Comparison Of Three Great Architectural Structures (Essay Sample)

Art & Architecture
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Introduction
The great pyramids, the Ziggurats of the ancient Near East and Stonehenge are among the some of the most recognized megalithic structures in the world. Located in Wiltshire England, Stonehenge is a major prehistoric monument that comprises of a ring of standing stones with each of the standing stones being around 13ft high and 6ft 11 inches wide with a weight of approximately 25 tons (Willis et al., 2016). The stones were set within earthwork in the middle of the complex Bronze and Neolithic Age monuments in England.
Located in the El Giza, Egypt, the great pyramids are some of the oldest and largest pyramids in the world (Tort 2015). The great pyramids were designed as resting place for the pharaohs of Egypt and have provided archeologist with great insight into ancient Egyptian practices (Tort 2015). The Ziggurat is a massive megalithic structure that was built in ancient Mesopotamia and the western Iranian Plato (Sparavigna 2016).
One of the most notable ziggurats is the Great Ziggurat of Ur (Sparavigna 2016). The objective of this paper is to draw parallelism between the three megalithic structures discussed above. The paper will also look at the culture of the individuals who built these structures and factors that influenced the golden age.
Parallels
A major similarity between the three structures is the fact that they were all places of spiritual ascension. Stonehenge was created as a place of burial and the people who created it intended it to be a place where a person’s soul would ascend to the next world (Willis et al., 2016). The place was regarded as a domain of the dead where the spiritual world interacted with the human world (Willis et al., 2016). The great pyramid was also a place of spiritual ascension where the spirit of the pharaoh and other important figures in traditional Egyptian society would migrate into the next world.
Egyptians believed that when a person died his spirit would be escorted by god Anubis to the next world and that the god Anubis would meet the spirit of the pharaoh at the pyramid. The locals believed that the slants of the pyramids would serve to bring the great kings of Egypt and the gods together (Tort 2015). Unlike the great Pyramid and Stonehenge which were built as places of burial, the ziggurat was a building like structure built on top of a raised platform that leads up to a holy place (Sparavigna 2016).
The ziggurats were regarded by the locals as a place where one would be able to transcend humanity and get closer to the gods. The locals referred to them as the “bond between heaven and earth” (Sparavigna 2016). They believed that as one moved up the steps towards the temple his/,her spirit also ascended into the spiritual realm.
Another parallel between the three structures is that they were build built on manual labor and utilized large boulders of stone. The creators of Stonehenge utilized exceptional engineering skills to bring the stones to upright positions and place other stones on top of them. The three megaliths were developed in periods where there were no mechanical systems to aid with their construction, and this manual labor was used. To be able to master manual labor in such a massive scale indicates that the individuals who commission the development of the structures were financially empowered and that the communities where they resided had large populations of individuals who could offer their services.
Another similarity between the three structures can be found in their design. All the three structures utilized complex engineering principles, and their design was based on mathematical shapes. Stonehenge is based on a circular design and the builders of the structure utilized mathematical principles in the placement of the stones on top of the pillar. The great pyramids are regarded as the greatest testament to Egyptian mathematical knowledge and engineering prowess (Tort 2015).
The base of the pyramid takes a square shape, and as one progresses up the pyramid, it starts to assume a triangular shape. Mathematical concepts are also reflected in the design of the Ziggurats. The structure consists of rectangular platforms that reduce in size as one goes up the structure (Sparavigna 2016). From t...