ARCHITECTURE, the human process through the ages by which mankind has sought to enclose space to be both habitable and an artistic expression of his endeavors. This survey concerns only the Bible world down to the NT period.

A. The development of architecture. Architecture has constantly reflected the basic character of its structural materials, as in the ubiquitous mud brick of Mesopotamia’s alluvial plain. But certain forms also indicate inability to rise above imaginative limitations or to control completely the basic structural materials. Notwithstanding this, their artistic use does occur in the decorative motifs of the more permanent stone and brick.

The enclosure of space appeared first in the provision of shelter for the family by means of the round plan. When rectangular framing was learned, rectangular plans prevailed in the seventh millennium b.c. at Budur, Anatolia, placing the center of beginnings of architecture in Asia Minor (A. Badawy, Architecture in Ancient Egypt and the Near East [1966], 128; hereafter BAAE). After urban groups arose, the palace was developed when the king figure arose, c. 3000 b.c. (K. Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land [1960], 41, 42; hereafter KAHL).

Architecture obviously requires peace and political stability for its development, both secured through the peaceful medium of a settled community undisturbed by the vicissitudes of contemporary times.

Architecture was also affected by cultural and religious influences, by infiltration of style through trade and migration, and by new rulers who felt free to adapt the local culture to their own tastes.

1. Anatolia and the West. Archeology indicates that the architectural process had its earliest observable beginning in Anatolia at Hafilar near Budur in the seventh millennium b.c. (J. Mellaart, “Two Thousand Years of Hafilar,” The Illustrated London News [Apr 8, 1961]; BAAE, 205). Already the rectangular plan showed an early solution of roof framing by tree pole beams. Foundation problems were solved by the use of larger stones as base courses for upper walls.

Enlargement of the house was evident in the sixth millennium with the appearance of two-story houses, using a post system of supports for the second floor (BAAE, 128), and by the appearance of the plano-convex brick, a more versatile construction material than rubble stone. A regression in the next millennium was seen in houses consisting frequently only of one room and an anteroom.

Incipient urban development emerged also at Hafilar in the sixth millennium b.c. in the grouping of houses around a rectangular open space (BAAE, 122, 123), occurring also earlier at Jericho. True towns, however, arose only in later times.

Plan types show the usual contrasts between the poor and affluent: the one-room-anteroom versus the multi-roomed homes of the latter. Other Old Hitt. houses featured two rooms for larger houses, achieved by repeating these two rooms in groups of two or more.

This two-room plan persisted into the second millennium, still using the posts of earlier times for roof supports. Thicker brick walls of later houses indicate longer ceiling spans. The entrance vestibule disappeared.

About 1500 b.c. a new plan appeared consisting of smaller rooms located back of a larger room, repeated as series to provide a larger house (BAAE, 130; R. Naumann, Architektur Kleinasiens [1955], Fig. 421). Models showed awnings, porticoes, and windows.

Troy (IIc) produced the earliest known palace in western Anatolia, the megaron style of a large, central room approached through an entry to the SW. Mid-second millennium Bogazkoy provided a splendid example of a defensive palace constructed on the highest point within its own walls with subsidiary buildings for royal, governmental and defensive functions.

Slightly earlier Yarimlim’s palace at Tel Atchana (17th cent. b.c.) revealed a “zoned” arrangement of ceremonial, residential, and dependency rooms arranged about a central court with an access corridor on the E side. Niqmepa’s plan (15th-14th cent. b.c.) was the same, but in several stories. Prominent was the use of a monumental hilani flanked by side towers. As the earliest known example, it may indicate the area of its origin. Doubled halls occurred back of the hilani and a movable hearth on rails provided heat in winter.

Carchemish and Sam’al were the more important towns of the first millennium, the former an oval with the inner citadel forming the NE quarter on its hill overlooking the Euphrates. Sam’al (Zingirli) was round with an oval-shaped citadel, the outer wall having three equidistant gates. The citadel had four “quarters” on different levels. (Anatolian towns were generally oval, while Syrian towns were round.) The two palaces at Sam’al had the usual hilani and the usual summer and winter quarters.

Sanctuaries in earlier Anatolia were a “nature” type, dedicated primarily to the weather god, reflecting the harsher Anatolian climate. Eflatun Punar had an altar platform at the northern end of an artificial lake (BAAE, 134), its face bearing carved representations of Hitt. deities. At Yazililkaya a converted cleft became a roofless grotto, with propylea (entrance gate complex) and secondary rooms.

Similar to the Hitt. palace, a remarkable example of palace influence on temple construction is seen in Temple I of Bogazkoy (14th cent. b.c.), the temple lying within a court formed by ranks of long, narrow storage rooms on all sides.

At Tel Tayinat occurred the plan reminiscent of Solomon’s Temple, of porch, antecella, and cella (8th cent. b.c.) which formed the basic elements of later Gr. temples.

2. Mesopotamia. About 4700 saw the spread of village culture through upper Mesopotamia and toward the W (cf. KAHL, 58, 59), but true urban culture appearing near the Pers. Gulf (BAAE, 80, 81) was characterized by streets radiating from a central plaza, though ovalpattern walls were the natural enclosures of irregular urban plans. City orientation was thereafter NW-SE with the temple in the northerly quarter facing NE to use the NE breezes for cooling. Its encircling wall served defensive purposes as well. An improved axial layout occurred in cities of later eras: Ur III, Nippur (Dyn III), and Larsa (20th-17th centuries b.c.) exhibited irregular plans while Borsippa (pre-18th cent. b.c.), Khorsabad (8th cent. b.c.), and Babylon (6th cent. b.c.) illustrated axial plans developed to facilitate religious festivals (BAAE, 83).

Houses in Mesopotamia were constructed first of reeds, as can be seen in the terra cotta offering stand of Ur (c. 2000 b.c.) found at Assur, showing a two-storied structure, the second set at the back of the roof terrace. Soon wattle-and-daub technique appeared (BAAE, 85). From one-room plans of earliest times, plans with several rooms developed, arranged around an open, inner court notable for frequent drains, usually of stone.

The historical period (c. 3000 b.c. onward) provided at Tepe Gawra a plan, largely symmetrical, of liwan (recessed covered area, open on one side) flanked by smaller rooms accessible from inside and to the left, a rectangular hall, roofed with a brick vault, fronting on an open, enclosed court. The symmetry extended into later times. Tel Asmar (25th cent. b.c.) formulated a non-symmetrical plan of entrance hall and vestibule to the left, observable by kitchen peepholes, and a living room beyond having a hearth and mud bench, with reception hall and a suite of bedrooms and service rooms arranged clockwise around the living room. Generally, roofs seemed to be gabled.

The Ur III Period (c. 2110-2000 b.c.) introduced the inner court about which rooms were arranged, frequently in two stories, the second served by a wood balcony on wood posts. This plan had become “centered” by 1970-1698 b.c. and chapels frequently were included.

In later eras house plans became irregular in size and layout, the streets being the irregular, open traffic ways in front of houses. Wall profiles became “sawtooth” in order to “straighten up” the exterior line. In the time of the Neo-Babylonian kingdoms larger houses had a more formal symmetry with subtle arrangement of reception area and private quarters.

Palaces. One of the earliest is that of King Mesilim (c. 2600 b.c.), a challenge to the theocracy (cf. 2 Sam 8:6ff.; Rev 17:9-18). Cf. also N. Bailkey, “Early Mesopotamian Constitutional Development,” Am. Hist. Rev., LXXII, 4 [July, 1967], 1219, 1220. The place consisted of the residence and an annex, the former having a passageway all around, consisting of a square courtyard with shallow rooms on three sides and a block of rooms on the E or fourth side. Urnammu’s palace (c. 2100 b.c.) used the same court layout with shallow rooms grouped about it, coupled with a series of smaller courts and rooms. Mari (c. 2000 b.c.) provided a huge palace complex which is significant for the introduction of a large square court with a shallow, broad throne room or reception room on the S side, which arrangement became characteristic of later Babylonian palaces.

The Cassites used a court system connected to a central transverse hall surrounded in turn by rooms, as at Dur Kurigalzu (Taha Baqir, “Iraq Excavations at Aqar Quf,” Iraq, Supp. 1943-1944, Fig. 52).

Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad was a citadel with palace, the latter with rooms grouped about courts according to function, making for a more random appearance.

Nebuchadnezzar built his palace by the river near the Ishtar gate on a terrace twelve meters high. It was a series of courts surrounded by smaller sized subsidiary rooms. The main court fronted the throne room on the S which was backed up by smaller rooms. This whole block was surrounded by a continuous corridor on three sides. At the N end of an eastern court group was a series of massive walls which some have suggested were foundations of Nebuchadnezzar’s hanging gardens described by Josephus and Diodorus (BAAE, 96).

Temples in Mesopotamia, derived from pre-Sumer. times from quite small cellae, became in later times elaborate, well-planned, sophisticated structures. Two types occurred: a symmetrical, T-shaped plan with an open court containing the altar and surrounding rooms, as in Temple D at Uruk (29th cent. b.c.) The second type showed a plan with cella at the side of a raised court, having a side doorway at one end, with the altar and niche for the idol at the opposite end, as in the “White Temple” (28th cent. b.c.); cf. BAAE, 100. Later Kafajah (c. 2300 b.c.) with a rectangular plan featured an outer wall, another oval wall within at a higher level, and within this at the rear a temple set on an elevated platform.

In the Neo-Sumer. era (Ur III) the ziggurat came prominently into use with the “high” temple on top where the god was said to alight. Access was by the monumental stair. The “lower” temple, at the base of the ziggurat, where the god was believed to dwell between advents featured a court and a broad shallow room at its back, the so-called “Hurrian” cella, also occurring in the Innana temple at Nippur (18th cent. b.c.). The ziggurat of Urnammu at Ur is the largest and most impressive for ascent.

In the later eras of Ur, layouts became precise and harmonic in proportion, viz., Ningal’s temple, where the peak of Babylonian architecture was reached (BAAE, 105).

The Cassites restored and remodeled temples of previous eras, reverting to the long, deep cella of the Sumerians, supporting the idea that they attempted to revive Sumer. culture. A characteristic plan (Innana, Uruk, 15th cent. b.c.) features a deep cella, ante-cella, and corner bastions, reminiscent of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem.

The Assyrians (13th-12th centuries b.c.) inherited the Hurrian cella, the Sumer., and a third, the broad, shallow cella, the latter seen at Kar-Tukul-ti-Ninurta (12th cent. b.c.), the “Hurrian” at Assur (Ishtar, 12th cent. b.c.). In late Assyrian times the deep cella with a more prominent rear alcove predominated.

In Neo-Babylonian times Sumer. types disappeared, and at Babylon, Esagilla was situated in its own court formed by surrounding buildings. The generally square temple had an eastern entrance to an ante-cella leading to the cella on axis, both broad, a combination on the Sumer. axial layout. The broad cella was also general for the lower temple of the ziggurat.

3. Egypt. Though starting its architecture later, Egyp. remains present striking examples of beauty of form and decoration, as well as a certain fixation of form and style due to religious restrictions (BAAE, 70, 71).

No evidence from Egypt is available on houses before 5000 b.c., since most prob. they have been buried under annual inundations of the Nile. Later construction in stone, however, indicated that woven reed mats hung on bundled reeds was the early wall and structural system. Next a mud-daubed reed technique appeared, and though denied by some, yet proof of borrowing from Mesopotamia is demonstrable (cf. however, R. W. Ehrich, ed., Chronologies in Old World Archaeology [1965], 14, 15).

Earliest indications regarding houses occur at Merimde (5th millennium b.c.), presenting one type of oval-shaped stone work for night use, roofless with floors below ground level, the occupant sleeping in a crouched position, and a day shelter of dome-shaped reed construction woven on a wood pole skeleton. The grouping of some along a curving street suggests a seeking for urban development. Similar settlements occurred at El Omari, Tasa, Badari and Hemaniya (BAAE, 11). In the era 3700-3200 b.c. (Badarian period) came the important development of rectangular wattle-and-daub structures and the creation of sun-dried brick.

Old Kingdom houses at Saqqara contained an entry hall, a living room and bedroom in two longitudinal strips. Other plans had dependencies of storerooms and work rooms, showing progress to the sixth dynasty. Middle Kingdom principal evidence for houses came from the pre-planned cities as at El Lahun, with rooms predominantly narrow, rigidly laid out in strip fashion. One sophisticated row plan featured a three-strip arrangement with a large court at the N end of the center strip with private quarters in back.

Orientation was to the N in all eras with a roof device to direct the prevailing breeze inward for cooling effect (see A. Badawy, “Architectural Provision against Heat in the Orient,” JNES, XVII, 123, Fig. 1), causing access to the house to be from the S side of the street.

In the New Kingdom at Amarna W, artisan’s living quarters were oriented E-W, with a western front courtyard, a hypostyle hall, the kitchen, and bedrooms to the E for cool sleeping rooms. Roof terraces with awnings were served by a staircase from the kitchen. The typical Amarna house, however, was the villa with its family garden plot, dependency houses and main house approached through a hypostyle hall, and a clerestory lighted central hall as living room, with private quarters beyond. Wall paintings of the monuments indicate that some houses occasionally had three stories, and occasionally basements.

The late period retained the tripartite arrangement of entry, living quarters, and private quarters, mostly two-story as at Medinet Habu (cf. U. Hölscher, Excavations of Medinet Habu [1945], V, 4-16; Figs. 3-20).

Palaces occurred in Egypt only after 3000 b.c., one at Abydos (29th cent. b.c.) with its upper palisade wall of alternate recesses imitating an earlier wooden wall. From the 27th cent. b.c. came a palace with a high, prominently slope-faced wall enclosing a central court, with service rooms against them and a separate walled enclosure for the main quarters. A double gateway was flanked by bastion towers with vertically channeled faces (BAAE, 30).

After a long gap in palace building, the palace of Amenhotep III at Malqata (14th cent. b.c.) presented a rectangular layout of a great audience hall, columned hall behind and rectilinear harem quarters beyond. Kitchen and other dependencies occurred against a S palace. The arrangement is like the tripartite house plan.

In the Late Period, Apries’ palace at Memphis is similar to residences at El Lahun of 1300 years previous, but arranged on an axial passageway through what is believed to be a peristyle court northward to a second court.

Temples remain the most imposing elements in Egyp. architecture, with a typically basic enclosure. Earliest forms were small one-room reed shrines. Later on arose the sun temple, the cult temple of a particular deity, and the mortuary temple.

Chief examples of the cult temple began with, among others, the Giza Sphinx temple. Amenemhat III built a temple (19th cent. b.c.) with three successive cellae preceded by a transverse vestibule. In the Empire Period, temple building was concentrated at Thebes, with the temples of Karnak and Luxor resulting. Karnak presents a gigantic series of open and covered courts extolling the grandeur of the age. In later times processions of the gods within the courts of Karnak developed on a station arrangement.

Basic elements of the cult temple include an axis, an entrance pylon, a hypostyle hall, a sanctuary and additional courts, and a naos. Its axis was usually oriented perpendicular to the Nile.

Basic elements of the sun temple included an altar and an obelisk to represent the connection to the deity, all within an enclosure open to the sky, but no cult statue or naos. The chief deity was Aten or Re’. Examples are those of Pharaoh Neuserre’ at Abu Gharab (2500 b.c.), of Akhenaton at Heliopolis (Amarna era), symmetrical in plan, and the sun temple of Ramases II at Abu Simbel (BAAE, 38-42).

Mortuary temples developed from the chapel at the E end of mastabas. By the fifth dynasty this had become a complex of many rooms arranged around a pillared hall. Chief example from the Empire period is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahari (Thebes), featuring a series of terraces at the base of rocky cliffs, where first occurred the proto-Doric fluted columns without curved tapers. That of Ramses III at Medinet Habu (12th cent. b.c.) is more like the usual cult temple, formed of halls on axis with flanking rooms. The portrayal of the king’s deeds on the walls was done to display his political influence. Mortuary temples were built before the decease of its pharaoh.

Pyramids. The most remarkable monuments to the power and abilities of the Egyp. pharaohs were the pyramids at Gizeh completed by the end of the fourth dynasty. Two general types were found: the stepped type as at Saqqara and the geometric as at Gizeh. Both were formed by slices of rubble inclined inward, with the geometric type faced with prismatic blocks (BAAE, 51, 52). In the First Intermediate Period, the pyramid was separated from the tomb and became a mere symbol. (See I. E. S. Edwards The Pyramids of Egypt [1952], 206ff.)

4. Palestine. Mesolithic Jericho produced the earliest houses in Pal. c. 7000 b.c. (KAHL, 42-44), well-built, round, prob. domed, floors below ground level, and built of plano-convex bricks, one of the earliest, if not the earliest, occurrences of this brick. Strangely enough, in the Late Neolithic period (5th millennium b.c.) free-standing houses of plano-convex brick on stone foundations occur (KAHL, 65), along with the round plan, though some plans suggest a rectangular shape.

In the Chalcolithic Period evidence of roofing by wood timbers appeared, and, commonly enough, gabled in the next millennium as shown by the house urn of Kodeirah (BAAE 157). In the Early Bronze Age an apsidal form of house plan briefly appeared (c. 2300) as at Megiddo, an import from the Aegean area. Now also the typical Palestinian house of mud brick or rammed earth on rough rubble emerged, rectangular in shape with a lefthinged door in the middle of the long side.

In the Middle Bronze Age the house had more rooms, often arranged around a court, perhaps reflecting Mesopotamian influence. At Tel Beit Mirsim one house had a room large enough to require center posts. Living quarters were generally on the second floor.

Decline set in at the Israelite conquest, with earlier Canaanite houses reoccupied or crudely rebuilt, with an occasional house showing a court and flanking rooms. Contact with the Phoenicians later provided improvements in techniques for public buildings but not for private houses.

In the Babylonian and Persian periods Gr. influence, as well as Mesopotamian and Egyp. forms, came in through their trading posts along the sea coast.

Palaces of note did not occur in Israelite Pal. until the 10th cent. b.c.; first was the House of the Forest of Lebanon (1 Kings 7:2ff.) hypostyle with wood columns of Lebanon cedar (BAAE, 160), and later the palace of Ahab at Samaria. At Ugarit from the era of the Middle Egyp. Kingdom appeared a palace featuring a scriptorium, stable, and military governor’s residence. At Hama near the monumental gateway to the citadel are the remains of a columned vestibule leading to three groups of transverse rooms, with upper residential quarters accessible by a stairway (BAAE, 163).

Temples. Jericho’s mound provides one of the earliest sanctuaries, from the early eighth millennium (KAHL, 41, 42). The cultic high places are represented by Babed-Dhra E of the Dead Sea. An early example of the ante-cella and cella occurred in the Early Bronze Age shrine at Ai (c. 28th cent. b.c.). In the Middle Bronze Age the cellae became deep, with porch and ante-cella open to the outside, frequently flanked by towers. In Israelite times more temples appeared. Bethshan’s tell provides a temple (10th-9th centuries b.c.) featuring an ante-cella and raised rear cella reached by a stair to the side (cf. the d^ebir of Solomon’s Temple). See also KAHL, 251. For Solomon’s Temple see Jerusalem Temple.

Elsewhere in Pal. chief examples of temples appeared at Byblos from Egyp. Dynasty II, similar to the tri-partite layout of Egyp. cult temples, and a strictly Phoen. type. Ugarit excavations revealed two temples, one to Baal and a second to his father Dagon from the Middle Egyp. Kingdom similar in plan to the Byblos style temple. Each had a court with altar, an ante-cella, and broader cella beyond containing an offering stand. The Byblos Reshef temple employed the ante-cella and raised cella (BAAE, 167, 168).

Cities. The earliest indication of urban development in Pal., if not in the whole Middle E, occurred at Jericho in the grouping of settlers about the shrine from c. 7800 b.c. By 7000 b.c. a tower more than thirty ft. high (KAHL, 44) and a defensive wall had been built, showing troublous times. By c. 6500 b.c. a settlement appeared at Seyl Aqlat near Petra. About 3000 b.c. Arad in the Negeb developed a triangular-shaped city plan with an enclosing stone wall and bastions (BAAE, 150). Tel Beit Mirsim (23rd cent. b.c.) presented an oval-shaped wall with a few N-S streets. Similar layouts appeared in the Late Bronze Age at Megiddo.

City orientation is suggested in Numbers 35:4, 5; although the cardinal points of the compass are given, it does not follow that the city was rectangular; rather, simply travel around the city is indicated.

A significant feature of Palestinian towns was the effort to provide water supplies within the city walls: Jerusalem and Megiddo had vertical shafts; El Gib and Gezer had tunnels with stairs.

Important towns beside Jericho include Gezer, Byblos, Tyre, and Ugarit. Gezer was occupied from Neolithic times (7000-5000 b.c.). In the 20th cent. b.c. its inner enclosure developed to provide three gates and took on a foot-shaped outline. In the Late Bronze Age a new wall was built with thirty towers.

Byblos showed contact with Mesopotamia c. 3000 b.c., as seen by the Jemdet Nasr seals in the lowest strata (BAAE, 154), thus revealing the fact of intercommunication and influence on what was done there. Close ties with Egypt may be seen from Early Dynastic times down to the Empire period. Cretan influences appeared 2100-1900 b.c. The principal street curved NW from the central plaza toward the wall. Remains show that secondary streets crossed the main street at irregular intervals.

Tyre lay on an island which originally was two, later joined by King Hiram (c. 969 b.c.). In later times a companion city was built on the mainland.

Ugarit in the Late Bronze Age had an irregular outline with irregular streets. Excavations indicate occupation as early as the Mesopotamian Pre-pottery era. The city wall was rebuilt c. 1800 b.c. After 1380 b.c. several large residential areas developed, separated by generally parallel streets. Houses frequently had cesspools and a well; a basin occurred in each court which also frequently had an awning.

B. Style. The matter of style was a result of the use of materials in a particular fashion and it varied with the use of different materials. Although both in Egypt and Mesopotamia the earliest construction was of woven reeds, yet even these developed a primitive elegance. Out of the following wattle-and-daub technique a wall form of slightly inclined character arose, repeated in the later mud brick dwellings, giving the walls an attenuated character. A persistent element of Egyp. stone work was the graceful cavetto cornice derived from earlier drooping reed shapes. The stone bundle papyriform column of Saḥure was modeled on the earlier bundled reed columns, a pleasant variant to the round open papyriform column of Karnak. The evidence from the Pyramid Age presented a frank expression of the power of stone as a superior architectural material. Relief was supplied in the fifth-sixth dynasties by copying plant forms.

After the First Intermediate Period a noticeable realism appeared in the artistic adornment of the monuments. Though a clear decay may be seen, and though a certain vitality derived from spatial treatments, as in Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple, it was not arrested by Amarna but accelerated as is evidenced by a certain “inelegance” of artistic decoration. The forces of decadence appeared in the later colossal architectural examples and the imitative archaism of the Saite period is mere copying of earlier examples.

Egyptian architecture was able to survive for its long period by being based on 8 to 5 height-base proportions of the isoceles triangle and a square related to it. Amarna adopted a series 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.

Mesopotamia, lacking a good building stone, turned to a combination of timber and brick, using plaster as a decorative material (cf. Gen 11:3b). Technicians soon developed the true brick arch for arches, vaults, and domes. Crenelated parapets finished wall tops in imitation of mountains. Mesopotamian architecture suffered by contrast to Egyp. for the dark brick crumbled to the gray of the earth.

Though symmetry dominated at first, later on orthogonal demand prevailed and a certain rigidity predominated.

Decorative techniques included the extensive use of plaster, painted and plain. In various eras stone slab wainscots lined the walls, illustrating in graphic detail the story of conquest, as in the palace of Tiglath-pileser III (8th cent b.c.).

Strangely enough, in Pal. where a good white limestone was available, stone was never used except in the Solomonic era, the lack indicating a people unfamiliar with this technique who were native to other areas without stonework. (Cf. J. Van Seeters, The Hyksos [1966], 17, etc.) Against brick work elsewhere the prevailing mode was rubble stone set in mud and sometimes plastered. Solomons’ Temple and palace, and Ahab’s palace at Samaria were almost the sole Israelite achievements. The significant contribution of northern Israel to architectural art was the proto-Ionic capital developed from the Mesopotamian sacred tree.

C. Materials and techniques. The most important step beyond reed construction was the shaping of mud into a suitable building material, either by hand, or later by a mold. Though the true arch in mud brick was developed in Egypt, this fact never released Egypt from the post and lintel style of stone construction (BAAE, 66). Yet most houses were built of mud brick. The abundance of labor and stone made for installation of unfinished blocks finished in place. Pyramids were constructed by the use of earth ramps (ibid., 63) and face blocks were dressed after placing.

Lebanon cedar was imported for beams for temples, but date palm trunks served as roof beams for the poorer houses which had roofs of brush and reeds plastered with mud and then whitewashed. Egyptian machines seemed never to have included more than the sledge, simple pulleys and windlasses, the crowbar, and ropes.

In Mesopotamia bitumen became the universal mortar. Burnt brick was used for protective facing. (See Brick.) Drainage channels and expansion joints to drain interiors of structures and relieve pressures were developed.

Timber was imported into Egypt and Mesopotamia, usually from Lebanon, for roof construction, but poorer houses were roofed like those in Egypt. Stone was reserved for the bull collossi, for wainscots and the like in Mesopotamia.

For resistance to earthquake shock in Syria and Pal. a system of wood timbers was employed between stone courses (1 Kings 6:36).

Some doors were made of stone with pintle projections to fit into sockets in sill and lintel; others were fashioned of wood with an edge post installed the same way. In Mesopotamia stone door sockets were frequently inscribed by the king-builder.

Bibliography H. Frankfort, “Town Planning in Ancient Mesopotamia,” The Town Planning Review, XXI (July, 1950), 98-115; I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (1952); A. Badawy, A History of Egyptian Architecture (1954); H. Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient (1954); R. Naumann, Architectur Kleinasiens (1955); W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (1956); S. Lloyd, Early Anatolia (1956); W. F. Albright. From the Stone Age to Christianity (1957); W. E. Smith, The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt (1958); K. Kenyon, Archaeology in the Holy Land (1960); R. W. Ehrich, ed., Chronologies in Old World Archaeology (1965); A. Badawy, Architecture in Ancient Egypt and the Near East (1966).