Undulating Mud Brick Walls in Acient Pharaonic Egypt By Max Johann Beiersdorf

https://www.academia.edu/37670488/Undulating_Mud_Brick_Walls_in_Acient_Pharaonic_Egypt The undulating mud brick walls from the 7 th –4 th Century BC are among the largest buildings in the ancient Egyptian culture, apart from the famous pyramids of the Old Kingdom. While the monumental temples of this period have continuously been the subjects of research, the exterior walls built with mud bricks have only rarely been the focus of scientific studies. In terms of an architectural semantics, Egyptologists' research has so far mainly focussed on the ancient perception of the buildings and in doing so has assumed the existence of a link between the characteristic appearance of the walls and the ancient Egyptian mythology. Aspects in terms of historical building research as well as the structural analysis were, in contrast, much less examined and mostly only studied on the basis of isolated findings. As part of the project, numerous undulating walls were studied and documented during several fieldwork campaigns in cooperation with the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) since 2011. In the course of this work, the enclosure walls of Heliopolis and Elephantine could be examined in greater detail. This provided insights into the relationship between design and technological advantages. Built in alternate panels of concave and convex courses of mud brick, the sequence of construction could be accelerated by raising the concave panels first. The structural analysis of the walls allows the assumption, that the stability could be increased in conditions of permanent weight. Based on these observations it can be concluded that this construction technique brought essential structural benefits. The paper presents the archaeological fieldwork and illuminates the architecture and construction history of the individual buildings in more detail. Based on observations made from the enclosure wall of the temple of Atum-Re at Heliopolis, which was the largest temple complex in Ancient Egypt, the paper focuses on the organisation of construction work. ...