Horizontal Axis in Religious Worship

There is an interesting paper by Alun M. Salt – The Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek Temples. Virtually all classical temples built in the diaspora colony in Sicily ci. 500 – 700 BC, are oriented towards East, as one would expect. While there is a bigger orientation variant for the classical Greek Temples in Greece itself. Alun M. Salt writes:

“One reason for the difference in results might be the context of their construction. Temples in Greece were frequently built upon sites that had been sacred for generations, reaching back into the Bronze Age at places like Thermon, where the later classical temples were built over the remains of Mycenaean era megaron. There was the matter of historical tradition which meant that temples built in the archaic and classical periods might be built not only according to the cosmology of the time of construction, but also within the restraints of prior religious thought. The temples in Sicily were built in cities that, at the time of building, saw themselves as immigrants in a distant land. Therefore there was no historical precedent to shape the construction of the temples. They were much more likely to be purely the products of seventh-, sixth- and fifth-century cosmology. The lack of prior foundations gave the Sicilian Greeks more freedom to express current thought in religious practice through their temples.

The self-identification of Sicilian Greeks as Greeks living overseas may have also made adherence to a Greek ideal more of an imperative to reassure both themselves and visitors from the homeland that their location made them no less Greek. It is interesting to note that Greek sanctuaries in Greece could be out in the hinterland tying territory to the city, while Sicilian temples were all built in urban or suburban sites. An ‘astronomical fingerprint’ may, along with other elements such as the architectural form and religious practice, have been part of a drive to prove the Hellenic character of a settlement. Hence, perhaps, the stronger results in Sicily than Greece. This could be testable by comparison with temple alignments in other locations like the Black Sea colonies or Hellenistic Asia. A lack of a similar adherence to astronomical orientation for temples in these regions would be a surprising result given the emphatic nature of the results in Sicily and Greece.”

Wait, Sicily is directly West of Greece. So a Sicilian Greek temple is looking to Greece, perhaps this was also a consideration, just like all the synagogues are supposed to look towards Jerusalem. Would be interesting to test, if the reverse is true for the Black Sea Greek colonies?

Speaking of orientation, the Beis Hamikdosh on the Temple Mount is unexpectedly on the North South axis. My guess is that all Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Muslim structures on the Temple Mount maintained the same astronomical orientation.

Photo via flickr/andrew_suzanne. C.R. Cockerell images licensed courtesy of Picture Library of the Royal Academy of Arts.

Further reading:

• On the Marienbad Nuremberg Axis with Richard Svandrlik
• What really happens when Greece defaults?
• The Romantic Visions of Charles Robert Cockerell

Tagged as: architecture, art, history, religion