The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

I'm looking for guidelines on the height and thickness, not to mention materials and design, of walls modelled on those of the ancient world. Think the Walls of Babylon, if on a smaller scale.

The city of Shussel in my fantasy campaign is situated in an Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian-esque part of the world, which is now at TL3. The walls were first built some 3,000 years ago, but might have been added to or even rebuilt several times since then. It is established, however, that their current design is antiquated and inadequate for TL3 siege warfare and the walls themselves are groaning with age and neglect.

I know approximately how thick the walls are at the top, because that has been described to the players already. They are wide enough for two chariots to meet, which is anywhere from 15' to 20'. The height of the walls is at least 30'.

There are no battlements, parapet or crenels on the wall proper, which is merely flat-topped*. There are a lot of defensive towers, however, and these should be crenellated and have proper fighting enclosures, at least to the limit of the top-of-the-line TL2 castle design.

First of all, I'm wondering what materials were used to build the walls. Ideally, if there is any possibility that fairly light and easy-to-work with materials like brick could have lasted this long, I'd like the walls to be made out of those. At any rate, the walls are not granite or any similarly hard type of stone. Limestone is a possibility, if it could have lasted thousands of years (with repairs and additions).

Secondly, to get 15' to 20' width at the top of a wall that is at least 30' high, how wide would the walls be at the base? Obviously, it depends on materials, but assuming either brick or fairly soft stone, what would be a ballpark figure?

*To facilitate the aformentioned chariots driving there, which was a concern considerably more important than optimal defensive value, especially as the city spent most of its existence deep within the heartland of a powerful empire and was confident in the strength of its field armies.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Are the bricks/blocks mortared or drystone?

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Whatever is most plausible for something that was built as top-of-the-line at TL1 or early TL2 in a climate much like Israel, but is considered out-dated in design and has not been well kept up for the past thousand years (and not at all for almost three hundred).

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Herodotus gave the walls of Babylon as 320' high and 80' thick, so a 4:1 ratio has some plausibility. Going from that, a 32' high wall would need to be 8' thick, then add your desired top width for chariot racing to the bottom thickness.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

I would be reluctant to base anything on Herodotus' numbers, as the consensus seems to be that he was just making it up from whole cloth. He seems to have been off by as much as an order of magnitude for the length of them walls, for example.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Mud brick, possibly with a drystone or baked brick foundation (I forget the Greek word which archaeologists use ... socle?) and possibly with a baked brick facing. The foundation prevents the winter rains from dissolving the adobe, and it make life harder for enemies with picks.

Stone elements tended to appear in places like the Levant and Anatolia with relatively good supplies of stone, but not in Mesopotamia because there is not enough stone locally but there were always burghers with an annual service tax due, mud, and straw.

I don't have reliable data on height-to-thickness rations. Check your library for a translation of Philon of Byzantium's manual for architects of fortresses? You should definitely be able to find data on Greek and Hittite fortifications at anywhere serious, though I don't know how Recijavik is for ancient history. Greek Aims in Fortification and Hellenistic Fortifications from the Aegean to the Euphrates are two English titles which come to mind.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Scholarly article about the walls of Jericho. The article isn't aimed at the details you want, but it should have some (scholarly) data, including height and thickness of the walls. With diagrams.

That's in early bronze age though. about 7000 BC. but it gives a good minimum size.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

7000 BCE is Neolithic, not Bronze Age, AFAICT. Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East started around 5000 BCE, give or take a few centuries, and if you don't count the Chalcolithic as part of the early Bronze Age, closer to 4000 BCE (again, give or take a few centuries).

EDIT: Unless someone's been playing silly buggers with the dates on Wikipedia again. I think GURPS Low-Tech also uses something like 4500 BCE as the start of the Bronze Age, though.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

For Bronze Age construction, the Cyclopaean walls of places like Mycenae might be a better model than Jericho.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Just trying to be helpful. We at lest have a minimum

Lets try Mycenaean Troy

The guy writing the thing seems to care more about the scarpment of the wall than its thickness, but the one wall we get stats for is about 6 meters tall and 4.6 to 6 meters thick.

I'll quit throwing crap when someone gives firmer answers.<smile>

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Walls were often not uniform all the way through. I can see a outer layers of baked brick to avoid water damage, thicker layers of sun dried bricks for stability and then fill the middle with packed earth and rubble.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

That does sound like many ancient walls.

If possible, I would like to avoid packed earth and rubble, largely because that seems like it would produce walls that were very thick at the base compared to the top. At the time the original walls were built, aesthetic considerations were very important and displaying their late TL1/early TL2 architectural mastery would have been more important than economy.

Also, for dramatic reasons, I'd like it to be possible to cause a catastrophic collapse of a section of the wall by turning some of stone at the base to mud, disintegrating another 10' by 10' part at the base and then hammering it with magical stones and explosive magical projectiles for a few hours. Packed earth and rubble is inconveniently stable, compared to a brick or stone wall that has had its base compromised.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

In which case, a core of sun-dried brick and an outer layer of baked brick would seem suitable. A TL1/2 society would need a very good fuel source to be able to build a city wall entirely from baked brick.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

What would be the effects of a millenia or two on that kind of wall?

This is a port city, but I'm comfortable assuming that the sections of wall nearest the ocean have been repaired or even replaced more frequently than the rest. There have been many times when the port facilities needed enlarging and rebuilding and they were probably late TL2/early TL3 before the city entered a long economic slump due to misrule by a God-King.

Anything not adjacent to the ocean will likely enjoy a very mild climate for most of that time. Hot and sunny, for the most part, with, if anything, slightly less rain that in good for crops.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Well, it will need maintenance. The way to make that a tolerable burden is to use asphalt for mortar and waterproofing, which has ample historical precedent, but does require that the stuff be available within a reasonable distance.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

The walls at Gla are a good example of Cyclopean masonry. They are made of limestone blocks, are 2.8km long, 3-5m high, and up to 6.75m thick. The thickness doesn't taper very much from top to bottom - the sides are almost vertical.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Hmmm... in your opinion, could such a design be scaled up to 10m high?

If so, would one have to make the base thicker to hold the weight? By how much?

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

In the Epic of Gilgamesh I believe that the walls of Great Walled Uruk were made 'all through of kiln fired brick'



http://www.shmoop.com/gilgamesh/pride-quotes-4.html

"Go up, Urshanabi, onto the wall of Uruk and walk around.
Examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork thoroughly—
is not (even the core of) the brick structure of kiln-fired brick,"

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

Sounds very much like a boast that the city fathers of Shussels would like to have made when the wall was first built.

There is every reason to assume that when the area was first settled, it might have been forested, with long-term human habitation having used all the trees for fuel.

Re: The Walls of Shussel (first built at TL1)
 

There was a pyramid in South America made of soil and covered by stone slabs. It was one and a half high as Cheope's. It was several centuries old when European colonists took away the stones to use them for building. Then the pyramid melted away with rain.

I can't gather further details now. I read about it on Kurt Mendelssohn's The Riddle of Pyramids. However, I hope it gives some useful data on alternative construction methods.