How The Ancient Romans Drew Their Monumental Architecture

We have known for a long time that some of the builders in ancient times have extraordinary abilities, but we still do not know how certain monumental construction projects were achieved. However, a mystery has been put to bed: how the ancient Romans achieved efficiency in their massive construction projects, whether by building roads or buildings from scratch.

Their ancient masons sculpted or painted small, almost imperceptible instructions on the stones, explain to Arleta Kowalewska and Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Institute of Archeology at the University of Haifa, in Tel Aviv magazine.

Much of his work was done in Hippopotamus of Antioch, as the Romans called the city, on a hill overlooking the east of the Sea of Galilee.

Eisenberg said that they appear from the research in Hippos and in the region and realize the first time that the marks of the quarries can be traced back to the massive construction of Herod the Great, and then to disappear. They appear within the great Pax Romana and the construction boom in the Roman East The cities of our region needed a large-scale quarry effort to satisfy the need to build blocks and architectural elements for the public and for the monumental construction.

Therefore, Eisenberg and Kowalewska have shown that this city is on the top of a hill, the practice of painting the marks of the masons. There are other places where it started before and ended later.

The construction in Hippopotamus and other cities in ancient Israel, Jordan and Syria and beyond are not placed identical bricks, manufactured industrially, as we do now. Then, the stone blocks had to be carved into the rock individually. In Hippopotamus, that bedrock was basalt.

A set of whirlwinds whipped by the supervisors removed the blocks of the rock, then the set of transports (then in the third set of walls erected without the thought of the stone blocks identically). Creating stone blocks and building with them was skillful work.

It is also possible that builders and blocks where they are supposed to go during construction are put into practice. Both purposes were achieved with the brands of the masons.

Approximately 2,000 years later, more or less a few centuries, the marks, the tiny ones and with the frequency of the first steps, are barely perceptible. You will find the eagle eyes, technology, a line and an idea of where to start looking.

In fact, the brands were hardly noticed until Eisenberg and the team to rebuild a Roman basilica in the hippos of Antioquia.

"The penny only fell after we had already rebuilt some of the heavy basalt drums that the columns of the Roman basilica," says Eisenberg. "Each column was up to 9 meters [almost 30 feet] tall, and was made of a pedestal, base, well and, finally, the capital, all made of local quarry basalt."

The problem was that the drums of the columns shared the same diameter but differed in height. Therefore, the order of the drums had already been planned in the quarry: each was marked to show where it was placed inside the column. "The piece marked" IIIIA "was superior to" IIIA ", and so on," explains Eisenberg.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-israeli-archaeologists-decipher-roman-stonemason-marks-allowing-reconstruction-1.7412410?=&v=FC8C8445C30FA5716EE4FD3D6CD30AE2&ts=_1561811553388