If one surveys the history of civilization and investigates the growth
and final results of the structural plan of either religious or civil
communities, it is at once apparent that the final housing scheme of
any given settlement is determined by the topography of the region of
its location.
For example, the study of the settlements of antiquity shows that the
higher locations were universally chosen as the sites of palaces and
temples, and that where the configuration of land did not permit of
such natural elevation, mounds or raised crepidomas were constructed,
in order that by means of the terraced elevations a distinction might
be made between the different degrees of religious prominence.
That the Egyptians who inhabited the level areas of the alluvial Nile
appreciated the psychological effect of such terraced elevation is
shown by the architectural arrangement of their temples. To emphasize
the hieratic mysteries, the worshiper was led from a pyloned gateway
into an atrium with a pavement slightly graded above the level of the
dromos. This atrium, open as it was to the effects of the brilliant
Egyptian atmosphere, offered a subtle psychic preparation for that
elation of soul which stimulated the novitiate when, after ascending
the steps on the far side of the atrium, he entered the sombre shadow
of the hypostyle hall. This elation increased in many cases to a
religious ecstasy when the novitiate ascended into the upper region
where the esoteric mysteries were performed.
A simpler expression of this religious constructive arrangement may
be seen in the Temple of Kohn. Here the priestcraft developed a form
of temple construction which crystallized all the associative imagery
of man and reflected in its different stages of elevation of the
various sections the relevant distinctions of class and the progress of
humanity toward its idealistic goal.
Thus in the low grade level of the atrium the light, the air, and
freedom of movement suggested that lack of function and freedom from
formal life which exists among the multitudes; the conscious effort of
ascent in walking from the atrium to the hypostyle hall suggested the
difficulties of rising from a lower to a higher social order, while the
further ascent to the small, calm and dimly illuminated holy-of-holies
symbolized the fact that only through struggle, loneliness and pain may
a devout one hope to attain the quiet and sublime dwelling place of the
gods.
When the Greeks rose to intellectual and artistic position they evolved
the Greek form of temple, which was simply an Hellenic translation,
through the medium of the Mosaic temple, of the Egyptian hieratic
imagery. Perhaps the most typical of these temples is the great marble
Parthenon (438 B. C.) which was reared upon a three-stepped crepidoma,
a worthy stylobate support, a marvelous peristyle, reminiscent of the
open air atrium of its Egyptian prototype. Further on, and beyond the
peripteros, and at a higher level, the pronaos led through a great door
into the shrine chamber of Athena. Thus did the architects, Ictinus
and Callicrates, express in much the same manner as the Egyptians the
essence of crystallized human experience.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW, WINGDALE PRISON, WINGDALE, N. Y.