Interior Arch Door

Arches were known by the Mesopotamian Urartian, Persian Harappan, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and Assyrian civilizations, but their use was infrequent and mostly confined to underground structures such as drains where the problem of lateral thrust is greatly diminished. The oldest arched city gate in the world, eight feet wide, was found in Ashkelon, Israel, and is dated to the middle bronze age.