The Vaulting System of Ukheidar

Abstract

The vaulting system of a Persian palace may seem to be a subject remote from the province of the Hellenic Society. It is not perhaps so remote as it appears. The history of Hellenistic art is closely interwoven with the problems of the Orient, and all evidence is welcome which will help to elucidate a period so obscure, yet of so far-reaching an influence, as that which saw the fusion of Greece with the East after the conquests of Alexander. From the age of the Diadochi the arts emerged profoundly modified. To instance architecture alone, we find the builders in the Greek coast-lands preoccupied with Asiatic structural methods, bringing forth new solutions, modifying, with their quick sense of proportion and of beauty, ancient oriental themes, and giving back to inner Asia as much as they had derived from her. Not one of the great cities of the Diadochi in Mesopotamia or Syria has yet been excavated, and the importance of such fragmentary knowledge of the succeeding civilizations as can be gathered together lies in the fact that they indicate the changes that had taken place during a time of rapid development about which we have no direct information. In this development Greece and Asia bore an equal part, and the lines of interaction are everywhere to be traced. I am not, however, concerned here to disentangle these complex questions, but merely to furnish a few more details that bear upon their oriental aspect.