A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volumes 1 and 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
When the curvilinear roof is omitted, a flat one is substituted, nearly
similar to those common in the country at the present day, consisting of
beams of unsquared timber, laid side by side as close as they can be
laid, and over this a mass of concrete or clay, sufficiently thick to
prevent the rain from penetrating through. Sometimes this is surmounted
by a low pediment, and sometimes the lower framing also stands out from
the rock, so as to give the entrance of the tomb something of a
porchlike form. Both these forms are illustrated in the two woodcuts
(Nos. 119 and 120), and numerous varieties of them are shown in the
works of Sir Charles Fellows and others, all containing the same
elements, and betraying most distinctly the wooden origin from which
they were derived.
[Illustration: 121. Ionic Lycian Tomb. (From Texier’s ‘Asie Mineure.’)]
The last form that these buildings took was in the substitution of an
Ionic façade for these carpentry forms: this was not done apparently at
once, for, though the Ionic form was evidently borrowed from the
neighbouring Greek cities, it was only adopted by degrees, and even then
betrayed more strongly the wooden forms from which its entablature was
derived than is usually found in other or more purely Grecian examples.
As soon as it had fairly gained a footing, the wooden style was
abandoned, and a masonry one substituted in its stead. The whole change
took place in this country probably within a century; but this is not a
fair test of the time such a process usually takes, as here it was
evidently done under foreign influence and with the spur given by the
example of a stone-building people. We have no knowledge of how long it
took in Egypt to effect the transformation. In India, where the form and
construction of the older Buddhist temples resemble so singularly these
examples in Lycia, the process can be traced through five or six
centuries; and in Persia it took perhaps nearly as long to convert the
wooden designs of the Assyrians into even the imperfect stone
architecture of the Achæmenians. Even in their best and most perfect
buildings, however, much remained to be done before the carpentry types
were fairly got rid of and the style became entitled to rank among the
masonic arts of the world.
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