![]() ![]() The span was 12 feet (3.7 m) and the lower part of the arch was built in horizontal courses, up to about one-third of the height, and the rings above were inclined back at a slight angle, so that the bricks of each ring, laid flatwise, adhered till the ring was completed, no centering of any kind being required the vault thus formed was elliptic in section, arising from the method of its construction. The earliest barrel vaults in ancient Egypt are thought to be those in the granaries built by the 19th dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II, the ruins of which are behind the Ramesseum, at Thebes. The earliest known examples of barrel vaults were built by the Sumerians, possibly under the ziggurat at Nippur in Babylonia, which was built of fired bricks cemented with clay mortar. ![]() The effect is that of a structure composed of continuous semicircular or pointed sections. Pointed barrel vault showing direction of lateral forcesĪ barrel vault is the simplest form of a vault and resembles a barrel or tunnel cut lengthwise in half. However, monumental temple buildings of the pharaonic culture in the Nile Valley did not use vaults, since even the huge portals with widths of more than 7 meters were spanned with cut stone beams. widely used and from the end of the 8th century B.C. the Pantheon and the Basilica of Maxentius.īrick vaults have been used in Egypt since the early 3rd millennium BC. Some outstanding examples have survived in Rome, e.g. The Romans in particular developed vault construction further and built barrel, cross and dome vaults. The real vault construction with radially joined stones was already known to the Egyptians and Assyrians and was introduced into the building practice of the West by the Etruscans. They were built regionally until modern times. Main article: List of architectural vaultsĬorbelled vaults, also called false vaults, with horizontally joined layers of stone have been documented since prehistoric times in the 14th century BC from Mycenae. ![]()
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