Identical Diversity of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece
Mesopotamia is a Greek term which refers to the land between two rivers namely Euphrates and Tigris which is now called Iraq. Mesopotamia is known for being occupied by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians which helped in making it a very diverse civilization both in culture and design. Due to the fact that Mesopotamia is a land between two rivers, their way of writing, farming (irrigation), astronomy, literature and design all depended on the two rivers.
Hellenistic Greece literally means a culture wherein Greeks and Asians are together. This vision started with the conquest of Alexander the great which started with the conquest of Babylon up to the trip to India. All of his efforts helped spread the Greek Culture all throughout Asia. Aside from that, the very first conquest of Alexander the great was Mycenae and then the infamous Egypt was next, which is why there was a city in Egypt called Alexandria. With all the different conquests and all the different cultures coinciding with each other, it is evident that there may be diversity in the three civilizations, but surely there will have been common structural and cultural designs that will clash with each other.
Two of the civilizations, namely Mesopotamia and Egypt share common architecture. Seldom do they create towering homes or buildings most especially under the heat of the sun. They create buildings that have ceilings that would bend inwards if not arching upwards. In creating their housing they simply use branches and mud to be able to make their shelter weather proof.
Although when it comes to building tombs or monuments such as temples and palaces they make use of bricks and in the case of the Egyptians by 4000 BC they make use of stones such as limestone, granite and sandstone. In both civilizations they creatively made sun dried bricks made of mud to be able to make their infamous monuments. Monuments that still stand until now such as Mastabas in the case of the Egyptians, where they bury their dead and the great Ziggurats of the Mesopotamians were the first monumental buildings made by man kind.
On the other hand, Greece was famous for a number of different monuments. In Mycenae tombs such as that found in the other two civilizations is present namely the great beehive tombs and massive palaces. The Greeks are famous when it comes to the pillars with a decorated top or formally called as ‘capitals’. But unknown to many men, these originate in the basic design of Mesopotamian and Egyptian pillars.
Pillars in these two countries used to be made of bundle of reeds. When one looks at the bundle of reeds they seem like a circular arrangement pointing upwards in a neat array with protrusions on the bottom and most especially on the top. Egyptians evolved from reeds to stone. Egyptians made pillars made of stone in the way that their previous pillars where made, they placed palm-leaf designs for the ‘capitals’ and ribbed fluting to make it similar to their pillars of reeds. From this design the Greeks altered it in such a way that they made the pillars a lot slimmer for balance but still kept the ‘capitals’ and used it as a horizontal support.
Generally there are a lot more different influences are shared by these three civilizations due to the fact that they share common history. Monuments, buildings and pillars are just some of the great identical differences they may have.
`Highlights from the Collection: Mesopotamia’, Oriental Institute of theUniversity of Chicago, [Online]
Available at: http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/highlights/meso.html
‘Mesopotamia’, Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia, [Online]
`Iraq-Ancient Mesopotamia’, Library of Congress; Article on Ancient Iraq, [Online]
Available at: http http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/neareast/a/LOCIraq.htm
`Greece’, Cyber Museum, [Online]
Available at: http://members.tripod.com/jaydambrosio/greece.html
Fletcher, T. 2006, `A Short History of the World Architecture’, Essential Architecture, [Online]
Available at: http://www.essential-architecture.com/MISC/MISC-hist.htm
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