Chapter 1 ReportPrepared by:

Francess Deanna Ramli(10-201005-00109)

Prepared for:

Mr Raed M. A. Elottol

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Table of Content

Content Page

Introduction

The Sumerians

Sumerian Architecture

Materials

Masonry Materials

Other Materials

Urban Planning

Residential Architecture

Civic Architecture

Temple

Palace

Landscape Architecture

Sumerians and Akkadians Empire

The Akkadians

Akkad and The Arts

Akkadian Period

Architecture

Sculpture

Conclusion

Source

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Introduction

Mesopotamia, derives from an ancient Greek term meaning "the land between rivers," is

considered to be the cradle of civilization because this is where we find the origins of agriculture,

written language, and cities. Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river

system, largely equivalent to modern-day Iraq, as well as some parts of north-eastern Syria, south-

eastern Turkey, and south-western Iran. Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze

Age Mesopotamia included Sumerian and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the

Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indigenous Sumerians

and Akkadians including Assyrians and Babylonians dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of

written history in 3100 BC to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the

Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC and after his death it became part of the

Greek Seleucid Empire. Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians.

Mesopotamia became a battlefield between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia

particularly Assyria coming under periodic Roman control. In 226 AD, it fell to the Sassanid Persians,

and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Arab Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire.

A number of primarily Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and

3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Oshroene and Hatra. However, what kind of architecture and

culture from the Sumerian and the Akkadian that influenced the contemporary architecture and era?

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The SumeriansSumerian architecture

The Sumerians were people who lived in Mesopotamia, also known as Ancient Iraq, from the

mid 6th millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium BC. Sumerian architecture is probably the oldest

architecture in the world. People living in the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers began

to build really big, substantial buildings. Among their major architectural accomplishments are the

invention of urban planning, the courtyard house, and ziggurat step pyramids. There was no

architectural profession existed in Sumer; however, scribes drafted and managed construction for the

government, nobility, or royalty. The Sumerians were aware of 'the craft of building' as a divine gift

taught to men by the gods as listed in “me” 28, which is one of the decrees of the gods foundational to

the Sumerian understanding of the relationship between humanity and the gods. Sumerian

Architecture is the groundwork of later Hebrew, Phoenician, Anatolian, Hittite, Hurrian, Ugaritic,

Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian, Islamic, and to a certain extent Grecoroman and therefore Western

Architectures.

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The reconstructed facade of the 4100 year old Great Ziggurat of Ur, near Nasiriyah, Iraq

The most prominent building found in Sumerian cities is the temple, dedicated to the chief god or

goddess of the city and built on top of a massive stepped tower, or ziggurat. The Sumerians believed

the gods owned the temples, and so wealth and riches were used to construct luxurious homes for the

priestly officials who served the gods.

The priests of Sumerian cities had great power, and as history shows, the priests and priestesses

played a vital role in ruling those Sumerian cities in the early stages. Thus, if the gods played a role in

government, this made the state a theocracy-a form of government in which god or a deity is

recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical

authorities. The ruling power was primarily, however, in the hands of the kings of Sumerian cities.

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Materials

The story of Sumerian architecture is tremendously one of clay masonry and of increasingly

complex forms of stacked bricks. However, because these bricks were sun baked, Sumerian buildings

eventually deteriorated. They were periodically demolished, levelled, and rebuilt on the same spot.

This planned structural life cycle gradually raised the level of cities, so that they came to be elevated

above the surrounding plain. The resulting hills are known as tells, and are found throughout the

ancient Near East. Civic buildings slowed decay by using cones of tinted stone, terracotta panels, and

clay nails driven into the adobe-brick to create a protective sheath that decorated the front wall.

This is the Tell Be'er

Sheva in southern Israel

believed to be the

remains of the biblical

town of Be'er Sheva.

Cones of tinted stone

Clay nail

Foundation nail dedicated by Entemena, king of Lagash, to the god of Bad-Tibira, about the peace

treaty concluded between Lagash and Umma. Extract from the inscription: "Those were the days

when Entemena, ruler of Lagash, and Lugal-kinishe-dudu, ruler of Umma, concluded a treaty of

fraternity". This text is the oldest diplomatic document known. Found in Telloh, ancient Girsu, ca.

2400 BC.

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Masonry materials

Sumer lacking in both forests and quarries, used adobe-brick, also called mud-brick, as the

primary material. Adobe-brick was preferred over vitreous brick because of its superior thermal

properties and lower manufacturing costs. Red brick was used in small applications concerning water,

decoration, and enormous construction. A late innovation was glazed vitreous brick. Sumerian

masonry was usually mortarless although bitumen was sometimes used. However, bitumen is used as

statuary, mortaring brick walls, waterproofing baths and drains, in stair treads, and for shipbuilding.

Brick styles, which varied greatly over time, are categorized by period.

Patzen 80×40×15 cm: Late Uruk period (3600–3200 BCE)

Riemchen 16×16 cm: Late Uruk period (3600–3200 BCE)

Plano-Convex 10x19x34 cm: Early Dynastic Period (3100–2300 BCE)

Since rounded bricks are somewhat unstable, Sumerian bricklayers would lay a row of bricks

perpendicular to rest every few rows. The advantages to Plano-Convex bricks were the rate of

manufacture as well as the irregular surface which held the finishing plaster coat better than a smooth

surface from other brick types.

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Other materials

Building materials other than brick were used for sheathing, flooring, roofing, doors, and special

applications. These materials include:

The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) used for ceiling lintels

The giant reed (Fragmites communis) used for roofing and rammed earth foundations

Terracotta panels used for decoration

Bitumen used to seal plumbing

Especially prized were imported building materials such as cedar from Lebanon, diorite from Arabia,

and lapis lazuli from India.

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Urban planning

The Sumerians were the first civilization to create the city itself as a built structure. They

were proud of this achievement as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh which opens with a description of

Uruk its walls, streets, markets, temples, and gardens. Uruk itself is significant as the center of an

urban culture which both colonized and urbanized western Asia.

The construction of cities was the end product of trends which began in the Neolithic

Revolution. The growth of the city was partly planned and partly organic. Planning is evident in the

walls, high temple district, main canal with harbor, and main street. The finer structure of residential

and commercial spaces is the reaction of economic forces to the spatial limits imposed by the planned

areas resulting in an irregular design with regular features. Because the Sumerians recorded real estate

transactions it is possible to reconstruct much of the urban growth pattern, density, property value,

and other metrics from cuneiform text sources.

The typical city divided space into residential, mixed use, commercial, and civic spaces. The

residential areas were grouped by profession. At the core of the city was a high temple complex

always sited slightly off of the geographical center. This high temple usually predated the founding of

the city and was the nucleus around which the urban form grew. The districts adjacent to gates had a

special religious and economic function.

The city always included a belt of irrigated rural land including small hamlets. A network of

roads and canals connected the city to this territory. The transportation network was planned in three

tiers: wide processional streets, public through streets, and private blind alleys. The public streets that

defined a block varied little over time while the blind-alleys were much more fluid. The current

estimate is 10% of the city area was streets and 90% buildings. The canals; however, were more

important than roads for transportation.

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Residential architecture

Residential design was a direct development from Ubaid houses. Although Sumerian cylinder

seals represent reed houses, the courtyard house was the predominant typology, which has been used

in Mesopotamia to the present day. This type of house faced inward toward an open courtyard which

provided a cooling effect by creating convection currents. A courtyard called tarbaṣu was the primary

organizing trait of the house, all the quarters opened into it. The external walls were uninspired with

only a solitary opening connecting the house to the street. Movement between the house and street

required a 90° turn through a small antechamber. From the street only the rear wall of the

antechamber would be visible through an open door, likewise there was no view of the street from the

courtyard. The Sumerians had a strict division of public and private spaces. The average size for a

Sumerian house was 90 m2.

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Civic architecture

Temples often predated the creation of the urban settlement and grew from small one room

structures to elaborate multi-acre complexes through the 2,500 years of Sumerian history. Sumerian

temples, fortifications, and palaces made use of more highly developed materials and techniques, such

as buttresses, recesses, and half columns.

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Chronologically, Sumerian temples evolved from earlier Ubaid temples. As the temple

decayed it was ritually demolished and a new temple was built on its foundations. The heir temple

was larger and more articulated than its predecessor temple. The evolution of the “E2.abzu” temple at

Eridu is a regularly cited case-study of this process. Numerous temples had inscriptions engraved into

them, such as the one at Tell Uqair. Palaces and city walls came much later after temples in the Early

Dynastic Period.

Temple

White Temple and Ziggurat, Uruk (Warka), 3200 -3000 B.C.

The form of a Sumerian temple is a demonstration of Near Eastern cosmology, which

described the world as a disc of land which surrounded by a salt water ocean, both of which floated on

another sea of fresh water called apsu, above them was a hemispherical firmament which regulated

time. A world mountain formed an axis mundi, which is an omnipresent symbol that crosses human

cultures, joined all three layers. The function of the temple was to act as the axis mundi, a meeting

place between gods and men. The blessedness of 'high places' as a meeting point between realms is a

pre-Ubaid belief well attested in the Near East back the Neolithic age. The plan of the temple was

rectangular with the corners pointing in cardinal directions to signify the four rivers which flow from

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the mountain to the four world regions. The orientation also serves a more practical purpose of using

the temple roof as an observatory for Sumerian punctuality. The temple was built on a low terrace of

rammed earth, which is a technique used in the building of walls using the raw materials of earth,

chalk, lime and gravel, meant to represent the sacred mound of primordial land which emerged from

the water called dukug, 'pure mound' during creation.

The doors of the long axis were the entrance point for the Gods and the doors of the short axis

the entrance point for men. This design was called the bent axis approach, as anyone entering would

make a ninety degree turn to face the cult statue at the end of the central hall. The bent axis approach

is a modernization from the Ubaid temples which had a linear axis approach, and is also a

characteristic of Sumerian houses. An offering table was situated in the center of the temple at the

intersection of the axes.

Temples of the Uruk Period separated the temple rectangle into tripartite, T-shaped, or

combined plans. The tripartite plan inherited from the Ubaid, which had a big central hall with two

smaller flanking halls on either side. The entrance was along the short axis and the shrine was at the

end of the long axis. The T-shaped plan, also from the Ubaid period, was the same to the tripartite

plan except for a hall at one end of the rectangle perpendicular to the main hall.

There was a sudden increase of variety in temple design during the following Early Dynastic

Period. However, the temples still retained features such as cardinal orientation, rectangular plans, and

buttresses. Now, nevertheless, they took on a variety new configuration including courtyards, walls,

basins, and barracks. The Sin Temple in Khafajah is typical of this era; it was designed around a

series of courtyards leading to a “cella”, which is the inner chamber of a temple in classical

architecture.

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The high temple was a unique type of temple that was home to the patron god of the city.

Functionally, it served as a storage and distribution center as well as a shelter to the priesthood. The

White Temple of Anu, the god of heaven, in Uruk is typical of a high temple which was built very

high on a platform of adobe-brick. In the Early Dynastic period, high temples began to include a

ziggurat, which is a series of platforms creating a stepped pyramid. Such ziggurats may have been the

inspiration for the Biblical Tower of Babel.

Tower of Babel

Palace

The palace came into existence during the Early Dynastic I period. From a rather modest

beginning the palace grows in size and complexity as power is increasingly centralized. The palace is

called a 'Big House' where the lugal or ensi, Sumerian term for a king in general, lived and worked.

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Landscape architecture

The description of Uruk in the Epic of Gilgamesh

tells of one third of that city set aside for orchards, also

known as gardens in modern term. Similar planned open

space is found at the one fifth enclosure of Nippur. Another

important landscape element was the unoccupied lot, which

was used alternatively for agriculture and waste disposal.

External to the city, Sumerian irrigation agriculture

created some of the first garden forms in history. The garden

was 144 square cubits with a perimeter passage. This form of

the enclosed quadrangle was the basis for the later paradise gardens of Persia.

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Sumerians and Akkadians Empire

It was in Mesopotamia about 3000 BC where the Sumerian culture flourished. The civilized

life that emerged at Sumer was bent by two conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and

Euphrates rivers, which at any time could unleash shocking floods that wiped out the entire

population, and the tremendous richness of the river valleys, caused by centuries-old deposits of soil.

Eventually, the Sumerians had to battle other peoples. Some of the earliest of these wars were with the

Elamites living in what is now western Iran. This frontier has been fought over repetitively ever since;

it is arguably the most fought over frontier in the world. Sumerian dominance was challenged by the

Akkadians, who migrated up from the Arabian Peninsula. The Akkadians were Semitic people, that is,

they spoke a Semitic language.

In 2340 BC, the great Akkadians leader Sargon conquered Sumer and built the Akkadians

Empire stretching over most of the Sumerian city-states and extending as far away as Lebanon.

Sargon based his empire in the city of Akkad, from which his people derived their name.

Sargon's ambitious empire lasted only a short time in the long span of Mesopotamian history. In 2125

BC, the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia rose up in revolt, and the Akkadians empire fell

before a renewal of Sumerian city-states.

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The Akkadians Akkad and the Arts

Akkadian period

Sargon of Akkad's (reigned c. 2334-c. 2279 BC) unification of the Sumerian city-states and

creation of a first Mesopotamian empire profoundly affected the art of his people, as well as their

language and political thought. The increasingly large proportion of Semitic elements in the

population was in the ascendancy, and their personal loyalty to Sargon and his successors replaced the

regional patriotism of the old cities. The new conception of kingship thus engendered is reflected in

artworks of secular grandeur, unprecedented in the god-fearing world of the Sumerians.

Architecture

One would indeed expect a similar change to be apparent in the character of contemporary

architecture, and the fact that this is not so may be due to the rareness of excavated examples. It is

known that the Sargonid dynasty had a hand in the reconstruction and extension of many Sumerian

temples, for example at Nippur, and that they built palaces with useful amenities, such as the Tall al-

Asmar. Besides that, they built palaces with powerful fortresses on their lines of imperial

communication, for example like the Tell Brak, or Tall Birak at-Tahtani, Syria. The ruins of their

buildings, however, are lacking to suggest either changes in architectural style or structural

innovations.  

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Sculpture

Two notable heads of Akkadian statues have survived:

one in bronze and the other of stone. The bronze head of a king,

wearing the wig-helmet of the old Sumerian rulers, is probably

Sargon himself. Though lacking its inlaid eyes and slightly

damaged elsewhere, this head is rightly considered one of the

great masterpieces of ancient art. The Akkadian head in stone,

from Bismayah, Iraq, suggests that portraiture in materials other

than bronze had also progressed.

Where relief sculpture is fretful, an even greater accomplishment is evident in the famous

Naram-Sin, who is Sargon's grandson, stela, on which a pattern of figures is ingeniously designed to

express the abstract idea of invasion. Other stela and the rock reliefs, which by their geographic

situation bear witness to the extent of Akkadian conquest, show the carving of the period to be in the

hands of less competent artists. Yet two striking fragments in the Iraqi Museum, which were found in

the region of An-Nasiriyah, Iraq, once more provide evidence of the improvement in design and

craftsmanship that had taken place since the days of the Sumerian dynasties. One of the fragments

shows a procession of naked war prisoners, in which the anatomic details are well observed but

skilfully subordinated to the rhythmical pattern required by the subject.

Some compensation for the paucity of surviving Akkadian sculptures is to be found in the

varied and plentiful collection of contemporary cylinder seals. The Akkadian seal cutter's craft

reached a standard of perfection virtually unrivalled in later times. Where the aim of his Sumerian

predecessor had been to produce an uninterrupted, closely woven design, the Akkadian seal cutters

own preference was for clarity in the arrangement of a number of cautiously spaced figures.

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The Akkadian dynasty ended in disaster when the river valley was overrun by the mountain

tribes of northern Iran. Of all the Mesopotamian cities, only Lagash appears somehow to have

remained aloof from the conflict and, under its famous governor Gudea, to have successfully

maintained the continuity of the Mesopotamian cultural tradition. In particular, the sculpture dating

from this short interregnum in 2100 BC seems to represent some sort of posthumous flowering of

Sumerian genius. The well-known group of statues of the governor and other notables discovered at

the end of the 19th century, long remained the only criterion by which Sumerian art could be judged,

and examples in the Louvre and British Museum are still greatly admired. The hard stone, usually

diorite, is carved with obvious mastery and brought to a fine finish. Details are cleverly stylized, but

the musculature is carefully studied, and the high quality of the carving makes the use of inlay

unnecessary. The powerful impression of serene authority that these statues convey justifies their

inclusion among the finest products of ancient Middle Eastern art.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, the ancient civilization of the Sumerians and Akkadians has influenced out

contemporary architecture and design. For example, the courtyard house that is suitable for hot

weather states and it can be seen in most designed villas. It is really vital for people to mix the ancient

architecture into the modern architecture because it shows us where the building originated from and

it reminds us of our ancestors. Improvements can be made maybe by making a ziggurat-like city out

of solid bricks to sustain through the seasons.

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Source

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_architecture

http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/westasia/architecture/sumerian.htm

http://www.crystalinks.com/sumerart.html

http://www.iraqi-japan.com/iraqinfo/history_e.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_nail

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_dactylifera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phragmites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta

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