Early Civilizations

Early Civilizations

More than 5,000 years ago, a great civilization developed in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, then spread eastward along the north coast of the Indian Ocean. The Egyptian civilization developed beside the River Nile soon after. People traveled between the two areas and brought new ideas and inventions with them. Egypt had many workers and plenty of stone, and the Egyptians built huge pyramids and temples using simple tools and techniques. Because they did not have the wheel, 20 men pulled each stone to the pyramid on a wooden sled. Both stone and wood were scarce in Mesopotamia. The people there invented new materials such as bricks molded from clay and baked in an oven or dried by the sun. They then built wheeled carts to transport the bricks.

The Pyramids of Giza

These three pyramids were built more than 4,500 years ago as tombs for Egyptian pharaohs. The largest of the three, the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu, contains nearly two-and-a-half million stone blocks.

Temple for a God

The huge columns of Egyptian temples still stand like stone forests in the desert above the banks of the Nile. This complex at Karnak was built over a period of 1,200 years. A statue of a pharaoh and his daughter stands outside the temple.

Early Civilizations. Photo by Elena.

Did You Know?

Some Egyptian architects today are also building vaulted structures out of sun-dried bricks. The buildings stay cool and the materials do not damage the environment.

Steers and dragons

The symbols of the babylonian weather god Adad and of the city's protector, the god Marduk, decorate the Ishtar Gate.

Ishtar Gate

In the sixth century BC., king Neubuchadnezzar built a road called the Processional Way. This road led from his palace in the city of Babylon, the main city of Mesopotamia, to a ceremonial hail for New Year's celebrations. The Processional Way passed through the city's double wallsat the Ishtar Gate.

Parade of Lions

Every animal lining the walls of the Processional Way was brick, cast from special molds so that the bodies curved out from the wall. Each of the lions was made up of 46 specially molded and glazed bricks.

Glazed Bricks

The bricks on the walls were painted with a glasslike mixture then baked to produce glowing colors.

 Arched Vault

The passage through the gate was 13 ft wide, which was only possible because it was covered by an arch.

Inventing the Arch

A stone laid across an open space like a doorway is brittle and will break it a heavy weight is placed on it. To avoid this, the supports of ancient stone buildings were set close together. Mesopotamians invented the arch so they could build wide, open rooms. Bricks or small stones set in a curve from an arch, the weight of each stone puses it against the next until one pushes agains a thick wall, called a buttress. The buttress presses the stones together and holds the arch in place. A vault is a celling built with arches.