. Much Fgyptian ritual, as well as the development of 2 masonry architec: ture unsurpassed in technical skill and the ‘evasive ingenuity of is design, was moti vated by the belief thatthe corpse must be spared disturbance and its material needs ‘must be supplied, so that it could continue fig. 448 Abydos (Upper Fayph, royal tumulus tomb of First Dynasty (ca. 00-2000 se re construction drawing fig. 44b Seqaara Lower fgypt, mortuary Com ples of Qeeen Hemeith, Fist Dynasty, recon THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT to function normally forever. And no corpse was more privileged in this respect than that of the god-king, The Burial of Kings At firs, after the unification of Egypt and as a consequence of it, the pharaoh was given 4 double burial. As lord of Upper Egypt, he was buried symbolically at Abydos, 300 miles south of Cairo, a site sacred to the god of the Underworld, Osiris, and the ancestral home of the early kings. The actual body ‘was laid to rest at Saggara. ‘The cenotaphs of the early pharaohs at Abydos consisted of a subterranean cham: ber roofed in timber and topped with a hheap of sand contained within a brick shell (fig. 44) Stelai were set up outside to mark the place for offerings, and beyond a low precinct wall the king's family and mem bers of the count were buried in mastabas, small tumulus graves with a casement of brick. At Saqqara the royal tombs were more complicated. The busial pit, cut into native rock, comprised, in addition to the burial chamber, a number of subsidiary rooms holding the owner's valuable possessions (On this system was erected a large rectan- gular structure, as much as 9 meters (30 feet) high, with an intricately panelled brick ex: terior coated with white lime-stucco and painted with geometric designs. This su- perstructure enclosed rooms where sup- plies were stored for the use of the de- ‘eased, The recessed exterior and the layout ff the rooms were meant to stand for the actual palace of the king: consonant with the old Lower Egypt custom, the king was considered buried under the floor of his house. Two other features make their appear- ance during the 250-year development of these early dynastic tombs at Saqqara: a small mortuary temple on the north side, and a wooden boat alongside the tomb 10 Carry the pharaoh across the heavens. For everyday he would accompany the sun-gox Re on his voyage trom east to west and at night in the opposite direction, through the Underworld Zoser's Pyramid Complex ‘The Saqgara tomb of one early pharaoh, Zoser, that dates from about 2680 &.c., is n remarkable in several ways. (Fig. 4.5) It is larger and more elaborate than any before it—a vast scheme, and exceptionally not ‘organized on the Egyptian principle of axial sequence. Is architecture develops the ‘most insistent symbolism of the pharaoh as the sole ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt there are twin tombs, double-court build- ings, matching mock palaces. And all this, is done in stone—the first interpretation of the brick, timber, and plant forms of Eeyp= tian arehitectuee in the hard medium of Tura limestone. The structure actually constitutes a tech- nological revolution. This prodigy of ma sonry construction seems to have no par fens. Teale features announce the infancy of ts technique. The blocks used are small throughout, more in the measure of brick than cut stone. Upr ghts, molded in emu- lation of tree-trunk pillars or bundles of reeds, are not freestanding but always cau- tiously engaged to walls, and like them built ‘of regular masonry «ourses rather than of stacked up drums, Even so, the achievement was epochal and was credited by antiquity to the archi tect Imhotep. His narne is inscribed in one ff the rock-cut galleries of the stepped Pyramid where he is reterred to as being first after the king of Upper and Lower Egypt." He was reveced later for his great wisdom as an astronomer, magician, and healer, and as healer he was deiied, In this we have one more fact that sets Egypt apart from Mesopotamia. We know of no Me: sopotamian architect by name, The credit for conceiving public buildings and for su Pervising their consiruction went 10 the king, In Egypt, the execution of sacred or prestigious public works elevated the of tice ofthe architect stead of forcing it into ‘obscurity. We know something at his ‘working methods from a handiul of archi tectural drawings that have survived. The design process would appear to have com- bined a simple overall geometric system and the use of a set moclule to derive the di ‘mensions of the building, The stepped pyranid which contained Zoser's body stood cin high ground in the ‘middle of a vast rectangular terrace about 550 by 275 meters (1.800 by 900 feet). The high wall with recessed paneling around the terrace and the bastions that imitate tow: ‘ered gateways make it probable that Im-Fig, 46 Zoser compen, entry hall wo, 3 on Fig hotep wanted to conjure the walled city of Memphis, not just the royal palace. The only real entrance is at the southeast ‘comer of the enclosure. It leads into a long corridor lined with two rows of hall-col ‘umns engaged t0 spur walls. (Fig. 4.6) The columns carry a stone ceiling, cut to re semble rounded logs, which rises highe than the roof ofthe flanking compariments allowing for clerestory slits, This is proba by the earliest known case of clerestory lighting. The shafts of light here may have fallen on statues set in the compariments representing, possibly, head deities of the ames oF provinces of Egypt, oF Zoser himself, or perhaps double statues of Zo set and a nome-god. At any rate, the num ber ofthese compartments is 0 close to the standard numberof forty-two provinces that it has been suggested thatthe central space between the colonnades stood for the Nile with the sudden doubling of the columns 2 the end oppo Beyond the cortidor lies a large court, at the southwest comer of which isa building Cf nearly solid masonry: it probably served a: the offering room for 3 large mastaba hidden within the western enclosure wall THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT Tig, 47 Zower complex, dummy chapel in Heb Sel Cour no. 6 on Fig. 43 This secondary tomb may have repre sented the usual royal cenotaph at Abydos, or else the actual burial place of the king's entrails, which were customarily removed from the corpse before mummification. Or it may have been a dummy tomb for the he king during the Heb-Sed, a jubilee festival that celebrated the reconsecration of his reign. This fest: val included a race that proved the king's Fenewed vigor and was probably assoc ated with fertility. He ran i accompanied by the priest of the souls of Nekhen,” namely the prehistoric kings of Upper Egypt, and carrying a flail, the implement that is used to thrash grain. Two hoot-shaped markers fn this court may have had something to do with this ritual race AA second important ceremony ‘enactment of the kins’s coronation, is pro vided for in a lower court, north of the en. trance corridor, The area is entered skit ing an unusual, curved wall. On either side fof an oblong court stand dummy chapels dedicated to the norve-gods of Upper and Lower Egypt. (Fig. 4.7) As in réal ile, s0 too. In his death the king would have to obtain their consent, ane by one, for a new term fof office; he would then be crowned, on separate daises at the short ends of the court, with the cone-shaped white crown lf Upper Egypt and ‘he caplike red crown of Lower Egypt A pair of smaller courts further north stood betore mo buildings representing the king's “white” and “red” palaces. Thein the attached chapels whose columns Carry lotus and papyrus capitals, which were the emblems of Upper and Lower Egypl, respectively, The re two buildings is found plants tus (or ly) and papyrus plants around a stake driven into the ground was « high: (ON EARTH The stepped pyramid lies to-the west of thisd Along its north side were the mortuary temple, where the offerings wuble palace were presented, and the serdab, a small ‘seated statue of Zoser and built of solid masonry except for two holes to enable the image to look out This statue and were considered reliable substitutes dead body in the event of its destruction The body lay beneath the pyramid, ina franite sarcophagus chamber, oF rather a shaft, cut through virgin rock and entered from the top through Initially, a simple stone mastaba was placed lover it. This mastaba, enlarged three times in the course of construction, became the lowest stage of a four-stepped pyramid Then the pyramid in turn was enlarged to- ward the north and west, and the stages increased t0 six, bringing the total height {0 62 meters 204 feet What prompted the transformation of the raditional mastaba into this unique pile of stone? We do not, of course, know for ee tain, Whi something more than rendering the tomb the desire to monumentalize ty above the perimeter wall and be scaled against the expanse of the west bank. But hese six unequal stages also gave a sense climbing, of aspiration, an effect visually close to the Mesopotamian ziggurat. The ble stats for human ascent, and nothing at the top—no shrine or architectural climax ture that sublimated the holy person of the king and lifted him heaverwad to the realm ol the sun-god Re The pharaoh’s relationship to Re was in jeached. It was a struc fend of the Old Kingdom, the two were completely identified with each other. The main cult center of Re was at Heliopolis, just north of Memphis that of a son to his father. By the and the most sacred relic (of his temple there was a pyramid, or cone shaped stone, the benber, symbolizing the primeval mound on which the sun-god first revealed himself at the creation. The com 1usion inescapable that the stepped pyramid stood for this mound of creation Whose summit was the resting place of the sun, In addition, it was probably thoueht of spell in the Pyramid Texts says was to be laid ut for the king divine ascent, which a ‘that he may mount up, ramids of Giza To etherialize the sticase and to make the royal tomb a worths symbol of the sunlight that brings Re and nis son the pharaoh to gether—these aims may have been the Cosmic reasons. fcr the subsequent at tempts, costly and laborious, t0 transform Zoser's staged scherne into a true pyramid The process took time and some exper mentation. Zoser's Siqgara complex and the famous pyramids 0 Giza are separated by more than 2 century. In between, transi tional solutions were tried at Meidam and Dahshur. (Fig. 4.9) An intial stepped pyra mid at Meidum, 3¢ miles south of Mem phis, had is sides filled in at some late nd the whANTECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYP Tura limestone. Furthermore, the arrange ment of the subsidiary buildings set the pattern for all the later, true pyramids, in cuding those now surg alo sell-contained layout of Zoser’s pound. The mortuary temple was moved to the east side. From here, a slop way reached out to a valley temple closer to the ev The dead body would be brought by boa za. This arrangement 3 and connected with it by a canal to this building at the edge of the sown. washed and puritied; then it would be em balmed (or perhaps its prior embalmment re-enacted) and subjected to a magic rte falled “The Opening of the Mouth” that enabled the king 10 speak once more and to enjoy offerings. At Dahshur, there we two pyramids, probably built by the sam king, Sneferu. Both were planned from the start as true pyramids. One was executed that way: the other, the so-called Bent Py amid, seems to have been completed in haste after the king's death, with the orig inal 52° angle of incline (which later be. came standard) reduc abruptly halfway up toward the summit At Giza, there are three separate pyra mid complexes, the atest, that of Myke nos, being tve smallest. (Figs 4.10, 4.11) The oldest of the three, trat of Cheops, son of Sneferu, has the largest pyramid, 137 me- ters (450 feet) high 3° present and another10 meters originally. But the pyramid com: plex of Chetren is the best preserved, with his extrsordinary valley temple intact, and, ‘next 10 i, the noble form of the Sphinx, 2 * recumbent leonine body welded to the portrait head of the king wearing the royal hheaddress, perhaps the best-known mon- ‘ument in the world, Directly infront of the Sphinx, to the east, was a temple dedi- cated to Harmakhis, an aspect of the sun- god; arranged around a rectangular court paved ia alabaster was a continuous clois- ter that held twenty-four columns, proba- biy an allusion to the sun's daily journey, and two axial niches, east and west, that marked the journey's axis. The temple was ‘entered from the east by 1wo doors, The same entrance scheme holds for the better-known valley temple next to it (Fig 4.12) Between its two doors probably stood the serdab for the king's statue. Going in, Cone encountered, first, along vestibule and, then, a T-shaped hall set in an enormously thick casement of masonry. It, 100, had an alabaste: floor which reflected the light that ‘ame in through sits set in the upper parts ff the walls and the underside of the fat roof. Against the walls stood twenty-three statues of Chetren, representing the dei Cation of individual organs of his body. The walls, which have a pronounced batter wore faced with red granite from Aswan, both inside and out; of granite too were the massive piers and the flat roof they sup- ported. The masonry, for once, does not ‘emulate natural forms oF mean anything else, but is content to display its own su- rb geometry and the clean abstraction of square uprights and lintels. From here the body was transferred to the mortuary temple via the covered causeway built on a rockspur that bridged the depression between the Sphinx group and the pyramid. The walls ofthe causeway were ‘sure to have been decorated with paintings and reliefs whose subjects, judging from a later example that survived, would include Fig 417 Giza, the pyramid groups top. peneval site plan middle, etal plan of the Chelren compen, showing the monuary temple, the ‘ausenay, the valley temple, and the Spins with the atached temple of Hormathis; bottom, 2 Pyramid of Cheops the APLACE ON EARTH aFig. 412 Giza, valley temple of Cheiren; i the actual construction ofthe project, such as the transport of columns and. archi traves, the craftsmen fashioning objects of gold and copper, the tiling of the rayal festates, processions of servants. bringing provisions to the tomb, and hunting and fishing, The mortuary temple began with a T- shaped entrance hal of two separate units an open court followed, which was sur rounded by a cloister, and on its west side five narrow openings, each with a statue of Chetren, could be counted, possibly rep resenting the five official names assumed by she king on his accession. Beyond thi court, whch also had statues against the broad piers that defined it, only priests could proceed. At the innermost sanctu ary, they would lay down daily offerings for the sustenance of the royal body that lay beyond, inthe heart of ts stone mountain Tre pyramid of Chetten is relatively sim: ple within. That of Cheops, the Great Py amid as itis known, has a more ingenious arrangement. It was surrounded by wooden Solar boats in pits (one of these boats was THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYP! found in 1954), three small pyramids for ‘Cheops immediate family, a mastaba for his mother Hetepheres, and to the east and west of the enclosure wall, an orderly cem: tery for his court, the comparatively min tte mastabas lined in strict parallel rows like ranks of soldiers at attention ‘The entrance into the pyramid is on the forth face, a litle east of center, (Fig. 4.17 From here a corridor descends through the core and into native rock. It ends in a chamber that was to contain the body be fore the decision was taken to bury it within the pyramid proper. The Queen's Cham: ber, a misnomer that endures, was con: structed for this purpose exactly midway between the north and south sides, not far from ground level, and the Ascending Cor: Fidor was cut to reach it from the initial corridor, beginning ata point about 18 me- ters (60 feet) from the entrance. Then there was another change of plan, possibly to thwart spoilers and thieves. The Grand Gallery was tun as a continuation of the Ascending Corridor, a splendid passage of polished limestone that rises in seven sec: tions corbelled forward, It led to the King's Chamber, the final resting place of Cheops. Built entirely of gran te, this Chamber had 2 curious supersiruciure of five compart ‘ments above is flat ¢ ling, to relieve some of the weight that must rest upon it There are no extan‘ Egyptian records that tell us of the construction methods of the Giza pyramids, and 1» scholarly agreement fon any aspect of the subject. Did the core rise first, with the aid of a colossal earth ramp, of a system of such ramps, that rose with i, and the casing of Tura limestone applied Subsequently, working downward? ‘Or were the casing s ones placed first, be- veled to the exact incline angle and set on 2 truly level plane, anu this frame then filled Wwith the core blocks? Were hard stones like granite quartied at this early age, or only loose boulders used as they were found lying on the ground? Did the conveying of these blocks, a single one of which might weigh as much as 200 tons, involve wheeled vehicles at all, oF only sledges dragged over 4 way paved with balks of timber? Whatever the exact details, the feat was epic, M eniailed clearing and leveling the site perfectly on the desert bed; surveying this site with measuring ropes of palm oF flax fiber to obtain a pertect square: exactly orienting the four faces on the cardinal points without the holp of magnetic com: passes; quarrying millions of stone blocks and transporting them on the Nile and over land, sometimes for hundreds of miles Iiting them to heights that could exceed 120, meters (400 feet), and this without pulleys and dressing them moticulously with stone land copper tools. Then, there is the question of labor, A regular work force cf skilled masons and craftsmen and their assistants, housed near the pyramid, was urdoubtedly occupied full-time during the span of construction Additional men wer probably levied to transport the blocks ‘etween late July and late October, when the Nile flooded and the population was large y idle. But we should fefrain trom seeing the pyramids as the re pressive fruit of slave labor. The satisfac tion that ancient con nunities derived from working on monuments of propitiating and hopetul faith, ike Stonehenge or the zig fgurats, may be difficult for us to under stand in the age of labor unions. It was eal nonetheless(Upper Egypt, the mor 1c, Hleventh Dynasty, and Queen Hatshepsut And the pyramids of Giza were monu iments of hope. Today we are fascinated by their size, the precision of their masonry work that eschews the use of mortar, thelr Fecondite at. But to the kings of Egypt and the Old Kingdom millions who accepted them as divine, the pyramids were the sole efficacious link between themselves and the realm of the gods, not abstract curiosities They reproduced architecturally a cosmic truth that called 10 mind the creation and its eternal guarantee, the rising and setting sum. In several statements of the Pyramid Texts, the earliest preserved body of rel A PLACE ON EARTH ‘on the right, ca, 1500, Fighteenth Dynasty: view gious literature carved on the walls of royal tombs, the pharaoh is described as using the rays of the sun, in place of a staircase to ascend to Re: "I have trodden these thy rays as a ramp under my feet whereon | mount up to my mother Uraeus on the brow of Re.” Heaven strengthened the rays ff the sun, we are told, to facilitate this as It seems likely, then, that the Giza pyra mids—these awesome masses of stone- were monuments to something immaterial and gossamer, the rays of the sun. They were the visible proot for the people who llled the benign lang that the universe was ordered, their welltbeing and safety vouched for. To us, stripped of their re fective limestone vasing and the gold overlay of their capstones, the pyramids seem relentlessly earhbound, broad-based and massive, stone mountains. But to their ‘emanating trom, and leading the way to, the sun. More than two thousand years betore Christ, these shimmering specters of the desert that focused te long band of water and field that was lgypt proclaimed the truth of the promises "lam the light of theworld... He that believeth in me, though he were dead, shall never die The Time of the Gods ‘The Giza pyramids were never surpassed nor rivaled, since indeed the theocratic ab- so utism of a Cheops or Cheiren remained unreachable, Then, the gods were afraid of the king: “He is the Great Mighty One that hhas power over the mighty ones... His duration is eternity and his boundary ever hastingness.” Atter the term of the three Gia kings, their immediate successors felt it necessary to enhance their pyramids tings at Abusir with separate sun temples in honor of Re. Laid out like the pyramid complex itself, with a small chape! by the water and a causeway, the main feature of these temples was an open court contain: {ng an obelisk mounted on a podium, the sacred symbol of the sun-god. While the integrity of the royal tomb that had spoken a1 Giza of the oneness of Re and pharaoh was thus being sundered, the tomb’s scale Shank and the quality ofits workmanship deteriorared. At the same time, the mot- tucry temple was growing bigger and was beginning to compete with the form of the pyramid proper In the Middle Kingdom, when stability was restored after a century of social tur moil that undid the old order, the pyramid ‘came to be engulted by the mortuary tem: ple, if was there at all. The pyramid did rho: even hold the real tomb, which had -meved elsewhere within the complex. The femphasis had clearly shifted from the vi sual glorification of the ruler to the pious fies ofthe burial cult, and these were now dominated more and more by the new chiet deity of tne national religion, the sun-god Aon who had transcended and absorbed the authority of Re. By the time of the New Kingdom, the pyramid was na longer a royal prerogative, Debased and popularized, it continuee to dot the cemeteries for cen tures, well into the Christian era, Deir eb-Babri We can appreciate how far funerary archi- tecture had evolved since the days of the Giza kings if we look atthe arrangement of ‘Mentuhotep's tomb, a Middle. kingdom prince frem Upper Egypt instrumental in THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT fending the civil war and reuniting the country about 2050 #.c. At the time of -Mentuhotep, the capital was at Thebes, and the burial compound was within the west bank necropolis, situated against the stately clittbay of Deir el-Bahr. (Figs. 4.13, 414) The valley temple is now gone, as is the unrooted causeway, lined with statues of the king, which once led to the main group, below the blutl. The group consisted of three elements: a large forecourt planted with tamarisks and sycamore figs; a ter race, cut out of the rock, on which the mortuary temple stood: and a narrower uni further west, made up of a court and a hy- postyle hall, which was lodged into the clit, ‘The temple was a squate building faced externally with colonnades, except on the clif side. It was approached by a massive ramp that cut through a double colon: nade; the colonnade masked the terrace ‘embankment on the side that faced toward the forecourt, In the center of this out- wardelooking temple square was a solid Stone platform that probably supported a pyramid: or else the platiorm iselt, with ‘out a pyramid, may have emulated a prim- itive Theban sanctuary of this form be- lieved to have been the primeval hill abode fof the local god Monta. In either case, the king's share of this central space was ‘marked only by a cenotaph. His real tomb lay deep ia the cliff, approached by a long, ‘underground tunnel that started inthe small ‘court behind the temple and ran under the hhypostyle hall. The hall was really a re- markable room that held eighty octagonal columns arranged in ten rows. It © the ancestor of the multicalumned wansver hall of the New Kingdom temples in which the central row of columns in line with the longitudinal axis is taller than the rest to admit clerestory lighting Its of course significant that cliff burials had been common in Thebes for local no- rmarchs. Iti also significant that the entire scheme of Mentuhotep was oriented to: ‘ward the newly started temple of Amon across the river in northern Thebes, the modern Karnak. The king's architecture hoped to satisfy the provincial aristocracy and the priesthood of Amon, the partners, of his authority This landscaped, terrace architecture was adopted in the larger and better-preserved Undertaking next to it, that of Queen Hat 79 shepsut (1503-1482 ».c.). We are dealing with a much later period, more than five hundred years in faet—a monument of th New Kingdom. Obviously indebted to its folder neighbor, it taxes the compromised supremacy of the pharaoh a step further The pyramid is absent from the Queen's funerary complex. The royal person was not less prominent in her own tomb architec: ture than the divine presence of Amon. Partly this has to do with the special cir- ‘cumstances of Hatshepsuts accession, She was the first woman to wrest the male throne of Egypt, and she held onto it for twenty years. This unusual and precarious position created the added urgency to demonstrate nearnes: to the gods. Beyond the search for legit macy, however, the surrender of royal ascendance to the high deity of Thebes, and thus, toa degree, also to his powerful priesthood is unmistaka- ble. By now the temple precinet at Karnak had grown to impressive proportions, as We will soon see. The way to the Queen's fu nerary complex started there. (Figure 4.15), Indeed, the great god issued from his tem= ple during the Feast ofthe Valley to visit the ‘mortuary temples of the earthly kings that were now lined up along the west bank facing him. He crossed the river on his barge as the dead care out of their graves to greet him. The meuary temples were built large, to provide for these divine vis: its. Hatshepsut's express instructions to her aechitect Senmmut were to ereate an earthly palace for Amon reminiscent of the myrrh terraces of Punt, the mythical homeland of the gods. A dificult expedition was sent out to Punt, now probatly what we know as Somaliland, to bring back mytrh trees for the terraced gardens of “the paradise of ‘Amon. The story of the expedition is de- picted on the walls of the colonnade of the second terrace, between @ chapel of the jackalcheaded Anubis. lord of cemeteries, and another of Hathor, the cow goddess associated with both love and death. This Colonnade consists © two rows of square pillars. Immediately above itis an unusual Colonnade, with great painted statues of the Queen in ‘the guise nf Osiris standing in front of square pillars. It forms the facade ‘of the temple proper, a large hypostyle hall with an inner sanctuary cut deep into the cliteke 6 Fig. 18 Dav elha, temps of Mentuhotep and Hatshepsut; axonametne drawing wth plans selected levels.81 WeNihiodThe lowest of the three terraces is also faced with a colonnade, this one with an ‘outer row of piers and an inner row of six teer-sided columns. (Fig. 4.16) A straight axis runs through the entire staged layout, leacing trom the valley temple to the fore: count first by means of an avenue of sphinxes and then by ramps up the first wo hardly on in such tere mersional. 1 architecture reappear as one climbs along its axis. The relating line of Egyptian sequences, often laid out in the slat land, was now made to ‘ise toward the bounding clift-screen of western Thebes. The Egyptian stone masses srardly set in vast open spaces at Saqgara and Giza—stone-built structures played against the land—were here welded to the rockscape as if nature were an extension of Senmut’s design Karak and Luxor In Thebes itself, “the Mistress of Every City ‘Amon, was supreme, The New Kingdom capital par excellence, Thebes had raised itset from a modest provincial existence to beirg the center of government and the national religion. Amon was installed here in splendor as the principal dety ofthe land and the divine strategist of the policy of expansion sm triumph against estine and, under Ramses It (13041217 a against theie great rival, the Hittites of Minor. War booty and the tribute of sub- iugated peoples poured into Thebes and ‘was pul To use to glorify the name of Amon and his roval wards with a monumental en Viroament worthy of this golden age. The victorious kings continued to build funer ary settings for themselves on the west bank land to enlarge the layout of the original Midile Kingdom temples of Amon at Kar ‘nak and Luxor on the east bank The resi ea may have been pri marly in the west, between the river and the ‘ow ot funerary temples. The houses, ff varying size and splendor, are not now ble, but from representations. of them and information gleaned trom other excavated sites we have a fai idea of their character. (Fig. 4.17) Modest residential Streets held row houses whose main fea: tures were a court, a broad hall which A PLACE ON EARTH. Thebes, 2 sweet, ca 1500 8) econ perspective drawing 82served as the main living space, and at the rear a kitchen with an independent st ‘ase that led to second-storey bedrooms and the terrace above. Richer families might have a basement for weaving looms and might use the terrace to store grain in bins Facades were brightly painted and topped by balustrades of interwoven palm fronds, windows had mullions and transoms, and tracery in the lower half. It was an outgo- ing street architecture, not involuted and street-shy as were the houses of Mesopo- tamian cites. On the edges of town and the surrounding countryside, villas set on large independent plots had their own gardens THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT ings such as granaties and Chariot houses. The broad hall, sing higher than the periphery and thus provided with clerestory lighting, was a shared feature of wealthy and more modest houses; 30 was the shaded portico on the south side of the court taking advantage of the prevalent north breeze. The two temple compounds on the east bank, Karnak to the north and Luxor which ‘was known as Amon’s “southern harem, had their own mud-brick enclosure wall. They were linked with one another by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes. Between the two enclosures stood the palaces and administrative buildings. The temple com- pounds and ther dependencies sheltered the attendant staff, thousands of workmen ‘ceaselessly adding and altering, hundreds ‘of thousands of -atle, orchards, boats, and workshops—for these New Kingdom sane: twaries were social and economic centers whose administrators wielded power con: sonant with the .vealth of their holdings. ‘The great temples at Kaenak and Luxor as we see them tcday were the product of many hundreds of years’ work that gradu- ally extended tre ‘original axis and en hanced the periphery. Farler cult temples, Which are to be sstinguished trom mortu- Fi. 418 Luxor, temple of Amon, Mut, and Konsu; plans of two main stages of its devel ‘opment: left, the temple atthe time of Amen hotep UF SI7—1579 wc, ght, with the weld tons of Ramses (1304-1217 8.) 83 Tues Shree mentors 2 ber Sorctuary 3 Hyposiye Fall & Reesor 5 Precessonal Cobrrose 5 Pitr Ferre 7 Forecourt 8 PinTHE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT : . ary temples and the special open-air tem / ples of the sun like those at Abusir, have Feft scant remains. They were modest in Scale and of no standard disposition. They lltezed from the others in the fact that they ‘variably housed the statue of a deity, 2 small wooden figure often sheathed in gol. The Middle Kingcom temples of Karnak and Luxor, impossib|: 10 reconsteuct today, be= longed to this category ‘The standard New Kingdom temple may hhave been originated under Amenhotep il (1417-1379 6.c:) tor the fest eeplacement of the eatly temple at Luxor. The type com- prises three part: the inner sanctuary for the cult statue, the boat that transports it to other temples, and vessels and imple ‘ments relevant 10 its care; the hypostyle hall; and an outer forecourt for the public, entered through 2 pylon, The tripartt scheme is not urlike the layout of the Iyp- ical Egyptian hovse, with a reception ves- Uibule and court at the front, the broad l= ing room in the center of the house that parallels the hypostyle hall, and the private apartments at tte back that parallel the Sanctuary. The New Kingdom custom of honoring the dei'y by adding to his or her temple came to mean multiple pylons and courts in solemn progression, so that mov ing along the axes of Amon’s temples at Karnak and Luxcr one trod both a ritual path, from the most public spaces to the holy of holies, and a historical path, from the most recent reigns, the Ethiopian and Ptolemaic dynasties, through the New Kingdom, 10 the oldest foundation that marked the site as sacred, ae fig. 419 Karak, temple of Amon (Di) and Ws ste 12), at the end o! ts long history. The main stages of his develooment can be followed i the preceding drawings, The lefthand column shows the main adations to the temple Hell the right hand column eecors the appearance of psp eral structures: (A) the complex atthe time of Tathmosis 1 (525-c1. 1512 me); the addition ofthe Fesival Hal and the small temple to Amor ReHerakhty at the ‘me of Tuthmoss IN (304 1450 0.c1); (©) addons during the next one hundved years—the new hypontye hal forthe temple of Amon, an the completion othe uty sidiay temple groups of Mont (ta the north. ast and Mut (the southwestAmenhotep Il’s temple at Luxor, ded: cated to the Theban triad—Amon, his wife Mut, and theie son Khonsu—consisted of an elaborate inner sanctuary, a hypostyle hall ‘open in its entire width 10 a large fore court, and beyond the pylon of this fore court, a processional colonnade—two pat allel tows of huge papyriform columas, fourteen in al, ining the main approach to the temple. (Fig. 418) On axis with the in ner sanctuary, some distance to the north of the temple, stood a small shrine in gran- ite ouilt several decades earlier by Tuth: mosis Il (1504-1450 a,c the original Middle Kingdom temple, ur doubtedly paralleled the river bank. Begin hing with the forecourt of Amenhotep I's temple, however, the axis was noticeably bent eastward, in order to bypass the Tuth mosis shrine and pick up the line of the av This axis, set by ‘enue of sphinxes leading to the northera ‘compound at Karnak A.century and a half alter the completion ‘of Amenhotep’s temple, Ramses 1 added northern court to it, with porticoes on all four sides. In tront ofits massive pylon he set up colossi of himself and two obelisks flansing the entrance gate. This court was, shaped asa parallelogram to account for the ben! axis of the temple, and it incorpo: ated the Tuthmosis Ii shrine on the inner face of the pylon [At Karak the site seems to have been hallowed since the Old Kingdom. Of the Mudie Kingdom temple, some remains can be recognized toward the re sent complex. (Fig. 4.19) Under Tuthmoss H525=c. 1512 8.) the architect Ineny en: closed this temple within a perimeter wall he added an entrance court surrounded by Columns and statues of Osiris and pre- ceded by a pylon (V), a hypostyte hall with cedar columns, and another pylon IV ‘marked externally by two obelisks; The habit ff setting up this ancient symbol of the sun god Re of Heliopolis, who had now been absorbed by Amon, may have started here Inecy describes his services in full on the walls of his tomb, of the pre- to make in Kenak, erecting hall with columns, fa the double doorway of the temple I supervised the erection othe great A PLACE ON EARTH seat door leat is of A sich Shortly therealter, to the east of the new temple, Tuthmosis ll constructed a Heb: Sed jubilee complex, the Festival Hall. The 86 long reign of this warrior king had been dominated a it start by hs formidable step sister and wite Queen Hatshepsut, Her stamp at Karnak can still be seen inthe two lbelisks she had! put up in the hypostye hall ff Tuthmosis I, which necessitated the refig 421 Thebes, the avenue of ame sphioxes leading Irom the Nile to Pron Io the ‘Amon temple moval of its wooden ceiling. Behind the Festival Hall her husband also provided for 2 small temple to the rising sun, Amon-Re- Herakaty, with an eastern gate facing the Theban sunrise. The Karnak axis was now 2 full eecord of the solar path. The eastern- ‘most gateway was “the Upper Door of the Domain of Amon,” the station tor the ris: Ing sun at the first hour. It progressed through the Herakhty temple and across the Festival Hall where two chambers, to the rhortheast and southeast, housed the ter Festal and Solae aspects of the eternal cy- cle of rejuvenation. At the point in the in rer sanctuary of the main temple where Amon's cult boat stood, the sun reached the ninth hour, entering the “Field of Reeds’ the region where those blessed in death lived in perpetual spring. In the transverse: hall between Pylons VI and V, the sua was at the tenth hour; atthe hypostyle hall, at the eleventh hour. Beyond Pylon IV the daily Fath was completed with the setting of the sun at the twelith hour. To celebeate in the 9pen this solar course, Tuthmosis I had a rectangular Sacred Lake dug south of the temple and parallel to it, looked over by a giant granite scarab representing Khe- pi the sun growing toward noon, THE ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT EGYPT In the next century the temple axis at Karnak was extended westward with two new pylons {Ill and Il) that held between them a new hypostyle hall, one of the most remarkable achievements of Egyptian ar chitecture. At the same time, two subsii ary temple groups were developed 10 the orth and south of the Amon complen, dedicated to the original local deity of Thebes, Mont, and to Amon’s consort Mut, respectively. Between the Amon complex and the northern group of Monta stood a sanctuary to Ptah, the god of the fold capital of Memphis, a Middle Kingdom Structure of brick and wood rebuilt in stone by Tuthmosis Il. The southern group of Mut, with its own trapezoidal girdle wall was connected with the Amon temple by means of a processional way that entered the central precinct through a pylon in the south enclosure wall and passed through three more pylons before reaching the Amon temple at a point just east of the new hhypostye hall ‘The main processional way started at Luxor and rap straight until a point close the Mut compound. There it forked, wit ‘one prong going southeast to the entrance (of this compound and the main prong con. 87 tinuing toward the central group. Where it met the enclosure wall of this group, Ramses Il (1198-1167 8.¢.) raised a small temple to the romaining member of the Theban triad, Khonsu. One last proces- sional avenue ra. from a landing dock on the Nile to the frincipal western entrance fof the Amon pres inet, The purpose of these sphinx-bordered ‘monumental alignments came to the fore during the Feast of Opet when the holy family left their oficial residence at Karnak for a visit to the “southern harem,” The jobject was the yearly mystical marriage of Amon and Mut. it was a solemn, colortul ‘occasion. The ro:al house, the priesthood fof the various ceities, and the common people who arrived from all over partic feC pageant which used the ples themselves, and the processional avenues for a peripatetic ser vice that assured the lane’ fertility, The cult boats of the thre» gods were taken out of their chapels and carried through the tem piles to the landing dock where they were loaded on resplendent Nile boats for the shor sail to Luxor ‘Amon’s boat was kept in the central ‘chapel of the Kartak sanctuary, flanked by ‘wo courts of offering. Ater prescribed rites, at which the kin: presided, thirty priests wearing hawk anc! jackal masks carried the boat on their shoulders, first through the hall of records, passing between two mas sive granite pillars which were decorated in high relief with the heraldic plants of Up: pper and Lower Egypt, the lly and papyrus, (On Pylon VI, whi they crossed next, the wartior king Tuth nosis Ill was shown wore shipping Amon "at the ninth hour.” Be- yond 2 transverse vestibule and Pylon V, they passed between the obelisks of Queen Hatshepsut in the old hypostyle hall and then through Pylcn IV and its two obelisks that had terminated the initial New King. ddom temple of Tuthmosis I and his archi- tect Ineny. ‘i was a this point that the congregation may have waited (0 hail the boat as it en- + tered the great hyposiyle hall. (Fig, 4.20) Light filtered through the stone window ratings of the clorestory into the central Unit, a nave marked off by huge sandstone columns with papyrus capitals on which the ceiling rested, and! two aisles whose lower ‘columns supported! the clerestory. The forest of columns on the two sides of this central unit and the boundary walls be- yond were decorated with scenes showing the pharaoh in the presence of deities, It was in this hall that New Kingdom phar fohs were crowned, hence its designation {8 “the Hall of the Two Crowns.” But it was sc known as “the resting place of the Lord ‘of the Gods . .. the place of appearance ‘at his annual feast.” ‘The sailboats which were to tanspor the holy family were probably helped along with ropes pulled by members of the proces sion moving along the avenue of sphinxes. (Fig, 4.21) There were six way stations be: fore Luxor, each marked with a chapel. Upon arriving at the temple, the proces: sion filed through the pylon of Ramses I passing between the two obelisks (whose ligament withthe entrance was not exact, pprooably in order to conceal their unequal height theough the effect of perspective) and two seated colossi of the ruler. (Fig 44.22) More statues of him were to be seen fon the south side of the forecourt. The shaits of the papyriform columns and the walls themselves, both inside and out, were Crowded with scenes in sunk reliet. On the outside they had a martial character. The famaus battle of Qadesh against the Hit tites (1300 8.c.) occupied the face of the pylon, Within, the subjects dealt with the Feast of Opet, showing sacrificial scenes and the procession itselt—members of the royal famly and priests bearing offerings, the sacrificial animals gaily beribbones and painted, and a file of priestesses about to passthrough the pylon. Pest the forecourt, the space narrowed and dimmed. Probably leaving behind some ‘of the congregation, Amon’s train moved between the two rows of columns tower: ing above it as through a shady grove. (Fig 4.23) The capitals, in the form of open pa- yrs, flared out toward the top, ata heist ff about 15 meters (50 feet from the floor, enhancing the sense of overhead shelter The long directional passage and the bright dayl ght glowing at its end propelled one forward. One emerged into the brillant sun fof the nest court as into a clearing. The ‘open space was bordered on three sides with double rows of columns with papy rus-bud capitals, their ceilings painted blue like strips of sky on which were embla zoned the name crests of the pharaoh. The A PLACE ON EARTH inaly had se colossal statues ot Ramses and two fourth side led directly into the hypostyle hall its entire facade open toward the court The trapezoidal shape of the court strengthened the perspective toward this facade. Inside the hall, where thirty-two columns were lined up in four transverse rows, the feeling was of a crowding and closing up. ‘Once more, as they had started atthe in rer sanctuary of Kaenak, the priests alone now cartied the sacred burden beyond the hypostyle hall, leaving it through a single doorway in the rear wall. The ground rose under their feet, the ceiling height fel, daylight was left behind, They. passed through a small transverse hall and then through two square rooms one ater the other, the southernmost being the repost tory of the cult boat. The statue of Amon was deeper in, in a room behind the boat chapel and separated from it by a trans verse vestibule. A single beam of light fell upon it from a slot in the ceiling, A seated image of enormous proportions, the statue 88 Tight obelisk was ken nineteenth centry and would be daiy administered to by its priesthood, fed and clothed, and appeased ritually. For in the contentment of Amon rested the land's hope for the benevolence fits rulers, the glory ofits armies, and the Continued plenty of the Black Land Survival of the Egyptian Temple The primacy of Amon and his priesthood was never successtully challenged in the New Kingdom. A religious and. political revolution by Amenhotep IV or Akhenaten 1379-1362 9.¢. that attempted to replace Amon with the cult of the sun-disk Aton did not outlast the