About the Egyptians

The Egyptians decorated their buildings with beautiful pictures—scenes from daily life, flowers and animals, and words written in their "picture-writing," or hieroglyphics. Greek Architecture. The buildings of ancient Greece, built nearly 2,500 years ago (about 450 B.C.) have never been surpassed for beauty. Like the Egyptians and other early builders, they used the post or column and the lintel. Their buildings were not as huge as those of the Egyptians, because they were built more by free men than by slaves. The finest examples of ancient Greek architecture arc on the Acropolis at Athens. There is beauty in pictures; there is also beauty in lines.

The Greek buildings were beautiful because the lines and forms of them were so graceful. This was especially true of the great columns that supported the buildings. The finest Greek buildings were made of beautiful white marble and decorated with some of the greatest sculpture of all time, roman architecture. The Egyptians and Greeks had known about the arch, but had not used it in their finest buildings. The Romans used the arch as the basis of their architecture.

A series of arches, each touching the next, make a curved ceiling called a vault. A number of arches that meet at the same point on top, in a sort of upside-down bowl shape, make a dome. The vault and the dome, still seen in many great buildings, came to us from Roman architecture. The Romans also borrowed the columns of Greek architecture, and ornamented their buildings with sculpture in the Greek manner. The Pantheon, a great temple that can still be seen in the city of Rome, is an example of how the Greek and Roman styles of architecture were combined.