monument

The monumental public-works projects of the ancient world demonstrate a remarkable degree of human organization in the absence of power and machinery. The Great Pyramid at Giza, built about 2500 bce, before the Egyptians knew the pulley or had wheeled vehicles, covers 13 acres (5.3 hectares)…

The mechanization that was changing the organization of work throughout the medieval period was little apparent in the construction of castles, cathedrals, and town walls. Technologies that involved in the lifting of weights, for instance, had made little progress during the Middle Ages,…

…inscriptions may be divided into monumental, archival, and incidental. Monumental inscriptions were intended for enduring display and were therefore, as a rule, executed in lasting material, such as stone or metal. Maximal exposure to mortal eyes need not have been the prime purpose of their originators—e.g., the tomb chambers of…

…the gods became the principal monuments; royal palaces and private houses, which are very little known, were less important. Temples and tombs were ideally executed in stone with relief decoration on their walls and were filled with stone and wooden statuary, inscribed and decorated stelae (freestanding small stone monuments), and,…

…of the megalithic (huge stone) graves that appear in various areas from the Neolithic Period on. It is probable that in this practice there was also a vital believed link between the living and the dead, and that occasionally sacred areas and gathering places were connected with such graves. The…

…such tombs to serve as memorials to all their war dead.

Much of the attractiveness of Washington can be attributed to the hundreds of outdoor sculptures and monuments that adorn the parks, gardens, buildings, avenues, and cemeteries of the city. L’Enfant suggested the use of outdoor sculpture as a way to honour the…