Ancient Architecture - Softcover

Seton Lloyd and Hans Wolfgang Muller describe the beginnings of architecture in the Ancient Near Middle East and Egypt, the brithplace of Western civilisation, where the newly born science of construction merged with an emerging aesthetic practice. This book examines sites and structures from neolithic temples in Anatolia to the royal tombs of Egypt. Each page combines reconstruction drawings of site plans, building perspectives, and decorative elements with photographs of archeological sites including aerial views and details. An extensive section is devoted to Egyptian architecture from its origins to the first century AC. Also included are the first dwellings on a circular plan, dating from the 8th millenium BC in Jordan, the famous site of Catal Hayuk, the ziggurat towers of the Neo-Assyrians and Neo -Babylonians, and the Achaemenids. The book examines the theological requirements, organization, and hierarchies in the architectural practices of the era.

Seton Lloyd was the first Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and subsequently Professor of Western Asiatic Archaeology at the University of London. He is the author of numerous books on Turkey and the Middle East, including Ancient Turkey: A Traveller's History (University of California Press, 1998), and The Archeology of Mesopotamia (W.W. Norton, 2978, rev. 1984). The late Hans Wolfgang Muller was Professor of Egyptology at the University of Munich. He established in Munich a world-renowned school of Egyptian art history and a museum of Egyptian art. He is the author of Gold of the Pharaohs (Cornell University Press, 1999), among other books.