Wooden scaff olding would eventually be built to give sculp-
tors and painters access to the outer walls. In the case of the
pyramids at Giza, granite stones were set on the outsides of the
pyramids, carved until they formed smooth slopes to the tops
of the pyramids, and then polished so that they shone brightly
in sunlight, while displaying carved images and glyphs.
THE MIDDLE EAST
BY JAMES A. CORRICK
Th e building materials used in Mesopotamia, Persia, and
the rest of the ancient Near East were reeds, wood, stone,
and mud bricks. Reeds, harvested along the banks of the Ti-
gris, Euphrates, and other rivers, were commonly used be-
cause houses could be built quickly and cheaply from them.
A reed house began with a circle of holes for a round struc-
ture or two parallel lines of holes for a rectangular one. Th e
builder then pushed bundles of tightly tied tall reeds into
each hole and pulled together the bundles opposite each
other, tying them at the top to form the roof that was then
covered with a mat woven of reeds. More mats were hung in
the openings left for doorways.
Unlike reeds, trees were scarce in much of the Near East,
particularly in Mesopotamia, and wood was not generally
used to construct houses or any other buildings. Instead it
was reserved for door frames, doors, roofs, supports for roofs,
and paneling. Mesopotamia used stone, as did the rest of the
Near East, but more rarely because it had few sources of the
large stones needed for construction. Stone was used to make
city walls, building foundations, and fl oor paving. It was less
oft en used for the walls of buildings. Th e Persians, who had
a readier source of stone, used it to make stairs, doorways,
window frames, and columns, many of which stood 65 feet
high. Th ey sometimes carved whole building elements out of
a single stone block, as they did with the great stone staircase
in Persepolis.
Even the Persians did not use stone for building walls,
however—not even for their palaces. Like the Mesopotamians
and other ancient Near Easterners, they constructed building
walls from brick. Indeed, of all the building materials of the
ancient Near East the most common was brick formed from
mud. Mud brick was quick and easy to make as well as to use.
In the heat of Near Eastern summers, bricks had the added ad-
vantage of absorbing and radiating that heat very slowly. Th us
brick buildings, particularly those with thick walls, remained
relatively cool. Mud bricks were made from river mud or clay
that was mixed with either sand or fi nely chopped straw to
give added strength. At fi rst individual bricks were shaped
by hand. Th ese handmade bricks were either cigar shaped or
bun shaped. Although shaping bricks by hand would con-
tinue, aft er 2700 b.c.e. many Mesopotamians began to use
rectangular molds, which formed bricks that were twice as
long as they were wide.
Th e brick makers either pressed the mold down into a
mass of prepared mud or fi lled the mold up with mud. Be-
Clay foundation peg, the fi rst Dynasty of Lagash, around 2400 b.c.e.
from Bad-tibira, southern Iraq (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)154 building techniques and materials: The Middle East