Nina Graser
Sanchi is a Buddhist complex, famous for its Great Stupa, on a hilltop at Sanchi Town in Raisen District of the State of Madhya Pradesh, India. The Great Stupa at Sanchi is one of the oldest stone structures in India, and an important monument of Indian Architecture.
It is so easy for us to think that the machinery used for cutting stone in the industry are all modern inventions, and as for how stone was cut and processed in the distant past, ah, well, who cares ?... Some simple contraption, of course, would be a generalised assumption.
The obelisk of Hatshepsut, built in the year 1457 BC, during the XVIII dynasty, is the second biggest of all the ancient Egyptian obelisks. Made of one single piece of pink granite, it has a height of 28.58 metres and its weight is 343 tons. It is located in the Big Temple of Amon, in Karnak.
In the Romanesque period the construction of churches used to be the responsibility of what was known as Magister Muri. He was represented with a Virga (baton in hand). The master had specific knowledge to complete the work, he was also in charge of organising the tasks, the transport of the materials, of the invention of new machines and new construction systems, etc.
In the north-east of Cambodia, 300 km from its capital Phnom Penh, can be found the capital of the ancient Khmer empire, Angkor. Hidden during centuries in the middle of the jungle, it was totally isolated from the rest of the world until the year 1860 when French missionaries discovered it.
No matter how much one has heard, read, or seen in an infinite number of movies and documentaries the Pyramids of Egypt, nothing is comparable to the sensation of finding oneself in front of what is, without any doubt, the greatest architectural project in the history of Humanity. These impressive mountains of stone surrounded by a mystery even today, in the much waited twenty first century, have not been deciphered completely, they make us feel small and insignificant.
