medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Hi, C.
> > >From: rochelle altman <[log in to unmask]>
> > >[excellent topographical description of the
> Galilee/Nazareth/Jerusalem area
>ruthlessly snipped]
>
> > Coming from you, that's high praise. :-)
>
>i have a strong interest in 12th c. Nazareth (i know a Chartrain sculptor who
>worked there, before the Salad-Inn put a stop to that foolishness), so you got
>my attention up-front.
Then you should be interested in Nazareth's position -- a way station
between the mountains and the valleys and the inland lake/sea. (It is
freshwater, after all.) Therefore, not simply a poor little farming
village. It was a trader's village; a meeting ground between the
highlanders and the lowlanders. Of course, they had artisans and workshops.
> >>Conifers, in general, yield lumber good for chairs, tools, shelves, doors,
>door-frames, bed-frames, etc.... also are limited in the width of the lumber
>and are not the most durable of woods.
>
> >>>durable enough (if kept out of the weather), but knotty as hell and, thus,
>difficult to do fine work in.
>
> > And that's why so many antique chairs, etc., from the general area are (1)
>with very little shaping -- straight backs, legs, and frames -- and (2)
>painted.
>
>no doubt.
>
>and no doubt ordinary furnature for ordinary folks was pretty simple (the very
>possession of a chair, of any sort, might disqualify one from being
>"ordinary").
Nope, not if you see the style -- pretty much boxes -- only with
square legs. Stools are easy enough to make from scrap lumber or
fallen tree branches with enough heft -- then you got
round legs with a box or circular or flat plate on top. Of course,
not too surprisingly, there were stone benches and other stone
seating. (Stone benches are not particularly comfortable without a
cushions [kariyot] of some sort -- and cushion/pillow makers were
around.) Stone tables, too.
>still, the Upper Classes would have demanded furniture.
Of course the upper classes had fine furniture -- not the same thing,
though, is it.
>and the Egyptians, for all their lack of wood (good or otherwise) were --as
>best we can judge from the tomb survivals) *master* cabinetmakers, joiners,
>whateverthahellyouwannacallit.
They sure were -- but the Pharoahs could import whatever they
wanted... including skilled woodworkers. They had guilds, too.
>there must have been *thousands* of small (and large) shrines of this sort:
>
>http://www.suziemanley.com/march/tut_nest.htm
>
>chairs
>
>http://daphne.palomar.edu/mhudelson/WorksofArt/02Egyptian/2121.html
>
>(there's another one from Tut's tomb, not gilded, but quite wonderfully worked
>an marvelously finished; i don't know where it's wood came from, sub-sahara,
>perhaps.)
Or Phoenicia or Crete or Cyprus -- lots of trading in this triangle
as far back as the fourth millennium.
>these were so common, apparently, you can pick one up today for a Song on
>eBay
>
>http://cgi.ebay.com/Ancient-Egyptian-TUTANKHAMUN-THRONE-JEWELRY-BOX_W0QQitemZ180198445327QQihZ008QQcategoryZ10911QQcmdZViewItem
Yeah, and if from Tut's tomb, and not a replica, then an illegally
exported item at that. Better not let Hawassi know -- he's even
trying to copyright the Pyramids now. (LOL)
>chariot wheels (not all that easy to design and construct), including a few
>i've seen which show an absolutely *brilliant* solution to the problem of how
>to solve the hub/spoke/wheel problem: the spokes were made out of half-round
>pieces of wood which were (heat/steam)*bent* at acute angle and lashed
>together two at a time, flat side to flat side, mortised into the fellees,
>comming together at the hub.
Chariot makers and wheel-wrights were specialists, they were not
general carpenters.
>as far as i'm concerned, in spite of the *massive* loses of exemplars over the
>millennia, woodwork of this quality did not simply "suck itself out of its own
>fingers," and implies *extensive* experience, over a long, long period of
>time.
Of course. From what's been turning up recently, it seems that all
this expertise with copper (and the things are beautiful and
intricately designed) from the chalcolithic and later -- appears in
Europe and the Middle-East after the dispersal of the farming
communities around the Black Sea when the Mediterranean changed the
Black Sea from fresh-water to salt (yep, Noah's Flood). Axe heads had
wooden handles; the beds were wood-framed. You would have to have had
equivalent expertise with wood.
From wall paintings and pottery there seemed also to have been
chariots by the 4th millennium-- wood framed with reed matting
filling in the sides.
>with no native wood close by, to speak of.
>
> > > >> So, there was plenty of wood -- and work -- available for a jointer, a
>cabinet-maker, but not much for a general carpenter. ...the dominant building
>material was stone.... Wood was used in door and window frames, doors,
>furniture, shelving, and household items. etc.
>
> >>>and for roofs.
>
> >>the construction of which would fall to the carpenter.<
>
> > True -- if the roofs had wood cross beams.
>
>you mean beams running across the building's width?
>
>one way to do it.
>
>esp. for large buildings.
>
>more modest houses could have had a long ridge "beam", onto which the rafters
>were attached, running down to the walls.
No. No ridge beams, no rafters. Apparently stretched and treated hide
or, as in Egypt, woven reed matting, or, as in Mesopotamia and
Westwards, tunnel roofs.
Lots of tunnel roofs still around. We do know about the Egyptian reed
matting, but stretched hide depends entirely on pictures on walls and
pottery. Nothing much left of roofs of modest dwellings from
antiquity, only foundations.
And Chris, in Egypt, the reed huts of the lower classes were narrow;
in Mesopotamia, the mud and straw brick huts had thick walls and
narrow rooms. In Greece, modest dwellings had absolutely
claustrophobic rooms -- even just standing outside and looking in at
an abandoned early AD house on the upper Plaka was repellent. Of
course, in Egypt we have temples. To the East we find foundations,
stairs, and lower parts of walls of the luxury buildings. Remnants of
arched stone roofs did turn up from ca. fourth millennium in Mesopotamia.
>a post or column in the middle of the room would help that ridge beam out --or
>it could be spliced ("fished") together from two pieces (the "evolution" of
>middlevil splice joints is laid out in particular detail in the books of Cecil
>Hewett which i mentioned previously on this thread).
>
> >No wood in the roofs in the older plastered-stone houses (I've been inside
>one that dates to the 12th-century.)
>
>roofs made out of stone?
Yes. But as I said, that was a luxury house. Had two domed rooms and
a luxurious entry courtyard (behind marvelously carved double gates)
full of flowers and trees. As far as I could determine (couldn't
exactly go around gouging the ceilings), the roof was made of thin
stone slabs that met in the middle of the stone cross-beams. I
presume over that there was impregnated reed matting in layers.
>in modest houses?
As I said, to the West, modest houses may have had either reed
matting, stretched hides or tunnel roofs.... In Mesopotamia, farm
workers probably had matting; however, the artisan and other middle
classes most likely would have had tunnel roofs of straw and mud
bricks that rested on and overhung the tops of the walls. Essentially
a full-sized kerf for rain run-off.
> >We were talking about wood, so I didn't mention that the stone from the
>Judean Hills is sandstone, chalky and soft (you can "inscribe" it with a
>fingernail) and it's soft enough to be not difficult to cut cross-beams out
>of.
>
>i'm having trouble picturing a stone "cross-beam" --spanning a 10+ foot
>space...
You have to see it to believe it. It was extraordinary. Looked a
great deal like our modern concrete cross-beams -- but it was of stone.
Then, you are imagining rooms in ordinary (not luxury) housing to be
much larger than they were. Five or six feet wide would be more like
it. Length, though, is another story.
> >Flat roofs
>
>flat *stone* roofs?
>
>i'd like to live long enough to see one of those...
>
> >themselves may have been matting that was tarred (Dead Sea not far away) to
>water-proof. And domes (of whatever size) are stone -- corbelled and
>plastered, inside and out.
>
>domes?
>
>in "ordinary" (lower or even middle class) domestic architecture?
Domes usually were on the homes of the rich; but when you find a dome
on a modestly sized house without a courtyard...you have to think
artisan or merchant.
Then there were, and are, all those tunnel churches -- which is
merely an elongated, instead of round, dome -- an arch -- atop a
typical narrow room. Most definitely a stone roof supported by stone
side walls. No interior columns. You see these tunnel churches all
over the Cyclades. Some are tiny 4-5 person tunnel churches perched
on a mountain top; others are "large" 25-30 person churches in populated areas.
Tunnel churches imitate the construction of Mesopotamian houses and
temples and clearly were also around in the Coastal areas of the
Mediterranean. I have photos of some of those tunnel churches from
Greece. (One from the 3rd to 4th-century was right across the street
from the apartment in Chalandri behind a modern concrete,
pseudo-Byzantine. I couldn't imagine why all those tourist buses
stopped at that very ordinary pseudo-Byzantine church, so one day I
wandered around the back and -- lo, there was this ancient tunnel
church.) I even have one photo of a tunnel synagogue. But, I have no
way to make them available on the web.
> >The arch, corbel and other developments, has been used in
> construction in the
>general area since the fourth millennium.
>
>i've got no trouble with those, just don't see them being used all that much
>in common domestic architecture.
Why not? Easy enough to build -- when the rooms are narrow. Whether
out of straw and mud bricks or cut stone. In fact, if you ever get a
chance to visit Thera (aka Santorini), you will find modest domestic
buildings of stone with stone tunnel roofs all over the Island.
Plastered and white-washed, of course.
> > Buildings in Petra (the rose-red city built of stone) were cut into the
>rock.
>
>are their *houses* in Petra?
Yes and no.
>i thought that all those spectauclar carved "caves" (i wouln't call them
>"buildings" --faux buildings, maybe) were tombs.
Houses of the dead. Yes. -- just look at the entries. Greek
funeraries of the Classical period have the statues encased in the
entry to a temple. Note that a temple was called a house of god.
There is, also a monastery cut into the rock. That red rock is also
soft sandstone.
>in any event, perhaps we can agree that Petra is something of a One-Of?
No, we can't. There are monasteries in the Egypt that were, and are,
cut out of the "living rock."
> >No wood in the roofs.
>
>no "roofs," in caves.
>
>caves come with ready-made "roofs" --even man excavated caves.
Sure.
> >(And precious little wood available in that area.) In Egypt, the general
>population built their houses of reed stalks bound together for support posts
>and woven reed mats for roofing.
>
>as in the Land of the Two Rivers.
No, in the land of two rivers the modest houses were built of mud and
straw bricks and probably covered by a tunnel roof -- except for
actual laborers. As long as the tops of the bricks were protected,
the housing stood.
>but, not much in the way of reeds, in Palestine, i assume.
Reeds all around the Sea of Galilee. Reeds around oases. Reeds used
for pens. One end of the Sea was a swamp -- a malarial swamp. All
types of reeds -- fat woody ones, skinny weaving ones, round ones,
flat ones, etc.
> >Again, no wood and no need for general carpenters.
>
>Viday Soupra, re Egyptians.
Nope, those were not general carpenters; those were specialists. Some
marvelous chairs and cabinets from Pharonic tombs. Chariot builders
were specialists. And wheelwrights were another specialty group of
woodworkers. None of these specialists can be called general carpenters.
> > Today, of course, it's poured concrete and concrete block -- much cheaper
>than a stone mason.
>
>yes, the damned Romans ruined it all.
Well, the Egyptians had their own form of concrete -- that's how they
built the pyramids and apparently some of their temples. It looks
like stone, but it's cast Egyptian concrete (see the pyramids). It's
not all stone, though they did some remarkable things with stone for statues.
Wouldn't surprise me if the Romans got their concept of concrete from Egypt.
>c
Cheers,
Rochelle
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