| Near Eastern Architecture |
Stone and timber were rare in the alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; so Mesopotamian Architecture was necessarily based on the use of clay brick with an outer skin of often highly colored glazed bricks, exemplified by the Ziggurat at Ur (c.2500 BC). Farther up the Mesopotamian rivers in Assyria, stone was available, but it was used primarily as a wall covering to be decorated with Bas-Relief sculpture and inscriptions, from which much of the knowledge of Assyrian history is derived. The architecture of both the Babylonian (c.1900-c.1550 BC) and the Assyrian empires (c.1100-612 BC) was based on massive brick platforms raised above the floodplain and often further terraced to give the characteristic ziggurat form. The ancient Persian Empire (538-333 BC) adopted these features and supplemented them with the extensive use of columns, as in the palaces at Persepolis (518-c.460 BC) |
|
|