architectural productions to be found anywhere. They are examples of
long-continued perseverance and patience, and can only be the result
of a preconceived design which must have been thoroughly studied in
all its elaborate detail before the first stroke was given toward
its realization. The unity of conception and execution exhibited in
such works is truly wonderful, and it is not astonishing that the
superstitious natives should attribute their creation to Visvakarma,
the heavenly architect. On the other hand, there are but few practical
lessons to be learned from their examination. Such methods are not
possible in our day, nor if so, would they be desirable. Architecture
of this kind is scarcely more than wholesale sculpture, and as such can
in no sense compare favourably with the grace of form and scientific
construction which we see in the works of Greek and Gothic artists.
The Pagodas are the most important of the buildings constructed with
jointed materials. They consist of vast enclosures containing numerous
religious and domestic edifices. There are often double or triple
series of enclosing walls of great height and thickness. The sides are
usually placed so as to face the points of the compass and each contains
a monumental entrance, richly sculptured, and adorned with bands of
embossed copper.
The chief buildings within are the temple proper, or vimana, and a
number of hypostylic halls with small sanctuaries dedicated to different
divinities.
The form of the vimana differs in the North and South of India. In both
cases it is pyramidal, but while in the Southern temples the plan is
rectangular and the elevations marked by a series of horizontal stories
and mouldings, in the North the exterior surfaces are convex and the
outlines curved, showing vertical instead of horizontal divisions. The
lower story, containing the idol, is usually a hollow cube of granite,
and serves as a base to the pyramid above, which is most frequently built
of brick with stucco facing.
The halls are composed of a great number of columns of varied design,
placed in parallel rows. The ceilings are formed by stone beams or slabs
resting upon the columns. The central aisle is frequently wider than the
others and is roofed over by a corbelled vault.
A tank of sacred water surrounded by an open colonnade is not uncommonly
placed within the enclosure, the waters being used by the infirm for the
healing properties which they are supposed to contain.
The pagodas of Tanjore, Combaconum, and Madura are among the finest and
most celebrated. They were built between the fifth and eleventh centuries
of the Christian era, and should hardly, therefore, be described among
the ancient buildings of the world, were it not that they are linked in
with the chain of the older Indian art too closely to be separated from
it.
In the period corresponding to the Middle Ages of Europe, Mahometan
architecture was introduced in India and many beautiful buildings were
erected in a new style blending the foreign art with the native ideas
and taste, but offering a marked contrast to that which preceded it.
Although China was one of the oldest of civilized countries it contains
but few monuments of great antiquity. The temples and palaces, being
built of wood, were exposed to fire and decay, and were often pulled down
and rebuilt. With the exception of the great wall and of the numerous
bridges crossing rivers or arms of the sea, there are no important stone
constructions to be found there.
The latter are formed of huge granite piers, spanned by massive stone
lintels, requiring the united labour of thousands of men to convey them
from the quarries to their destination and to set them in place. In the
mountains the ravines are bridged by iron chains suspended from cliff to
cliff.
The great wall was built as a frontier protection, and extended the
entire length of the boundaries of the country. It has always been kept
in repair, although obviously absurd as a fortification in modern times.
It is of great thickness, and upward of twenty feet in height. The
foundations are of stone, and the upper part of brick with stone facing,
the joints of which are extremely accurate. At short intervals there are
towers, placed so that the middle distance between any two is within
arrow-shot.
Chinese wooden buildings are all much alike, whether temples or palaces.
As a rule, they have but one or two stories; they are surrounded by
porticos, consisting of wooden columns mounted on stone bases, without
capitals, which are replaced by a species of bracket. The roofs
project considerably, and their angles are turned up, this form being
undoubtedly borrowed from the old tent habitations, which were composed
of hides stretched tightly on bamboos. The tiles with which they are
covered are semicylindrical in shape and are enamelled with bright colour.
The celebrated taas, or Buddhist towers, are of similar construction.
They are generally octagonal, and from six to ten stories high. Each
story is set back from the one below, and has a balcony and projecting
roof, with bells hung in the angles. The walls are covered with tiles or
paintings. A high staff is placed on the top and connected with angles of
the roof by chains.
The tower of Nankin, known as the Porcelain Tower, was the most famous.
It was erected in 1431, and but recently destroyed.
The Chinese have always excelled in artificial or landscape gardening. In
this work they build airy bridges, with open-work balustrades, pavilions
highly ornamented and enriched with painting and gilding, and boundary
walls with circular openings, disclosing vistas of great beauty.
Their commemorative gateways are of interest, as they have a central
opening and a smaller one on each side, like the Roman triumphal arches;
the heads are square, however, with brackets in the corners. The upper
parts are ornamented with figures in relief and inscriptions recording
the virtues of persons to whose memory they are dedicated.
Although communication existed between China and the countries bordering
upon the Mediterranean from remote ages, Chinese architecture, like
the Indian, was without influence upon that of Europe. It is only in
Western Asia that the first forms of building are discernible, which
were subsequently imitated or followed in European constructions. The
most important of these are situated in Mesopotamia, the fertile region
comprised between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
The political histories of Assyria, Babylon, and Persia are generally
treated separately, but the architecture of each belongs to one style,
which may be called the Assyrian, for its distinguishing characteristics
remain the same in all the great cities which were in turn the capitals
of reconstructed kingdoms and empires.
It may be considered in four chronological divisions: In ancient Babylon,
from 2234 B.C. to 1520 B.C., at Wurka and Mugheyr; in Nineveh, from
the fourteenth to the seventh century B.C., at Nimrod, Khorsabad, and
Koyoundjik; in the second Babylon, during the seventh century and after
the capture of the latter by Cyrus in the year 538 B.C., in Persia, at
Persepolis, Passargadæ, and Susa. A renaissance of the art may be traced
in Sassanian buildings erected eight centuries later.
The citadels, palaces, and other important structures of these cities
were usually built upon artificial mounds or terraces, strengthened by
massive walls. The materials used were bituminous bricks,
cemented with bitumen, slabs of gypsum anchored with copper nails and
bands, and timber for roofs and columns. Stone and gypsum or alabaster
were employed in Nineveh and in the cities of Persia. In Babylon the
only available material was bituminous clay, and consequently all the
buildings there were built of brick. At the present day nothing remains
of these but irregular mounds, from which but little can be gathered
toward an understanding of what their appearance was when entire.
Wood was probably used to a great extent, and was naturally most easily
destroyed by the fire of invading armies. The roofs, formed of thick
layers of earth carried on beams, in falling in, buried the lower
portions of buildings, and it is probably due to this fact that the
bass-reliefs have been preserved.
The surfaces of the bricks were frequently enamelled in colours, and the
wood-work was probably brilliantly painted, as traces of pigments have
been found upon the more durable materials.
But little was known of Assyrian art prior to 1843, when the excavations
of Botta, the French consul at Mosul, followed soon after by those
conducted by Layard, brought to light many ruined buildings, in which
bass-reliefs, inscribed stones and metals, and other important relics
were found, enabling historians to form a consecutive account of the
government, warfare, and arts practised by a people whose
cities have lain buried and whose very name has almost been forgotten for
over two thousand years.
The explorations were made in Nimrod, Koyoundjik, and Khorsabad. The
palace of Asshur-bani-pal, erected at Nimrod, in the ninth century B.C.,
is situated upon a terrace, or platform, approached by a wide staircase,
and preceded by two gates decorated with winged bulls.
These winged bulls, or lions, were placed as the guardian deities, at
the portals of all the great Assyrian palaces, after the manner of
the Egyptian sphinxes, not standing isolated like these, however, but
built into the masonry, one side or the front and one side only, being
carved. The head was human, with long beard and hair, and surmounted by a
helmet, the wings large and proportioned to the body. As Sir Henry Layard
remarks, it would have been difficult to find more fitting symbols to
express at once the wisdom, power, and ubiquity of a supreme being.
The chief apartments of the palace are a large assembly hall, 152
feet in length by 30 feet in width, and a number of smaller chambers
and banqueting-halls, ranged around an open court. The walls of the
great hall were decorated with bass-reliefs, representing triumphal
processions, carved upon slabs of gypsum eight feet in height.
The palace of Esarhaddon, erected in the seventh century, on the same
terrace, contains a large hall, 165 by 62 feet, divided in
its length by a wall, surmounted by a gallery of columns. One of the only
well-preserved ramps which has been discovered was that leading to this
palace.
At Koyoundjik, opposite Mosul, the palace of Sennacherib was found at
the Southwest corner of a mound a mile and a half in circumference. It
contained a vast number of courts and halls, decorated with bass-reliefs
and winged bulls, and two colossal statues.
The palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, erected in the year 704 B.C., is among
the best preserved. Like the others it is placed upon an artificial
terrace, enclosed by a wall a mile long on each side. It was defended by
a citadel of eight towers with doors flanked by winged bulls. The palace
was reached by a long, narrow passage leading to a court and entered
through three great gates. The bulls of the central portal were 19 feet
high. On each side were two bulls, 13 feet high, with the figure of a
giant strangling a lion between them.
The halls and chambers were grouped around two great courts measuring
about 350 by 200 feet. The hareem formed a separate set of buildings, as
did also the stables and outhouses. The walls were of great thickness,
evidently for coolness. They were decorated with slabs of alabaster,
enamelled tiles, and designs painted on stucco.
There has been much speculation on the method of roofing these rooms,
some believing that circular vaults were employed and others that wooden
beams, supported on wooden columns, similar to the stone ones found in
Persian palaces, were used for this purpose. The latter theory seems the
more probable, as the local manner of building is the same as this at
the present day. No traces of columns remain, however, and the spans are
in many cases too great to be roofed by single pieces of timber. One of
the most interesting discoveries made at Khorsabad was the gate of the
city, the jambs supporting a semicircular arch over a span of eighteen
feet. The gate was a double one having two separate passages, one for
vehicles and the other for pedestrians: the marks of chariot-wheels still
remaining in the pavement of the former. The sides were ornamented with
winged bulls, and the archivolts of the arches were decorated with blue
and yellow designs in enamelled tiles.
It had been long supposed that the Etruscans were the first to make use
of the true semicircular arch (_i.e._, formed of wedge-shaped stones or
bricks, with joints radiating to a common centre), but this discovery,
and the finding of pointed arches in the sewers of Babylon, by Layard,
places the date when both these expedients were known, at a much remoter
period, though even these are probably much later than the examples found
in Egypt.
No complete example of a Chaldean temple has been found, but there are
several the lower stories of which are sufficiently well preserved to
give an accurate idea of their size and details, and in the
tomb of Cyrus at Passagardæ, in Persia, we have probably a model on a
small scale of one of these buildings when entire. This tomb consists of
a platform of six steps, eighteen feet high, surmounted by a rectangular
chamber. The latter has a doorway and a ridged roof abutting against
pediments.
It has been surmised that all the temples were like this, consisting of a
chamber or cella built on the summit of a several-storied structure, each
story being either concentric and reached by a ramp winding around the
four sides or placed farther to one side than that immediately below it
and approached by straight flights of stairs.
The oldest is probably that at Wurka, dating as far back as 2000 B.C.,
known as the Bowariyeh. There are the remains of two stories, the lower
occupying about 200 square feet. It is probable that a third story or a
cella was placed above these, but nothing positive can be said on the
subject, owing to the extremely ruinous condition of the building. The
temple of Birs Nimroud, probably identical with the tower of Babel, is in
a more satisfactory condition, the upper story having been preserved by
a process of vitrification. The lowest story occupies a square measuring
272 feet on the side, each of the upper ones, of which it is supposed
there were originally six, being 42 feet less.
For the materials used in its construction we have the scriptural
authority: “Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they
had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar” (Gen. xi.); slime
being probably bitumen.
M. Place discovered the remains of a tower at Khorsabad, with a winding
ramp, which he thinks was originally seven stories in height. The walls
were strengthened with buttresses and decorated with sunken panels,
and from traces of colour found upon them it has been supposed that
each floor was painted in a different hue. The area covered by the base
is about one hundred and fifty square feet, and the total height was
probably one hundred and thirty-five feet.
The ruins of Persepolis are the best preserved of the ancient Persian
buildings, those at Susa and Passagardæ being in too bad a condition to
offer much that is interesting.
They are situated in the plain of Mardacht, upon a terrace partly formed
of masonry, and partly cut in the rock of the adjoining range of hills.
The wall is composed of huge blocks of stone fitted together without
mortar, but with the finest of joints. The terrace is reached by a
splendid double flight of steps, upward of twenty feet in width, and on
a grade easy enough to permit of the passage of long processions without
interruption. At the head of the stairs is a propylæum, or outer gate,
flanked by colossal human-headed bulls. Beyond this, a second staircase,
ornamented with a triple row of bass-reliefs, gives access
to the Chehil Minar, or great hall of Xerxes.
This building occupies a rectangle about three hundred and fifty feet
long by three hundred in width. It consists chiefly of a central hall and
three lateral porticos, the roofs of which were sustained by 72 columns,
36 in the hall and 12 in each of the porches.
Thirteen of these are still standing, and the position of all the others
is well defined by broken bases or shafts. They are of two different
kinds, the one having a capital composed of double-headed bulls, and the
other a capital with volutes, not placed horizontally as we see them in
classical columns, but vertically and resting on a complicated series of
mouldings. These last may have been also surmounted by the double-headed
bulls, as without such an addition the columns are shorter than the
others, which measure 67 feet 4 inches. The beams which they sustained,
rested upon the body of the bull between the two heads.
The shafts of the columns at Persepolis are fluted and taper upward from
the bases, which are elaborately ornamented with mouldings.
It is probable that the Greek Ionic capital was derived directly from the
Persian voluted model, as the order originated in the Greek colony in
Asia Minor.
The Chehil Minar is the finest building on the platform, the other halls
of Darius and Xerxes being smaller, and though a hall containing 100
columns has been found, it is inferior in height, the total altitude not
exceeding twenty-five feet.
The hall of Darius contained sixteen columns, forming a square, preceded
by a portico with eight more. The walls have long since disappeared, but
the façade of the building is reproduced upon the face of the rock-cut
tomb of Darius in the neighbouring hill called Naksh-i-Rustam, so that a
restoration of the structure as it originally appeared is easily made.
This tomb shows the four front columns of the porch with double-headed
capitals, sustaining an entablature, above this is placed an attic
decorated with bass-reliefs and a figure is represented standing on the
top in the act of sacrificing on an altar.
The stone buildings of Persia are generally supposed to be reproductions
of the wooden constructions of Assyria, as the character of the art is
similar in both, the bass-reliefs and winged bulls of Persepolis being
practically identical with those of Nineveh.
We find no traces of Assyrian art for several centuries after the
erection of the buildings just described, though it is probable that it
had influence in all Eastern edifices erected during the interval, not
only in Asia, but in Greece and later in Byzance. There was evidently
a revival of Assyrian taste during the dynasty of Sassanian kings who
reigned between the third and seventh centuries of our era. The remnants
of their palaces are found at Firouzabad, Al Hadhr, Serbistan, Ctesiphon,
and Mashita, where we find large halls vaulted and domed and ornamented
in a manner directly traceable to the ancient buildings in Assyria. The
chief peculiarity of these structures lies in the use of the horseshoe or
elliptical arch, which is found nowhere else. The porch of the Tak-Kesra
at Ctesiphon consists of a great elliptical tunnel-vault, 115 feet deep,
85 feet high, over a span of 72 feet.
There is more or less Roman influence in the details of the Sassanian
palaces, but it is not altogether certain whether the knowledge of
domical construction which they exhibit was derived from, or was not
itself parent to, Byzantine art.
Comparatively little is known concerning this Assyrian style, but it
contains interesting elements, and it may be that its constructive forms
are susceptible of a greater development in our own time.
Asia Minor, Palestine, and Cyprus are fields covered with the evidences
of the glory of past ages, but the ruin and desolation everywhere is
complete. The case of the temple of Jerusalem, where not one stone
remains upon another, applies in most instances in places which have
formerly been great cities, filled with magnificent buildings which were
their pride in the day of their prosperity.
The temple of Solomon was situated upon Mount Moriah, and was built to
accommodate the Levites, to offer a place of assembly for
the people, and as a temple for the worship of the priests. The two
sanctuaries were richly decorated with polished cedar and gold, with
columns and cornices of bronze, and divided by linen curtains embroidered
with purple and scarlet.
The peculiar formation of the hill upon which it was built, required
immense walls of the most substantial character to be raised from the
valley below to enlarge its summit, so as to afford sufficient space for
the erection of the various courts. “It was built of stone, made ready
before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer, nor axe,
nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building” (2
Kings vi., 7).
The temple itself is supposed to have been 60 cubits long, the porch
20 cubits, the Holy place 20 cubits; the width was 20 cubits and the
height 30 cubits. The porch, however, was 120 cubits high. (The cubit is
estimated to equal from 10 to 20 inches.)
The temple underwent several profanations, and at last was utterly
destroyed in the reign of Jedekiah by Nebuchadnezzar, 580 B.C. After
laying in ruins 42 years, the foundation of the second temple was laid
by Zerubbabel and in breadth and height was double that of Solomon’s.
This second temple was plundered and profaned by Antiochus Epiphanes,
and afterward rebuilt by Herod. It was considerably larger than its
predecessor and was made of marble and of the most costly
workmanship. It became the admiration and envy of the world, but, as our
Lord predicted (Mark xiii., 2), it was completely demolished by Titus,
A.D. 70.
Many restorations of the temples of the Greek colonists in Ionia
have been attempted, but they are based on historical descriptions,
inscriptions on coins, and other uncertain records, and are too
conjectural to be accepted as accurate. There are, in fact, but few
architectural remains sufficiently well preserved to be of interest to
the architect, excepting the temples at Baalbek and Palmyra which are of
the Roman period.
There are several groups of tombs, the most important being in Lycia.
These are of interest, as they illustrate more completely the transition
between wooden and stone building than any other examples. There are
two kinds, the one consisting of sarcophagi standing isolated, and the
other of excavations in the mountain-sides. The former are composed of
a stylobate or pedestal, serving as a base to a coffer ornamented with
uprights and cross-pieces and panelled doors imitating exactly a wooden
original. The roofs are curved, having in section the form of a pointed
arch, being probably the earliest instances of its employment as a
decorative feature.
The tombs cut in the face of the rock are of a similar description,
having the same carpentry framework. The upper parts are terminated by a
low pediment or by a row of stone logs supporting a horizontal moulding.
Later on during the Greek occupation, these wooden forms were abandoned
and replaced by porticos of the Ionic order.
In various parts of Asia Minor, there are remains of tombs similar to
these erected by the Pelasgi and Etruscans, which will be described in
another chapter.
IV.
GREECE.
The oldest architectural works in Greece are those erected by the
Cyclopes or Pelasgi, a race who came originally from Lycia, and moved
gradually Westward, peopling successively the islands of the Grecian
Archipelago, the Peloponnesus, Sicily, and Italy. At Tiryns and Mycenæ,
in the province of Argolis, are to be seen the most remarkable remains
of the buildings of this people, which were always grouped together in
walled cities, serving as strongholds to protect the inhabitants of the
province from the wild tribes with whom they came in contact. These
cities were generally placed upon a rocky eminence, difficult of access
and commanding a view of the surrounding country.