Creation, temple, house

Othmar Keel ( The Symbolism of the Biblical World: Ancient Near Eastern Iconography and the Book of Psalms ) has shown that much of the symbolism and theology of temple is common throughout the ancient world.

Of Egypt, he writes, “Almost all the great Egyptian sanctuaries claimed to house without their courts the primeval hill, the ‘glorious hill of the primordial beginning,;’ which had first emerged from the floods of Chaos. The great wall which surrounds the huge temple enclosure of Karnak is laid out in an undulating design. This unusual form is intended to represent the primeval waters which formerly lapped around the temple hill.” As the first land, the temple is also the location where the creator first made his appearance. Pyramids have the same significance: they are “huge primeval hills.” More, they also form staircases. Keel quotes a Pyramid text that says, “A staircase to heaven is laid for him [for the king] so that he may climb up to heaven thereby.”

Mesopotamian temples also included the “pure hill,” and Mesopotamian temples also represented the creation: “The construction of the Esagila, the principal temple of Babyllon, is described within the framework of the creation epic Enuma elish. Construction took place after Marduk, the principal Babylonian deity, had vanquished the power of Chaos (Tiamat, Kingu). The gods then raised the summit of Esagila against the Apsu: they built the temple tower. It is called the ‘house of the foundation of heaven and earth.” Mesopotamian ziggurats were also conceived of as staircases between heaven and earth, one bearing the title “the house of the bond between heaven and earth.”

Ugaritic myth and temple-building also connect the temple to creation and to the holy mountain of the god. “After his victory over the sea god Yam, Baal receives a temple on Zaphon, the mountain of the gods located in the northern portion of the city of Ugarit.”

He further notes that the temples of the ancient world were homes for a god or gods, typically represented by an image. He notes the shift in Mesopotamian temple construction around the third century B. C., when the “bent-axis” house was replaced by a “broad room” structure with an entrance on one of the broad sides. Bent-axis temples keep the image of the god around a corner, invisible to anyone entering the temple. It maintains a sense of “privacy and security.” In a broad-room temple, Keel writes, “The entrance and – in the temple – the podium with the image of the god are moved to the center of the long side, rendering the image visible from outside, as in the long-house type. In this case, however, the image does not appear far in the background of the room, as in the long-house. Instead, the visitor stands immediately opposite it . . . . Thus, the deity is very close to anyone who pauses in the central court.”

He describes a Sumerian temple discovered around Uruk: “a second broad-room extends in front of the broad-room which contains the platform for the image of the god. Light could enter the anteroom only through the door; the cella, however, has a shaft through which light falls on the divine image. The graduated rooms evidence the need to establish, even in proximity to the deity, a certain distance between man and god. The image of the god, separated by the dark anteroom, yet illuminated from above, must have appeared to the beholder in a very mysterious light.”