It was the cultures of the great river valleys—including the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Indus, and the Huang Ho—with their intensive agriculture based on irrigation—that developed the first communities large enough to be called cities. These cities were built with a new building technology, based on the clay available on the riverbanks. The packed clay walls of earlier times were replaced by those constructed of prefabricated units: mud bricks. This represented a major conceptual change from the free forms of packed clay to the geometric modulation imposed by the rectangular brick, and the building plans too became strictly rectangular.

Bricks were made from mud and straw formed in a four-sided wooden frame, which was removed after evaporation had sufficiently hardened the contents. The bricks were then thoroughly dried in the sun. The straw acted as reinforcing to hold the brick together when the inevitable shrinkage cracks appeared during the drying process. The bricks were laid in walls with wet mud mortar or sometimes bitumen to join them together; openings were apparently supported by wooden lintels. In the warm, dry climates of the river valleys, weathering action was not a major problem, and the mud bricks were left exposed or covered with a layer of mud plaster. The roofs of these early urban buildings have disappeared, but it seems likely that they were supported by timber beams and were mostly flat, since there is little rainfall in these areas. Such mud brick or adobe construction is still widely used in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Later, about 3000 bce in Mesopotamia, the first fired bricks appeared. Ceramic pottery had been developing in these cultures for some time, and the techniques of kiln-firing were applied to bricks, which were made of the same clay. Because of their cost in labor and fuel, fired bricks were used at first only in areas of greater wear, such as pavements or the tops of walls subject to weathering. They were used not only in buildings but also to build sewers to drain wastewater from cities. It is in the roofs of these underground drains that the first surviving true arches in brick are found, a humble beginning for what would become a major structural form. Corbel vaults and domes made of limestone rubble appeared at about the same time in Mesopotamian tombs (Figure 1). Corbel vaults are constructed of rows of masonry placed so that each row projects slightly beyond the one below, the two opposite walls thus meeting at the top. The arch and the vault may have been used in the roofs and floors of other buildings, but no examples have survived from this period. The well-developed masonry technology of Mesopotamia was used to build large structures of great masses of brick, such as the temple at Tepe Gawra and the ziggurats at Ur and Borsippa (Birs Nimrud), which were up to 26 meters (87 feet) high. These symbolic buildings marked the beginnings of architecture in this culture.

The development of bronze, and later iron, technology in this period led to the making of metal tools for working wood, such as axes and saws. Less effort was thus required to fell and work large trees. This led in turn to new developments in building technics; timbers were cut and shaped extensively, hewed into square posts, sawed into planks, and split into shingles. Log cabin construction appeared in the forested areas of Europe, and timber framing became more sophisticated. Although the excavated remains are fragmentary, undoubtedly major advances were made in timber technology in this period; some of the products, such as the sawed plank and the shingle, are still used today.

Stone construction in Egypt

Like the other great river valley cultures, Egypt built its cities with mud brick; fired brick did not appear there until Roman times. Timber was used sparingly, for it was never abundant. It was used mainly in roofs, where it was heavily supplemented by reeds. Only a few royal buildings were built with full timber frames.

It was against this drab background of endless mud brick houses that a new technology of cut-stone construction emerged in the temples and pyramids of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 bce). Egypt, unlike Mesopotamia or the Indus valley, had excellent deposits of stone exposed above ground; limestone, sandstone, and granite were all available. But the extracting, moving, and working of stone was a costly process, and the quarrying of stone was a state monopoly. Stone emerged as an elite construction material used only for important state buildings.

The Egyptians developed cut stone for use in royal mortuary buildings not only for its strength but also for its durability. It seemed the best material to offer eternal protection to the pharaoh’s ka, the vital force he derived from the sun-god and through which he ruled. Thus stone had both a functional and symbolic significance.

Within the long tradition of brick masonry, stone construction appeared abruptly, with little transition. The brick mastaba tombs of the early kings and nobles suddenly gave way to the stone technics of King Djoser’s ceremonial complex at Ṣaqqārah, the construction of which is associated with his adviser and builder Imhotep. It is a structure of somewhat curious and uncertain forms but of great elegance in execution and detail. It consists mostly of massive limestone walls that enclose a series of interior courtyards. The walls have convoluted surfaces, which recall the mastaba tombs, with dummy doors, and there are even whole dummy buildings of solid stone. The complex has a large entrance hall with a roof supported by massive stone lintels that rest on rows of short wing walls projecting from the enclosing walls. There are no free-standing columns, but incipient fluted columns appear at the ends of the wing walls and engaged 3/4-columns project from the walls of the courtyards. The complex also contains the first pyramid, created from successively smaller mastabas. All these elements are built of small stones, which could be handled by one or two men. It represents a technology that was already highly developed, involving elaborate methods of quarrying, transporting, and working stone.

The construction process began at the quarries. Most of them were open-faced, although in some cases tunnels were extended several hundred meters into cliffs to reach the best quality stone. For extracting sedimentary rock, the chief tool was the mason’s pick with a 2.5-kilogram metal head and a 45-centimeter haft. With these picks vertical channels as wide as a man were cut around rectangular blocks, exposing five faces. The final separation of the sixth face was accomplished by drilling rows of holes into the rock with metal bow drills. Wooden wedges were driven into the holes to fill them completely. The wedges were doused with water, which they absorbed and which caused them to expand, breaking the stone free from its bed. In the extraction of igneous rock such as granite, which is much harder and stronger than limestone, the mason’s pick was supplemented by balls of dolerite weighing up to 5 kilograms, which were used to break the rock by beating and pounding. Granite was also drilled and sawed with the help of abrasives, and expanding wooden wedges were used in splitting.

The Egyptians were able to move blocks weighing up to 1,000,000 kilograms from quarries to distant building sites. This was an amazing accomplishment, as their only machinery was levers and crude wooden sledges worked by masses of men and draft animals. There were no wheeled vehicles before 1500 bce, and they were never widely used in building. Most quarries were near the Nile, however, and boats were also extensively used in transporting stone.

At the building site the rough stones were precisely finished to their final forms, with particular attention to their exposed faces. This was done with metal chisels and mallets; squares, plumb bobs, and straightedges were used to check the accuracy of the work. These tools remained standard until the 19th century. After the first appearance of small stones at Ṣaqqārah, their size began to increase until they attained the cyclopean scale usually associated with Egyptian masonry at about the time of the building of the pyramids. In spite of the heavy loads that stone structures created, foundations were of a surprisingly shoddy and improvised character, made of small blocks of poor quality stone. Not until the 25th dynasty (c. 750–656 bce) were important buildings placed on a below-grade (underground) platform of masonry several meters thick.

The Egyptians possessed no lifting machinery to raise stones vertically. It is generally thought that the laying of successive courses of masonry was accomplished with earth or mud brick ramps, over which the stones were dragged to their places in the walls by animal and human muscle power. Later, as the ramps were removed, they served as platforms for the masons to apply the final finishes to the stone surfaces. The remains of such ramps can still be seen at unfinished temples that were begun in the Ptolemaic period. The stones were usually laid with a bed of mortar made of gypsum, sand, and water, which perhaps acted more as a lubricant to push the stone into place than as a bonding agent. There was also limited use of metal dovetail anchors between blocks.

The great Pyramids of Giza, the tallest of which rose to a height of 147 meters (481 feet), are a marvelous technological achievement, and their visual impact is stunning even today; it was not until the 19th century that taller structures would be built. But they also represent a dead end in massive stone construction, which soon moved in the direction of lighter and more flexible stone frames and the creation of larger interior spaces. The free-standing stone column supporting stone beams appeared for the first time in the royal temples associated with the pyramids of about 2600 bce. Square granite columns carrying heavy granite lintels spanned 3 to 4 meters (10 to 13 feet); the spaces between the lintels were roofed by massive granite slabs. In these structures the abstract notion of the timber frames of the early royal buildings was translated into stone.

Although stone is more durable than timber, it is quite different in structural strength. Stone is much stronger in compression than timber but is weaker in tension. For this reason, stone works well for columns, which could be made very high—for example, 24 meters (80 feet) in the great temple of Amon-Re at Karnak. But stone lintels spanning between columns are limited by the tension they develop on their bottom surfaces; their maximum span is perhaps 5 meters (16 feet). Thus, for longer spans, another structural form was needed to exploit the higher compressive strength of stone. But the arch, which could span a longer distance in compression, remained confined to the sewers and to the underground roofs of the tombs of minor officials. So, perhaps with the image of the timber building frame still strong in their minds, the Egyptian masons were content to explore the limitations of the analogous stone frame in a series of great temples built during the New Kingdom (1539–1075 bce) at Karnak and Luxor, culminating in the elegant loggias of Queen Hatshepsut’s temple at Dayr al-Baḥrī. The paradigm of the stone-frame temple that they established would endure to the end of the Classical world.

Greek and Hellenistic cultures

Use of the Egyptian stone frame diffused throughout the eastern Mediterranean after 1800 bce, and the cultures of mainland Greece were particularly attracted to it. In the Greek world of the Aegean and southern Italy, many stone-frame temples were built; some have survived to the present day in various states of preservation. They were built largely of local marble or limestone; there was no granite for huge monoliths. The basic technology was little changed from that of Egypt; the major difference was in the labor force. There were no state-mobilized masses of unskilled workers to move huge stones; there were instead small groups of skilled masons who worked independently. The building accounts of the Parthenon show that each column was built under a separate contract with a master mason. There was certainly lifting machinery for handling the blocks, although its precise description is unknown; the concealed faces of stones still have grooves and holes that engaged the ropes used to lift them into place. Metal cramps and dowels were introduced for joining stones together; mortar was almost never used. There was some experimentation with iron beams to reinforce longer spans in stone, but the maximum remained about 5 to 6 meters (16 to 20 feet). Longer spans were achieved with timber beams supported by the stone frame; the solid stone roof slabs of the great Egyptian temples could not be duplicated.

Much of the mason’s effort was concentrated on the refinements of detail and optical corrections for which Greek architecture is justly famous. This same sense is also seen in the first surviving construction drawings, which were made on the unfinished surfaces of the stone walls of the Temple of Didyma. Such drawings would normally have been erased during the final finishing of the wall surfaces, and those at Didyma survived because the temple was never completed. The drawings show how the masons developed the final profiles of columns and moldings—a rare glimpse of the design processes of builders before the days of pencil and paper.

In contrast to stone technology, which remained largely unchanged from Egyptian methods, clay masonry underwent considerable development. Although mud brick remained standard for dwellings, fired brick was more widely used and began to be laid with lime mortar, a technique borrowed from stone construction. Glazed brick also appeared in this period, particularly outside the Greek world among the Babylonians and Persians, who made considerable use of it in royal palaces. A fine surviving example is the Ishtar Gate of the Palace of Nebuchadrezzar at Babylon, with a true arch spanning 7.5 meters (25 feet) and dated to 575 bce. Another major innovation was the fired clay roof tile. This was much more waterproof than thatch, and tile roofs could have the lower pitch characteristic of Greek temples. Hollow terra-cotta blocks for wall ornaments also appeared about this time, probably derived from the highly advanced pottery industry, which routinely made fired clay vessels more than one meter long.

Although stone technology remained confined to the trabeated (column-and-beam, or post-and-lintel) frame, there were a few structures that hinted at future developments. Perhaps the most spectacular building achievement of the age was the Pharos of Alexandria, the great lighthouse built for Ptolemy II in the 3rd century bce. It was a huge stone tower nearly as high as the Great Pyramid but much smaller at the base—perhaps 30 meters (100 feet) square. Within this mass of masonry was a complex system of ramps over which pack animals carried fuel for the beacon at the top. The Pharos was the first high-rise building, but the limitations of masonry structures and the lack of a rapid way of moving people vertically precluded any further development of tall buildings until the 19th century. The Pharos remained the only example of this type long after it was demolished by the Arabs beginning in the 7th century ce.

Another example of a new stone technology that was tried but not pursued further by the Greeks was the underground tombs of Mycenae, built about 1300 bce. These tombs have main chambers enclosed by pointed domes of corbeled stone construction, about 14 meters (47 feet) in diameter and 13 meters (43 feet) high. Crude versions of the corbel dome had appeared earlier in Mesopotamian tombs and the tholoi of Neolithic Europe, but in Mycenae the technics were refined and enlarged in scale. A corbel dome or arch does not develop the high compressive forces that characterize true arches and domes, which are built of radial segments of stone or brick. Thus it does not take full advantage of the great compressive strength of stone and cannot span long distances; 14 meters is near the upper limit. Greek masons did not choose to explore this type of structure; their buildings remained largely concerned with exterior forms. The Roman builders who followed them, however, exploited masonry to its full potential and created the first great interior spaces.