The state and culture of Mesopotamia, formed in the basins of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, formed the first significant civilization in the history of mankind. The heyday of its development falls on the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. For many branches of human life, embodied and become known in later civilizations, it was Mesopotamia that was the birthplace: architecture, writing, mathematics, the state apparatus, social structure, and so on.
Unfortunately, the millennia that have passed since that time have destroyed many of the achievements of this cradle of mankind. Almost everything that we know about it is known thanks to material artifacts preserved in the earth: tablets for cuneiform writing, giving an idea of an ancient letter, a stone stele found that preserved the laws of Hamurappi (the oldest official legislation, whose birthplace was precisely Mesopotamia). Architecture, which tells about religious ideas, the social and political structure of these peoples, and so on, also plays an important role in this. Actually, it is the remains of the ancientconstructions provide the most complete information about the long-disappeared states.
Mesopotamia: architecture as a face of civilization
In the conditions of the almost complete absence of stone and forest in this area, the main building material for Sumer, Assyria and Babylonia was clay, from which the so-called raw brick was molded, and later baked brick. Actually, the emergence and evolution of mud-brick buildings is the main contribution to world architecture made by ancient Mesopotamia.
Architecture of Mesopotamia already at the end of the VI millennium BC. e. characterized by the emergence of adobe houses, consisting of several rooms. This was at a time when most of the world's population had not yet even thought of switching to agriculture, living in random camps and hunting and gathering by driven hunting and gathering. With the emergence of the state in Sumer, monumental religious buildings also appeared here. The people who inhabited this area built characteristic temples in the form of stepped towers and ziggurats. Ziggurats were usually pyramidal in shape. It is interesting that the biblical Tower of Babel, which got into the Bible from more ancient myths of the peoples of Mesopotamia, has their appearance.
The palaces and royal residences of the rulers of Assyria and Babylonia had a very complex structure. So, for example, the palace of Sargon II in the city of Khorsabad was a powerful citadel, twenty meters high. And its courtyard was abundantly riddled with canals and vaulted ceilings. The palace itself wasone-story, but had many courtyards around it. In one part, the royal apartments were located, and in the other - chambers for women. In addition, government offices and temples were also housed in the palace.
In the structure of cities, the architecture of ancient Mesopotamia is characterized by a continuous building of quarters with common walls between two separate houses, as well as blind facades facing the street and small windows located under the roof. Inside such a building, as a rule, there was a patio.
