Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/875

ARCHITECTURE. open aiul of stone masonry. A few are sepnl- clirnl temples, sueli as the Raniessenni (q.v.) of Ranieses II. at 5Ieclinet Habu. liut with these exceptions they are purely temples to the gods. Each temple of tl.e usual type was approached through a long avenue of sphinxes or statues, vas preceded by an immense facade of pylons connected with an encircling wall, with an open columnar court, at the opposite end of which was a hall of columns forming the prelude to the dark inner sanctuary. This is undoubtedly the earliest conception of a large columnar interior in architectural liistory, and though its propor- tions may be heavy, the composition was artistic and imposing, and both .sculpture and color were used with architectural details to enhance the etTect. Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, and Philje are the master])ieees over a period of some fifteen hundred years (for illustrations of Edfu and Luxor, see those titles). Xo vaults, arches, or piers were used in any part of this architecture — only the straiglit lintel and column. The heavy columns, of so many forms as to rebel at any classification by orders, were placed very close together, so that the eliect was not one of spaciousness.

Babyloma axd Assyria. Babylonian architecture is less known, but there is enough information about it to show that it reached its full development as an art long before the Eg^y-ptian, and that while the latter remained isolated, Babylonia stood at the head of a long architec- tural genealogy: for Elam and Assyria literally copied it; Persia, the Ilittites, and Phceniciana and other nations borrowed from it. and its induence was felt even to China and India. There could be no sharper contrast than that which exists between these two primitive architectures. In Babylonia vaults and arches were used in place of straight lintels and flat ceilings, and there were no long lines of eolunnis, and consequently no larger interiors than could be secured by the span of a single dome or tunnel vault; brick was used in place of stone, thus increasing the heavi- ness of walls and proportions. The Babylonian style appears to have existed at least (iOOO years B.C.. and to have lasted without essential change until the time of Nebuchadnezzar. The temples had no large interiors, but were stepped pyra- mids, remarkable mainly for their great height, their external mass, and the brilliant coloring of their receding stories, faced with glazed tiles. Only in the royal palaces did the Babylonians excel, creating a t-pe which the Assyrians de- veloped with numerous halls and chambers grouped around three main courts. The palace at Tello. the temjiles at Erech and Ur. give the usual types; but the excavations at Xippur and Babylon Sre disclosing other sjilendors. Mean- while the better preservation and more thorough study of the Assyrian ruins enables to judge somewhat of the details of the earlier style. The temple observatory and the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad were destroyed by some great catas- trophe — probably by fire — when they were still occupied, perhaps at the time of the fall of Xineveh; and not only their plan, but also a large part of their structure and decoration in sculpture and color, can be reconstructed. Still, the Babylonian-Assyrian ruins suffer by compari- son with the Egvnitian. from their poor preserva- tion, largely du« to their easily disintegrated brickwork.

HiTTiTK.s AND PiicE.xiciAXS. The Hittites, the rivals of both Egypt and Assyria, were great builders; like the Egyi)tians, they used stone and were constructors of forti-esses. Of their temple architecture little is known; but their palaces — one of which has been excavated at 8en- jerli and another at Boghaz-Kiii — appear to have been of a type similar to the Assyro-Baby- lonian. Their works were scattered from the confines of Assyria to the Syrian coast and as far northwest as the interior of Asia Minor. Of the architecture of the Phcenicians very little re- mains; they also built in stone, and like the Hittites used at first the Cyclopean and poly- gonal masonry. The great " fortifications and ports of Arvad. Tyre, Sidon, and the colonies of Africa and Italy show that the utilitarian side of this architecture was more developed than the religious; for the temples themselves were but small shrines, none of them equaling, appar- ently, the temple of Jerusalem in size and splen- dor, though the actiuU work on this temple was done by Phoenician artisans and artists. The -Egean Style. It was the migrating Pelasgic tribes of Asia Minor, the Mediterranean islands, Greece and Italy, whose works formed the first link between these early architectures of Western Asia and that of the pre-Hellenic and Hellenic world, forming what is called the -Egean style, which flourished mainly between c.2nnn and 1000 n.c. The cities of Crete, as Cnnssus. and of other islands, of Troy and other cities in Asia Minor. Tiryns. Mycenic. Argos. and others in Greece, besides many early Italian cities, such as Norba and Lignia, show how im- pressie and rugged a style of construction was combined by these races with a delicate and varied decoration, especially in the bee-hive domical tomlis (ilycena-. Tlioricus. Vaphio, etc.) in the royal palaces, which were as important in their way as those of the Assyrian kings. PER.SIA. The second connecting link was Per- sia. Its great palaces and tombs at Susa, Per- sepolis (q.v. for illustration), ileshed Murgab, and Pasargadte, with monuments from Cyrus to Artaxer.xes, show the influence of Egypt in their great columnar halls — though they are far more spacious and light than the Egj-jUian — of Baby- lon and Assyria in the use of brickwork, sculp- tured colossi, and friezes of reliefs in the curious double-animal capitals and the enameled tiles. From Lycia and the Greeks of Asia Minor came the high stone basements for their structures, the flutings of their columns, and many details. The hall of Xer.Kcs at Persepolis is more than twice the size of the great hall at Karnak, and shows how- such columnar interiors, once introduced into Western Asia, were ajjpreciatcd and devel- oped. The later dynasties of Persia — both Parthian and Sassanian — threw ofT many of these foreign elements in a tendency to return to the brickwork, the domes, vaults, and arches of trily Oriental ty]>e. as can be seen in the palaces at Sarbistan. Firuzabad (q.v. for illus- tration), and Ctesiphon.

Greece. Meanwhile, even before the rise of Persian architecture, the fJreeks had originated the Doric and Ionic (for illustration, see these titles) orders in all their essential features. The temple, which is the one central figure in this architecture, appears to have developed out of the main hall of the Pelasgic royal palace, as it is seen in Crete, Troy, Tiryns, and Mycense,