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1898 illustration of abacuses of many capitals in various styles. In architecture, an abacus (from the Ancient Greek ἄβαξ (ábax), ' slab '; or French abaque, tailloir; pl.: abacuses or abaci) [1] is a flat slab forming the uppermost member or division of the capital of a column, above the bell.
The Greek abacus was a table of wood or marble, pre-set with small counters in wood or metal for mathematical calculations. [22] This Greek abacus was used in Achaemenid Persia, the Etruscan civilization , Ancient Rome, and the Western Christian world until the French Revolution .
For example, the volutes of ancient Greek and Roman Ionic capitals had lain in the same plane as the architrave above them. This had created an awkward transition at the corner – where, for example, the designer of the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis in Athens had brought the outside volute of the end capitals forward at a 45-degree angle.
Tesserae of a mosaic of doves drinking at a golden basin, 1st century AD, National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy A tessera (plural: tesserae, diminutive tessella) is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a square, used in creating a mosaic.
A pseudoperipteros (Greek: ψευδοπερίπτερος, meaning "falsely peripteral" [1]) is a building with engaged columns embedded in the outer walls, except the front of the building. The form is found in classical architecture in ancient Greek temples, especially in the Hellenistic period.
Entablatures at Caesarea Maritima Entablature at the Temple of Venus Genetrix, Rome. An entablature (/ ɛ n ˈ t æ b l ə tʃ ər /; nativization of Italian intavolatura, from in "in" and tavola "table") [1] is the superstructure of moldings and bands which lies horizontally above columns, resting on their capitals.
Five groups of markings appear on the tablet. The three sets of Greek symbols arranged along the left, right and bottom edges of the tablet are numbers from the acrophonic system. In the center of the tablet – a set of five parallel lines equally divided by a vertical line, capped with a semicircle at the intersection of the bottom-most ...
Objects, such as stones, were added for counting and then columns for place-valued arithmetic. The demarcation between an abax and an abacus seems to be poorly defined in history; [3] moreover, modern definitions of the word abacus universally describe it as a frame with rods and beads [4] and, in general, do not include the definition of "sand ...