Egyptian Architecture style

The two principal building materials used in ancient Egypt were unbaked mud brick and stone. From the Old Kingdom onward stone was generally used for tombs—the eternal dwellings of the dead—and for temples—the eternal houses of the gods. Mud brick remained the domestic material, used even for royal palaces; it was also used for fortresses, the great walls of temple precincts...

arches

Arches were known in Egypt and Greece but were considered unsuitable for monumental architecture. In Roman times the arch was fully exploited in bridges, aqueducts, and large-scale architecture. New forms and uses were found in medieval and particularly Gothic architecture (flying buttress, pointed arch), and Baroque architects developed a vocabulary of noncircular forms for expressive reasons.

capitals

Primitive abacus capitals were known in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and two kinds of simple stone capital have been found in the stepped-pyramid complex at Saqqārah (c. 2890–c. 2686 bc). One, a saddlelike shape, suggests bent reeds or leaves; the other, an upturned bell, derives from the papyrus plant. Later Egyptian architecture used capitals derived from such plant forms as the palm...

columns

...as well as support. Classical Greek and Roman architecture made use of five major orders (or styles) of columns, carved from single blocks or created from stacks of massive stone blocks. In ancient Egypt and the Middle East, columns, usually large and circular, were used with great effect to decorate and support massive structures, especially in the absence of arches. In Eastern architecture...

concrete

Concrete was employed in ancient Egypt and was highly developed by the ancient Romans, whose concrete made with volcanic-ash cement (pozzolana) permitted a great expansion of architectural methods, particularly the development of domes and vaults (often reinforced by brick ribbing) to cover large areas, of foundations, and of structures such as bridges and sewerage systems where waterproofing...

Greek architecture

From about 650 on, the Greeks began to visit Egypt regularly, and their observation of the monumental stone buildings there was the genesis of the ultimate development of monumental architecture and sculpture in Greece. The first step in architecture was simply the replacement of wooden pillars with stone ones and the translation of the carpentry and brick structural forms into stone...

mastaba

rectangular superstructure of ancient Egyptian tombs, built of mud brick or, later, stone, with sloping walls and a flat roof. A deep shaft descended to the underground burial chamber.

obelisks

tapered monolithic pillar, originally erected in pairs at the entrances of ancient Egyptian temples. The Egyptian obelisk was carved from a single piece of stone, usually red granite from the quarries at Aswān. It was designed to be wider at its square or rectangular base than at its pyramidal top, which was often covered with an alloy of gold and silver called electrum. All four sides of...

pyramids

in architecture, a monumental structure constructed of or faced with stone or brick and having a rectangular base and four sloping triangular (or sometimes trapezoidal) sides meeting at an apex (or truncated to form a platform). Pyramids have been built at various times in Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, western Asia, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, India, Thailand, Mexico, South America, and on some islands of...

sculptural style

...of space rather than mass, there are styles of architecture that are effective largely through the quality and organization of their solid forms. Ancient styles of stone architecture, particularly Egyptian, Greek, and Mexican, tend to treat their components in a sculptural manner. Moreover, most buildings viewed from the outside are compositions of masses. The growth of spatial sculpture is so...