Posted on 02/07/2015 9:14:38 AM PST by SunkenCiv
...In the Egyptian religious architecture of the Old Kingdom (2686 - 2181 BC), the builders... mirrored less durable materials in stone buildings -- including wood and mud bricks... made on regular, rectangular plan, with an area of tens of square meters. Structures were built tightly next to each other. The windows were small and located in the upper part of the wall...
Lintels and window had support beams -- their task was to relieve the empty space, and to protect mud bricks against erosion of and mechanical damage. As is clear from contemporary analogies and archaeological documentation, the lower part of the door had a doorstep, probably placed above the ground level. This type of solution... results from the need to protect homes from water during the periodic river flooding... Houses did not have a door -- Egyptians used mats to cover door openings instead...
In addition to the mud brick buildings, a number of other elements can be found in modern cities in the Nile Delta that have analogies in the historic materials and archaeological documentation. An example can be of various types of fences made of organic materials and property walls made of mud bricks. These elements completed the virtual reconstruction...
The settlement functioned in this place for almost 1000 years, from approx. 3700 to 2700 BC First, there was a strong Lower Egypt local culture centre, then an important centre of power during the formation of a unified Pharaonic state. Tell el-Farcha became famous a few years ago after the discovery of one of the world's oldest brewing centres, two gold statues of rulers dating back more than 5 thousand years, extremely rich temple deposits, which included masterpieces of early Egyptian art -- some of them can be seen today in the famous Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
(Excerpt) Read more at scienceinpoland.pap.pl ...
Virtual 3D model of more than 5 thousand years old Egyptian homes, discovered during the excavations at Tell el-Farcha in the Nile Delta, prepared by Jacek Karmowski, PhD student of the Institute of Archaeology of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.
I wonder what the plants are...
JT
Those are some huge Asparagus plants
Nice looking places.
remember “The Money Pit” movie?
Wonder what it cost to reconstruct a structure using mud bricks.
They do pretty well in the parched, cracked earth, don’t they?
I guess a PhD in archeology doesn’t know much about botany.
I like his theory that high, small windows keep out “unwanted intruders like scorpions and snakes.” This must have been right after Adam and Eve when everything was peaceful and no man wanted to harm another.
I was just wondering if they were food plants, erosion control, or ‘just for pretty’.
-JT
When I worked in Yunnan Province of China ‘76-’77 the villagers built their homes from rammed earth. They couldn’t afford bricks. No glass in the windows, either. It was like a journey back 2,000 years.
Looks like The Big Res out in New Mexico to me.
positively Puebloean
Ancients would have painted their houses—at least a whitewash-—maybe put good luck symbols to ward off evil spirits.
You reminded me of something.
Does anyone know/remember what a ‘bottle tree’ is?
I had never seen one, until we drove by a house a couple of months ago that had one - in Maryland! :-)
Looks like Minecraft.
bump for reference
Yeah, that opened doorway defeated keeping out varmints and floods.
A lime based whitewash has antibiotic properties.
Who knew there was any question that the average man had a mud constructed house. It’s not like he had a thousand slaves to haul and carve stone.
Yes, they are believed to have originally been used in Africa, to trap evil spirits. Lately they’ve become trendy yard art...
-JT
Yes...it’s not a revelation, is it? We need to explore other possibilities. Were the Home Depots were out of 2x4s and drywall?
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