The Ancient Engineers, page 1
TECHNOLOGY AND INVENTION
FROM THE EARLIEST
TIMES TO THE
RENAISSANCE
THE
ANCIENT
ENGINEERS
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP
The
Ancient
Engineers
From the dawn of history to the rise of the scientific method in the 16th and 17th centuries, invention and technology advanced with painful slowness. The reason was not that men were stupid during thousands of years—it was the fact that most people were simply too busy trying to keep alive. The imagination and daring that every innovator must have were limited to a tiny group. It is about these brave men—whose genius enabled the Egyptians to build their pyramids, the Phoenicians to cross the stormy seas, the Romans to erect magnificent public buildings—that this carefully researched and fascinatingly written account of the advance of early technology has been written.
Mr. de Camp describes the methods used by early irrigators, architects, and military engineers to build and maintain structures to serve I heir ruler's wants. He tells, for example, how the Pharaohs erected obelisks and pyramids, how Nebuchadrezzar fortified Babylon, how Dionysios, ordnance department invented the catapult, how the Chinese built the Great Wall, and how the Romans fashioned their roads, baths, sewers, and aqueducts. He recounts many intriguing anecdotes: an Assyrian king putting up no-parking signs in Nineveh; Plato inventing a water clock with an alarm to signal the start of his classes; Heron of Alexandria designing a coin-operated holy water fountain; a Chinese emperor composing a poem to be inscribed on a clock invented by one of his civil servants.
THE ANCIENT ENGINEERS will delight those who like technology and invention for its accurate portrayal of the foundations of modern engineering, as well as lovers of history for its penetrating look at the material background of civilization and its unusual explanation of the world's social evolution.
Jacket: Place Design
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THE ANCIENT
ENGINEERS
Books by L. Sprague de Camp
Historical Fiction:
An Elephant for Aristotle
The Bronze God of Rhodes
The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate
Science Fiction:
Lest Darkness Fall Divide and Rule The Wheels of If
Genus Homo (with P. Schuyler Miller)
Rogue Queen
The Continent Makers
Sprague de Camp's New Anthology
Cosmic Manhunt
The Tower of Zanid
The Glory That Was
The Search for Zei
A Gun for Dinosaur
Fantasy:
The Incomplete Enchanter (with Fletcher Pratt)
The Land of Unreason (with Fletcher Pratt)
The Carnelian Cube (with Fletcher Pratt)
The Castle of Iron (with Fletcher Pratt)
The Undesired Princess
Tales from Gavagan's Bar (with Fletcher Pratt)
The Tritonian Ring
Tales of Conan (with Robert E. Howard)
The Return of Conan (with Bjorn Nyberg)
Solomon's Stone
Wall of Serpents (with Fletcher Pratt)
Non-fiction:
Inventions and their Management (with Alf K. Berle)
The Evolution of Naval Weapons Lands Beyond (with Willy Ley)
Science-Fiction Handbook
Lost Continents
Inventions, Patents, and their Management (with Alf K. Berle)
The Heroic Age of American Invention
The Ancient Engineers
Juvenile:
Engines
Man and Power
Energy and Power
Man and Life
THE ANCIENT
ENGINEERS
L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP
Barnes
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Several sections of this book have appeared as articles in Fate, Isis, and Science Digest, for which permission to use is gratefully acknowledged. Permission also is gratefully acknowledged from the British Museum, the Deutsches Museum of Munich, the Illustrated London News, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Guido Ucelli, the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Vorderasiatisches Museum of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin for permission to reproduce the photographs and paintings duplicated in the plates. Plate XIX, an illustration by John Christiansen from Heavenly Clockwork by Joseph Need-ham, Wang Ling, and Derek J. de Solla Price, is reprinted by permission of Cambridge University £ress.
We are grateful to the following publishers for permission to use excerpts from their copyrighted publications: Cambridge University Press for material from Heavenly Clockwork by Joseph Needham, Wang Ling, and Derek J. de Solla Price; The Clarendon Press, Oxford, for material from The Legacy of Egypt by S. R. K. Glanville and Aristotle's Mechanics, On Marvelous Things Heard, and Politics; Dodd, Mead & Company for six lines from "Lepanto" from The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton, copyright 1932 by Dodd, Mead & Company; Harvard University Press for excerpts from The Loeb Classical Library; Charles Scribner's Sons for material from Technology by Friedrich Klemm; Springer-Verlag for material from The Engineering Techniques in Ancient History by Curt Merckel; The Williams & Wilkins Company for material from Engineers and Engineering in the Renaissance by William B. Parsons.
Copyright © 1960,1962,1963 by Sprague de Camp
All rights reserved.
This edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.,
by arrangement with Spectrum Literary Agency
1993 Barnes & Noble Books
ISBN 0-88029-456-6
Printed and bound in the United States of America
M 9 8
To my wife and collaborator,
Catherine Crook de Camp
PREFACE
The system of indicating dates in this book is based upon those used by the late George Sarton in his History of Science and by Joseph Needham in his Science and Civilisation in China. Centuries are indicated by Roman numerals preceded by + or — according to whether they are centuries of the Christian era or b.c.; hence —VIII means eighth century b.c. Years are treated likewise, with Arabic instead of Roman numerals; for instance, +412 = a.d. 412. The plus sign is, however, omitted from years after +1000, because the meaning of the numeral is obvious in such cases.
In the text, most Greek names are spelled in the Greek manner, instead of the Latin (hence Keraunos instead of Ceraunus) because I like it better and think it will in time prevail. But in the notes and bibliography, most names of Greek writers are given in Latinized or Anglicized form to make it easier to find standard editions and translations.
For help in one way or another with this work—procuring books for me, answering questions, checking my translations, and criticizing parts of the text—I am grateful to Allen T. Bonnell, Lionel Casson, Jack Cog-gins, Bern Dibner, Caroline Gordon Dosker, A. G. Drachmann, I. E. S. Edwards, R. J. Forbes, Umberto Forti, Samuel Freiha, Samuel N. Kramer, Willy Ley, William McDermott, Robert P. Multhauf, Derek J. de Solla Price, Pellegrino Claudio Sestieri, Guido Ucelli, Donald N. Wilbur, Howard H. Williams, and Conway Zirkle; and to the Burndy Library (Norwalk, Conn.), the Swarthmore College Library, the Union Library Catalogue, and the University of Pennsylvania Library. Finally, my wife's work of editing the manuscript has gone far beyond the call of duty.
L. Sprague de Camp
CONTENTS
One
The Coming of the Engineers
13
Two
The Egyptian Engineers
28
Three
The Mesopotamian Engineers
53
Four
The Greek Engineers
86
Five
The Hellenistic Engineers
114
Six
The Early Roman Engineers
164
Seven
The Later Roman Engineers
211
Eight
The Oriental Engineers
260
Nine
The European Engineers
313
Notes
373
Bibliography
385
Index
397
PLATES
I.
The step pyramid of King Joser.
192
II.
King Khufu's Great Pyramid.
192
III.
Assyrian siegecraft.
192
IV.
The Ishtar Gate of Babylon.
192
V.
The Parthenon of Athens.
192
VI.
Torsion dart thrower.
192
VII.
One-armed torsion stone thrower.
192
VIII.
Counterweight stone thrower.
192
IX.
The Pharos of Alexandria.
192
X.
Roman methods of wall construction.
192
XI.
Relief showing crane powered by treadwheel.
192
XII.
The aqueducts of Rome.
216
XIII.
The Pont du Gard.
XIV.
Trajan's bridge over the Danube.
216
XV.
The great clock of Gaza.
216
XVI.
The Church of Santa Sophia in Constantinople.
216
XVII.
The stupa of Amravati.
216
XVIII.
The Temple of the Sun at Kon&rak, Orissl, India.
216
XIX.
Su Sung's astronomical clock tower.
216
XX.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris.
216
XXI.
Reversible overshot water wheel.
216
XXII.
A post windmill.
216
XXIII.
Light v. heavy cavalry in the early 17th century.
216
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
1.
Ancient capitals.
45
2.
Arrangement of rowers in a classical trireme.
82
3.
Heron's crossbow.
107
4.
Roman crossbow with quiver.
112
5.
Pipe organ of Heron of Alexandria.
139
6.
Parastatic water clock of Ktesibios.
142
7.
Fragment of dial of anaphoric clock.
144
8.
Chain of buckets driven by undershot water wheel.
146
9.
Hull of Lake Nemi ship.
154
10
Bilge pump from Lake Nemi ship.
157
11
Caesar's bridge across the Rhine.
190
12
Pompeiian hourglass mill.
227
13
Wheel and shaft of medieval horizontal water wheel.
230
14
Vitruvian water mill.
231
15
Heron's coin-in-the-slot holy-water dispenser.
239
16
Heron's wind-powered pipe organ.
240
17
Heron's two-cylinder pump for fire fighting.
241
18
Heron's steam engine.
242
19
The pendentive dome.
264
20
Hand-gunner of about 1400.
307
21
Honnecourt's sketch for water-powered sawmill.
321
22
Castle of Coucy.
332
23
Kerak des Chevaliers in Syria.
333
24
Plan of 16th-century Venetian galley.
353
THE ANCIENT
ENGINEERS
ONE
THE COMING
OF THE
ENGINEERS
Civilization, as we know it today, owes its existence to the engineers. These are the men who, down the long centuries, have learned to exploit the properties of matter and the sources of power for the benefit of mankind. By an organized, rational effort to use the material world around them, engineers devised the myriad comforts and conveniences that mark the difference between our lives and those of our forefathers thousands of years ago.
The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering—that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good. The story of engineering, pieced together from dusty manuscripts and crumbling relics, explains as well the state of the world today as all the accounts of kings and philosophers, generals and politicians.
To appreciate the accomplishments of the engineers, we must understand the changes that have taken place in human life during the last million years. A million years ago, at the beginning of the Pleistocene Period, our ancestors were small, apelike primates, much like the man-apes whose fossil remains have been found in Africa.
Two things distinguished our ancestors from modern apes, such as the gorilla and chimpanzee. First, they lived mostly on the ground and regularly walked upright, so that their limbs were proportioned much like ours. They did not have the long hooklike arms, the short bowed legs, and handlike feet of modern apes. Their brains were essentially the same as those of modern apes.
Probably as early as 100,000 years ago, before the last advance of the Pleistocene glaciers, and certainly by 10,000 years ago, the forces of evolution had caused these man-apes to evolve into men, every bit as human in form and as intelligent as we are. Differences in climate in different parts of the world had split the human stock into three major and several minor races.
These men, like all the men who had gone before them, lived by food-gathering. They sought a precarious livelihood by hunting, fishing, picking berries, and digging up edible roots and tubers. They greedily gobbled lizards, insects, and carrion. Today only small bands of African Bushmen and Pygmies, a few Australian aborigines, and a handful of Eskimos —a tiny fraction of 1 per cent of humanity—subsist in this manner.
Because of the difficulty of getting food, in Pleistocene times only a few hundred thousand people existed on the entire face of the globe. But there is no reason to think that we today are one bit cleverer than the men of —8000, at the time of the great Neolithic agricultural revolution that turned hunters into peasants. For one thing, 10,000 years is too short a time for evolution to have had a measurable effect. For another, many geneticists believe that civilization causes the human stock slowly to degenerate, by enabling persons with unfavorable mutations to live and breed, when in a wild state they would quickly perish.
However that may be, man has spent about 99 per cent of his history, since he first learned to make tools, as a hunting and food-gathering tribesman. Civilization has arisen only during the remaining 1 per cent of this time, since 9,000 to 10,000 years ago, when men discovered how to raise crops and tame animals. These discoveries enabled a square mile of fertile land to support 20 to 200 times as many people as before and freed some of these people for other, specialized occupations.
This revolution seems to have first taken place in the hills that curve around to the north of Iraq and Syria. From Iraq and Syria the Agricultural Revolution quickly spread to the valleys of the Nile and the Indus, which in their turn became centers of cultural radiation.
The Agricultural Revolution brought about changes fully as drastic in people's lives as those caused by the Industrial Revolution of the last two centuries. Permanent villages took the place of temporary campsites. One theory holds that men were first persuaded to give up their wandering life by the discovery that mashed grass-seeds could be used to make beer, since they had to stay put long enough for the mash to ferment.
In another three or four thousand years, some of the farming villages of the Near and Middle East grew into cities. Then with a rush came metals, writing, large-scale government, science, and all the other features of civilization.
