History of early and simple domes

[6] In developing countries, domes are often less expensive alternatives to flat or sloped-roofed construction because they use less material to enclose a given volume and provide a lower rate of heat transfer due to the reduced surface area.

[7] Although descended from a longer tradition, the examples of clay brick beehive domes at Harran, Turkey, have been dated to the 19th century AD, as are the dry stone trulli of Italy.

[10] The Himba people of Namibia construct "desert igloos" of wattle and daub for use as temporary shelters at seasonal cattle camps, and as permanent homes by the poor.

[12] Turkic and Mongolian nomads have used domed tents covered in felt for at least a thousand years in central Asia, and to the early 1900s they were used from Anatolia to Mongolia.

[15] Sylvester Baxter wrote that domes were evidently of Persian origin, with those early Persian domes being thought by Pascal Coste to have been derived from hemispherical bent-pole hide tents of the nomadic Iliate tribe of Turkmens near the Aral Sea, and thought by Frederic Edwin Church to have been derived from an earlier use of brick dome-shaped huts like those he had seen in Turkey.

[17] The discoveries of seal impressions in the ancient site of Chogha Mish (c. 6800 to 3000 BC), located in the Susiana plains of Iran, in the vicinity of the modern city of Dezful in Khuzestan province, show the extensive use of dome structures in mud-brick and adobe buildings, likely granaries.

[20] At the Sumerian Royal Cemetery of Ur, a "complete rubble dome built over a timber centring" was found among the chambers of the tombs for Meskalamdug and Puabi, dating to around 2500 BC.

[22] Some monumental Mesopotamian buildings of the Kassite period are thought to have had brick domes, but the issue is unsettled due to insufficient evidence in what has survived of these structures.

[17] A Neo-Assyrian bas-relief from Kuyunjik depicts domed buildings, although remains of such a structure in that ancient city have yet to be identified, perhaps due to the impermanent nature of sun-dried mudbrick construction.

[23][24] However, because the relief depicts the Assyrian overland transport of a carved stone statue, the background buildings most likely refer to a foreign village, such as those at the foothills of the Lebanese mountains.

[28][29] Similar above-ground tombs made of corbelled stone domes have been found in the fourth cataract region of Nubia with dates beginning in the second millennium BC.

[43] The heroon at Stymphalos has been dated to the late Classical or early Hellenistic period and has a round room preceded by a long rectilinear porch.

[44][45] Although they had palaces of brick and stone, the kings of Achaemenid Persia held audiences and festivals in domical tents derived from the nomadic traditions of central Asia.

[47] The possible use of domed ceilings in the architecture of Ptolemaic Egypt is suggested by rock-cut tombs in Alexandria and by a poem from a third century BC papyrus that references a fountain niche covered with a semi-dome.

The domes are contemporaneous with Archimedes, and the technique of their construction may be related to his method of analyzing spheres as a series of parallel truncated cone segments.

[50] The earliest evidence for dressed stone domes with voussoirs comes from the first century BC in the region of Palestine, Syria, and southern Anatolia, the "heartland of Oriental Hellenism".

[42] The remains of a large domed circular hall measuring 17 meters in diameter in the Parthian capital city of Nyssa has been dated to perhaps the first century AD.

"[54] The Sun Temple at Hatra appears to indicate a transition from columned halls with trabeated roofing to vaulted and domed construction in the first century AD, at least in Mesopotamia.

[56] A bulbous Parthian dome can be seen in the relief sculpture of the Arch of Septimius Severus in Rome, its shape apparently due to the use of a light tent-like framework.

[59] However, underground tombs dating to the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) have been discovered and often feature archways, vaulted chambers and domed ceilings.