been found the other division of the temple-consisting

FIG. 5.-Plan of Egyptian Temple (Edfou).

only of a small, unlighted, untenanted shrine (C), no larger than an ordinary modern room, within which were preserved

CHAP. I The early Egyptian Shrines

31

in an ark or coffer certain sacred symbols of the deity. This only was the Temple proper-the structure, that is to say, really needed and used for the safe keeping of the fetish. All the rest, avenue, portal, columned court and pillared hall, in all their extent and majesty, were merely designed for show, to provide a fitting and impressive

FIG. 6.-Portal and Court of Temple at Edfou.

approach that should strike the imagination of the worshipper and fill his soul with reverence and awe (Figs. 5 and 6).

Through a fortunate circumstance we are able to get behind these elaborate constructions, and learn the arrangements which preceded them in respect to the shrine and its furnishing forth. The pictures in the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing supply us with minute but extremely spirited

delineations of structures and objects which may have been. familiar to the inhabitants countless generations earlier than the erection of the tombs and temples that remain to us. Among these pictures are one or two representing small huts or arbours of rustic work in the form given in Fig. 7. These, we learn, are shrines of the gods, and they represent doubtless the original shape of the sacred chamber, which remained to all time as the heart and kernel of the vast temples of a Seti or a Ramses. The technical construction of these early shrines, of timber and wattle work, has points of interest that will be noticed on a subsequent page (§ 144), but their general form and equipment

FIG. 7-Early Egyptian shrines, from hieroglyphic inscriptions.

are highly significant for our present purpose. Religious worship, it need not be said, is infinitely older than the permanent temple, and for its performance all that was needed was a gathering of the pious at a sacred spot about a rustic altar, to which might

be added a movable ark or a fixed hut or canopy for the safe keeping of any totem, fetish or apparatus of secret mummery belonging to the local divinity. Given such a permanent structure, the approach to it would be specially hallowed ground and fenced off from profane tread. Any simple device such as a lofty flagstaff would be adopted to give it importance from afar, and on the occasion of the festival every kind of decoration in the form of fluttering streamers, branches of green trees, garlands of flowers, would be lavished on the building and its approaches. Here in the little Egyptian shrine, we see at the entrance two lofty flagstaffs, and in front the indication of a palisade, evidently marking off the hallowed precinct or temenos. The only thing not shown

CHAP. I

The Greek Temple

33

is accommodation for the Edituus, or guardian of the shrine and its contents, but he probably lived in the hut itself, just as in the early record contained in Exodus xxxiii. 11, Joshua livės as Ædituus in the tent-sanctuary which contained the ark or holy coffer of the Israelite nomads. Now it will be recognised that we have here, reduced to their simplest terms, just the same elements that went to make up the vast complexus of the monumental temples of Thebes or Abydos. The shrine remained as it had been, though now wrought in stone. The chambers round about it in the hinder portions of the temple were lodgings of the priests and storerooms for the offerings of the faithful; the courts and columned halls were merely developments of the palisaded enclosure. The flagstaffs actually remained till the latest times erect on each side of the single entrance to the temple, though the idea of them was still further carried out in monumental fashion by the rearing of two vast, almost completely solid masses of masonry of tower-like form, called after their Greek name 'Pylons,' that flanked the gateway and gave the desired imposing aspect to the approach towards the shrine (see Fig. 6).

§ 21. and in the Temple of the Greeks.

A very similar account might be given of what is perhaps the most important monument in the whole history of architecture-the Temple of the Greeks. We are not able unfortunately to trace its development so clearly as is the case with the temple of Egypt, but it is evident from the very sparing references thereto in Homer,1 that it was

1 In Homer the gods are all well provided with sacred enclosures (Teμévn) and smoking open-air altars (Bwμoí) but few with shrines (noi). Athene has a vŋós in Troy (Il. vi. 88), and at Athens (Il. ii. 549), and Apollo in Troy (Il. v. 445), in Chryse (Il. i. 39) and, apparently, at Delphi (Od. viii. 79).

a comparatively late addition to the apparatus of Hellenic worship. What that worship was in the older days we can readily imagine—days when the dwellers in the

little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,'

.

met around the woodland altar and with garland and dance and hymn and music and pipe, gave up their souls to festal enjoyment. At Olympia for example, long before there were any permanent buildings on the spot, there existed an open-air altar to Zeus in the midst of a sacred grove, whither came the folk from far and near to consult the local oracle, to sacrifice and to play, and on the trees of which they hung little votive images portraits often of themselves-by which the god should remember them for good when they were away.1 The permanent buildings added later-on were of the same character as the Egyptian - treasure - houses, shrines, and monumental structures designed to give dignity and importance to the place. The treasure - houses at Olympia were separate from the shrines, though within the sacred enclosure and so under protection of the local deities. The shrines themselves, though at first they may have been like those of Egypt, or like the Hebrew Temple, secret chambers forbidden to the vulgar, became in historical times open and reasonably accessible places, of the character rather of museums for costly and beautiful works of art in the shape of statues and votive offerings, than secluded haunts of Divinity; while to give them due artistic embellishment they were surrounded by a ring of columns bearing a roof and forming with it a sort of canopy of honour (Fig. 8). Instead of columned courts and halls preceding the shrine, as in

1 Adolf Boetticher, Olympia, das Fest und seine Stätte, Berlin, 1883, p. 163 ff.