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Mesopotámic architecture.
The mesopotámic Architecture is divided in Chaldean and asiria; two different
regions between the Euphrates and Tigris, but a same architectonic evolutionary
line. Soon, in the orbit of the Architecture asiria, can consider to the Persian
like a last reflection his, enriched and shining Architecture. Almost as remote
as the Egyptian, the Architecture heats and soon asiria completely
presents/displays different characters and until opposite; they are evolutions
that can be contemplated like parallel bars but that they stay always distant.
The clay gave its structural forms and direct rising in massive and staggered
towers that raised in search of coolness or they were closed in protective
cupolas of the sun and rain. A capable water distribution turned launching slips
and terraces suspended gardens. Those are these general aspects that, possibly,
appeared in the Architecture of the Chaldean cities. The Chaldean or Babylonian
period is considered that it lasted of about 3.000 years; of 4000 to C., until
the conquest of Babylonia by the asirios in 1257 to C. The Biblical city of Ur,
those of Tello, Nipur and Babylonia were the main centers of this first
mesopotámic Architecture where today only are little clay rest and knolls of
which they were towns and palaces. The asylums towers, or "Zigurats"-mountains
-, they are perhaps most characteristic of this Architecture; they were symbolic
towers from which the stars were observed, composed by superposed bulks stepped
and whose top, where it assumed existed an astronomical observatory, was crowned
with a shining cupola. Zigurats, like the one of Borsippa, indicates that a
color of the rainbow had seven floors representing each one of them or one of
the seven Earthlights; the Sun the Moon and the planets that were known in that
time. Inclines, sometimes helical, lead to the high terraces and the peak that a
height of more reached than 80 meters.
The tower of Babel was not, probably, but enormous zigurat. One is a practical
town: its religion had a utility sense, was moral and average rule to anticipate
the future; it was more in agreement with the nature than with the hope of
further on. Of they’re the lack of great temples and tombs. We have spoken of
bricks and, in effect, they were the heatings, and soon the asirios, the great
constructors of this material that, until today, is used as they used they: in
arcs, vaults and coatings glass finishes. The lack of wood made them invent
ingenious techniques to turn around arcades and cupolas by simple adhesion of
the mortar of lime to the bricks that were superposed or maintaining themselves
by gravity until closing the curve. The arc was born as a natural and wonderful
solution to cover a certain space not counting but on the clay with the ground
and the fire that transformed it into bricks. The heavy walls and the narrow and
extended forms of closed atmospheres demonstrate that they were covered with
vaults of tube from as remote times as the one with the Palace of Gudea in Tello.
The spirit of robust authority and law whereupon was governed the heatings is
reflected in the ordered hugeness of Babylonia 2500 to C. The stories of
Herodoto and the recent excavations, the city had a comparable board plane to
the one of a modern population; parallel avenues to the river and perfectly
oriented cross-sectional streets that include the amazing area of 200 miles
square. Urbanism much more seems to have been remote of which it assumes. The
Sacred Route, which the door of Ishtar entered it, constituted the main avenue
of the city. A high belt of walls with one hundred bronze doors surrounded and
defended the population where they straightened up more than 200 Zigurats. One
of these towers, next to the temple of Marduk (Baal), God tutelary of the city,
assumes was the tower of Babel. The asirios that dominated to Babylonia in 1275
to C. did not make but repeat the Chaldean Architecture fundamentally. |
