West Asiatic Architecture

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West Asiatic Architecture West Asiatic or Mesopotamian architecture started on 4000 to 2100 B.C. present day Iraq and Iran, The fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates river who is been named "Mesopotamia or the land between two rivers". The Mesopotamian cultures did great things by exploiting their rivers. They regulated them as best as they could and that made possible, a fertile and even Edenesque landscape. Within this landscape, they cultivated sufficiently abundant crops to permit the large-scale storage of surplus of food, in turn, permitted the growth of large urban populations and that corollary of urbanism: specialization. GEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES: Alluvial district of thick mud and clay deposited by the two great rivers. Such soil, in which no stone was found and no trees would grow, was eminently suitable for the making of bricks, which thus became the usual building material in Babylonia. *Chaldeaa - Walls were made from crude, sun-dried brick faced with kiln-burnt and glazed bricks of different colors. *Assyria - Plenty of stone in the mountains but followed Babylonians in the use of brick. They generally faced the walls internally and externally, not with glazed bricks, but with alabaster or limestone slabs carved with low bas-reliefs and inscriptions, which are of great historic importance. *Persia - Hard, colored limestones which were used in the building of Susa and Persepolis, and roof-timbers were obtained from Elam on the west, while Persian tiles have always been world-famous for their beauty of texture and color. CLIMATIC INFLUENCES: *Chaldea -rain fells for weeks at a time -long summer -swarms of insects *Assyria -had a similar climate -fewer swamps *Persia -dry, hot climate -country of sunshine and deserts -extreme of heat and cold RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES: *Babylonia and Assyria -polytheism *Chief Gods

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