In all stages of the transition from house to temple, the sacredness of
the threshold, of the door, of the entrance-way, of the gate, was
recognized in architecture and in ceremonial. Often the door, or the
gate, stood for the temple, and frequently the threshold was an altar,
or an altar was at the threshold.
There are, indeed, reasons for supposing that the very earliest form of
a primitive temple, or sanctuary, or place of worship, was a rude
doorway, as covering or as localizing the threshold altar. This would
seem to be indicated by prehistoric remains in different parts of the
world, as well as in the later development of the idea in the earlier
historic ages. The only exception to this was where, as in India or
Persia, the fire-altar on an uplifted threshold stood alone as a place
of worship.
Two upright stone posts, with or without an overlaying stone across
them, and with or without an altar stone between or before them, are
among the most ancient remains of primitive man’s handiwork; and a
similar design is to be recognized, all the way along in the course of
history, down to the elaborate doorway standing by itself as a memorial
of the revered dead,[274] or to the monumental triumphal arch as an
accompaniment of the highest civilization. And the very name of door, or
gate, attaches persistently to the loftiest temple and to the most
exalted personage. As the earliest altar was the threshold, the earliest
temple was a doorway above the altar at the threshold.
When the first dwellers on the plains of Chaldea, after the Deluge,
gathered themselves for the building of a common structure reaching
God-ward,[275] they, in their phraseology, called that structure Bab-el,
or Bâb-ilu, or Bâbi-ilu, the Door of God.[276] Ancient Egyptians called
the sovereign head of their national family “_Per-ao_” (Pharaoh), the
exalted House, or Gate, or Door;[277] as to-day the Sultan, who is
spiritual father of the faithful Muhammadans, and autocrat of his realm,
is widely known as the “Sublime Porte,” or the Exalted Door.[278] The
modern Babists, in Persia and beyond, look up to their spiritual head as
the “Bab,” or the “Door.”[279] “Throughout the East this word [‘Bab’]
signifies the court of a prince [as a ruler by divine right].... The
threshold of the gate is used in the same sense, and frequently it is
qualified by some epithet of nobility, loftiness, or goodness.”[280]
Jesus Christ did not hesitate to say of himself as the Way to God: “I am
the Door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”[281]
In China, Japan, Korea, Siam, and India, a gate, or doorway, usually
stands before Confucian and Booddhist and Shinto temples, but apart from
the temple, and always recognized as of peculiar sacredness. These
doorways, in many places, are painted blood-color.[282] They stand “at
the entrance of temple grounds, in front of shrines and sacred trees,
and in every place associated with the native _kami_”–or gods.[283] Yet,
again, in all these countries, the temple gateway is a main feature, or
a prominent one, in the chief sanctuaries.[284]
Swinging doors, or gates, are represented, in the religious symbolism of
ancient Babylonia, as opening to permit the god Shamash, or the sun, to
start out on his daily circuit of the heavens.[285] A door, or a
doorway, appears as a shrine for a god in various cylinders from this
region; and the god is shown standing within it, just beyond the
threshold.[286] Indeed, the doorway shrine is a common form on the
Babylonian and the Assyrian monuments, as a standing-place for the gods,
and for the kings as representative of the gods.[287] Illustrations of
this are found on the Balawat gates,[288] and the sculptures on the
rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb[289]–which is itself a gateway of the nations,
between the mountains and the sea, on the route between Egypt and
Canaan, and both the East and the West.
In ancient Egypt the doorway shrine of the gods was prominent, as in
Babylonia.[290] Moreover, a false door was represented in the earlier
mastabahs, or tombs, of the Old Empire of Egypt. This representation of
a door was toward the west, in which direction Osiris, the god of the
under-world, was supposed to enter his realm as the sun went down. On or
around this false door were memorial inscriptions, and prayers for the
dead; and before it was a table, or altar, for offerings to the _ka_, or
soul, of the dead.[291] Gradually this false door came to be recognized
as the monumental slab, tablet, or stele, on which were inscribed the
memorials of the deceased. As a doorway or a niche, square-topped, or
arched, it was the shrine of the one worshiped; and as a panel, or
independent stele, it was the place of record of the object of
reverence.
“Even at the beginning of the Middle Empire the door form disappeared
completely, and the whole space of the stone was taken up with the
representation of the deceased sitting before a table of offerings,
receiving gifts from his relatives and servants. Soon afterwards it
became the custom to round off the stone at the top, and when, under the
New Empire, pictures of a purely religious character took the place of
the former representations, no one looking at the tomb stele could have
guessed that it originated from the false door.”[292]
A “false door” was, in ancient Egypt, a valued gift from a sovereign to
an honored subject. Doors of this kind were sometimes richly carved and
painted, and were deemed of priceless value by the recipient.[293]
In Phenicia,[294] Carthage,[295] Cyprus,[296] Sardinia,[297]
Sicily,[298] and in Abyssinia,[299] a like prominence was given to the
door as a door, in temple and in tomb, and as a niche for the figure of
a deity or for the representation of one who had crossed the threshold
of the new life. And the door-form is a sacred memorial of the dead in
primitive lands in various parts of the world, from the rudest trilithon
to the more finished structures of a high civilization.[300]
In primitive New Zealand the gateway, or doorway, of a village, a
cemetery, or a public building, is both a sacred image and a sacred
passage-way. It is in the form of a superhuman personage, and it has its
guardians on either hand.[301]
A doorway with an altar between its posts was a symbol of religious
worship in ancient Mexico, as in the far East.[302]
It would seem that the “mihrab,” or prayer niche, pointing toward
Meccah, in Muhammadan lands, and the Chinese honorary portals and
ancestral tablets,[303] as well as the niches for images of saints in
churches or at wayside shrines, or for heroes in public halls, in
Christian lands, are a survival of the primitive doorway in a tomb.
And wherever the door is prominent as a door, the threshold is
recognized and honored as the floor of the door, and as the primitive
altar above which the door is erected. To pass through the door is to
cross over the threshold of the door.