SUMERIAN TECHNOLOGY—BOBULA 645 
of one of their reed buildings, when the mortar which covered the 
reeds was burned into a monolithic arch. If we may accept this 
explanation, we may also speculate as to whether the first “Gothic” 
cathedral was a mortar-covered reed building with the reeds burned 
out. The present-day reed buildings of southern Mesopotamia can- 
not fail to evoke in the spectator the feeling of affinity with the best 
Gothic style. The round “Roman” arch has certainly stood in its 
classic beauty and perfection over doors overlooking the lowlands of 
Mesopotamia for many millennia from the ruins of Ur, antedating 
the founding of Rome by a long stretch of time. The influence of 
Sumerian art on that of Rome is demonstrated in the book of Jurgis 
Baltrusaitis, “Art Sumérien—Art Roman” (1934). 
Woolley (1935) discovered that, in their transition from the square 
plan to the round plan of the half 
Cates dome, the Sumerian builders used a 
NT pastiecel? rough spherical triangle in the cor- 
ners of the room as support for the 
dome. He gives credit to the Sumerian 
architects for the invention of the 
Ficure 13.—Imprint of marble cyl- pendentive, which is generally believed 
inder worked with revolving burr. : 
Animals and architectural detail, to have been developed in the Byzan- 
tine Age. 
It would be a great injustice to Sumerian builders not to recognize 
that they strove for beauty. We must remember that the more deli- 
cate touches of decorative art which we miss today on the remnants 
of the nude brick walls of the Sumerian buildings may have been 
there in perishable material—wood and textiles. Heuzey (1888) 
suggests this possibility and mentions the cedarwood and the rugs. 
Sumerians seem to have enjoyed the subtle play of harmony and 
contrast of materials and colors. They were the first to use the 
mosaic technique. But their essential achievement remains the master- 
ful use of rhythm in the proportioning of their buildings. 
CERAMICS AND GLASS 
The fine clay carried to South Mesopotamia by the two great 
rivers was not only the basic material of architecture—foundations 
and walls, floors and drain pipes—but in a country completely void of 
stones, clay hardened by fire had to be used for making primitive 
tools, and in the deepest layers in which artifacts are found in 
Mesopotamia, clay objects are already abundant. Characteristic 
tools of the earliest agricultures are clay sickles, some of them with 
inlaid flint teeth. Along with these come the earliest clay statuettes 
of the first divinities. 
Naturally the largest number of clay sherds came from broken 
