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The Vaulting System of Ukheidar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Gertrude Lowthian Bell
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Extract

The vaulting system of a Persian palace may seem to be a subject remote from the province of the Hellenic Society. It is not perhaps so remote as it appears. The history of Hellenistic art is closely interwoven with the problems of the Orient, and all evidence is welcome which will help to elucidate a period so obscure, yet of so far-reaching an influence, as that which saw the fusion of Greece with the East after the conquests of Alexander. From the age of the Diadochi the arts emerged profoundly modified. To instance architecture alone, we find the builders in the Greek coast-lands preoccupied with Asiatic structural methods, bringing forth new solutions, modifying, with their quick sense of proportion and of beauty, ancient oriental themes, and giving back to inner Asia as much as they had derived from her. Not one of the great cities of the Diadochi in Mesopotamia or Syria has yet been excavated, and the importance of such fragmentary knowledge of the succeeding civilizations as can be gathered together lies in the fact that they indicate the changes that had taken place during a time of rapid development about which we have no direct information. In this development Greece and Asia bore an equal part, and the lines of interaction are everywhere to be traced. I am not, however, concerned here to disentangle these complex questions, but merely to furnish a few more details that bear upon their oriental aspect.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , 1910 , pp. 69 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1910

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References

1 He published a plan of part of the castle in the Gazette des Beaux Arts for April, 1909, and in the Bulletin de l'Acad. des Inscr. et Belles Lettres for March of the same year.

2 These plans, in order to correspond in position with the ground-plan on Pl. X., are printed with the northern point of the compass to the left.

3 Mission scientifique en Perse, vol. iv. second part.

4 For Sarvistān, Firūzabād, and Ctesiphon, see Dieulafoy, L'Art Ancien de la Perse, vol. iv.

5 The process is minutely described by Choisy, , L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 81Google Scholar. See, too, Dieulafoy, , L'Art Ancien de la Perse, vol. iv. p. 13Google Scholar. The same construction has been found in Egypt: Perrot, et Chipiez, , Histoire de l'Art duns l' Antiquité, p. 534Google Scholar.

6 This does not seem to be the case at Sar-vistān (Dieulafoy, loc. cit., section of chamber F), but the brick walls of Ctesiphon are treated as at Ukheidar.

7 I am not here concerned with the Roman aspects of the question, but it may be well to note that the groin occurs in Rome during the Republican period and is used in the Tabularium. See Delbrück, Hellenistiche Bauten in Latium. This example of the groin is the earliest known to me.

8 Choisy, , L'Ari de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 51Google Scholar.

9 Architecture, ii. p. 10. Choisy talks of brick groins in Constantinople dating from the time of Constantine, but that is probably because he places some of the existing cisterns too. early. See Strzygowski, and Forchheimer, , Die Byz. Wasserbehaltung, pp. 173Google Scholaret seq.

10 It is worth noticing that legend gave to oue of these princes a ‘Roman,’ i.e. Greek, architect (Rothstein, , Die Dynastie der Lakhmiden in al-Hira, p. 15)Google Scholar. Their civilization was, however, derived from their Persian over-lords.

11 Kuseir 'Amra, published by the K. Akademie der Wissenschaften.

12 Frequently published. See Perrot and Chipiez, ii. p. 146.

13 Choisy, , L' Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 90Google Scholar.

14 I have given a fuller definition of this term in The Thousand and One Churches, p. 439.

15 Choisy, , L'Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, p. 88Google Scholar.

16 The Thousand and One Churches, Fig. 308.

17 I am publishing it in a forthcoming work on Amida by Strzygowski and von Berchem.

18 Dieulafoy, , L'Art Ancien de la Perse, iv. p. 77Google Scholar.

19 Op. cit. p. 344.