Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Anatomy-Astronomy

ARCHITECTUR E.
History. bTone of those countries, however, nor any other with
which we are acquainted, present any tiling intended for
the personal accommodation of man in the early ages ; nor
is there any thing in the sacred structures that could for
a moment induce the idea, that the dispositions of archi¬
tecture arose in the construction and composition of do¬
mestic buildings. Everything leads rather to the belief that
devotion and superstition were the originators, carriers on,
and, it may be almost said, perfecters of the science.
The modern tent and marquee may be assumed as the
representatives of the earliest habitations of man ; at first
perhaps covered with branches, then with the bark of trees,
and, in a more advanced state, with the skins of animals.
It would not be till men began to congregate in towns
and cities for mutual defence from the aggressions of each
other, that any thing more permanent than such tent-like
habitations would be thought necessary, or even conveni¬
ent, as most of the tribes, if not all, were nomadic. In
what manner the cities were fortified, whether by being
surrounded with brick walls, or with defences of earth
or mud, as the forts in India are at the present day, is
not for us here to inquire; but we have no reason to
suppose that the houses within them were better than
the hovels of the inhabitants of such places in the East
now', if they were indeed so good. The rude New Zea¬
landers are found to fortify their villages very respectably,
although their habitations are mere huts; and the ancient
Mexicans and Peruvians are reported by their discove¬
rers and conquerors to have made their towns or cities
very secure by means of walls and other defences, and to
have had considerable structures dedicated to the divinity,
while their houses were of a mean and unpretending de¬
scription. It is probable that timber was principally used
in the ruder ages by men in the construction of their per¬
manent habitations, for such is the material employed by
the South Sea islanders to whom we have referred ; and
more particularly by the simpler and less savage tribes
inhabiting the Friendly and Society Islands of the same
hemisphere, who, moreover, thatch their houses with the
large leaves of the cocoa-nut and bread-fruit trees. This
supposition is supported, too, by the general tenor of the
Mosaic history, and by the command w'hich the Israelites
received to burn with fire cities whose inhabitants were
given to idolatry, which would not have been an efficient
mode of destruction if such materials had been employed
in building them as were then used in temples; for simi¬
lar commands enjoined them to “ overthrow their altars and
break their pillars.” Deut. chap. xii. and xiii. Jericho, also,
and Hazor, were burnt by Joshua. Even so late as the esta¬
blishment of the kingdom of Israel in the person of David,
that monarch is represented to have built himself “ a house
of cedar. There is indeed no reason whatever for sup¬
posing that the dispositions of architecture were employed
for domestic purposes till a comparatively late period;
and at no time in the history of the human race has the
art of building been rendered so subservient to the comfort
and convenience of man in civilized communities, as it is at
the present day. To that assertion the remains of Hercu¬
laneum and Pompeii, for their age, give the most decisive
and satisfactory evidence; and since their time the fact will
not be disputed.
If what we understand by the term architecture did not
originate in, or grow out of, the mode of building which
men employed in the construction of their own habita¬
tions, our next object must be to discover, whether it can
be deduced from the mode they adopted in arranging
and constructing edifices for the worship of the divinity.
433
n„P f- eailiest intelligible record in existence makes fre- History,
quent mention of the building of altars, but without
mp es. The first act of Noah on coming out of the ark,
was to build an altar ; Abraham built altars at various
tunes and in various places; Isaac and Jacob built altars,
and the latter is the first said to have set up a stone un¬
der the circumstances detailed in the 28th chapter of
Genesis On awaking after his remarkable dream, he
said, Surely the Lord is in this place”—“ this is none
other but the house of God”—he “ took the stone that
he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar and
poured oil upon the top of it, and he called the name of
that place Bethel;” and then dedicating it to the Deity
he said, “ and this stone which I have set for a pillar
shall be God’s house.” Jacob set up a stone again on
which to ratify his agreement with Laban in the most
sacred manner. In many other parts of the Old Testa¬
ment, stones, or pillars as they are called in some places,
were set up as witnesses and memorials of sacred eno-ao-e-
ments. In the covenant at Shechem (Josh. xxiv. 26,
et seq.), Joshua “ took a stone and set it up there under an
oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua
said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a
witness unto us, for it hath heard all the words of the
Lord.” After the battle with the Philistines at Mizpeh,
in which the Israelites were conquerors, Samuel, who had
prayed for their success, “ took a stone and set it up between
Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer,
saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” 1 Sam. vii!
12. I he analogy between these stones and the crom¬
lechs of the ancient Celtic nations is too clear not to be
observed. “ It is remarkable,” says General Vallancey,
in his Collectanea de Rebus Ilibernicis, “ that all the an¬
cient altais found in Ireland, and now distinguished by
the name of cromlechs, or sloping stones, were originally
called Bothal, or the House of God; and they seem to be
of the same species as those mentioned in the book of
Genesis, called by the Hebrews Bethel, which has the
same signification as the Irish Bothal.”1 Of these cromlechs Plate LI.
there are three kinds, the single upright stone or pillar;
the same, with another stone laid on it crosswise; and
two upright stones with a third placed on them, like an
entablature on two columns; and this third kind, to dis¬
tinguish it from the other two, has been called by the
Greek descriptive name trilithon. It is evident, moreover,
from the sacred text, that it was customary to offer sacri¬
fices by these pillars or cromlechs ; for on the return of the
ark from Philistia (1 Sam. vi. 14, 15), the kine drew the
cart on which it was placed into a field “ where there was
a great stone; and they (the people) clave the wood of the
cart and offered the kine for a burnt-offering to the Lord,”
having placed the ark on the stone. Now the sacrificial
stone or altar at Stonehenge is immediately before the
great trilithon which forms the end of the hypcethral
temple within the external peribolus, and that temple it¬
self is doubtless of the same species as those which Moses
built at Mount Sinai, and directed the people to construct
on their arrival in the promised land (Exod. xxiv. 4, and
Deut. xxvii. 2-6), which they afterwards did under the
command of Joshua, the stones or cromlechs being multi¬
plied for special purposes. Moses and Joshua set up
twelve stones (probably trilithons), because of the num¬
ber of the tribes: at Stonehenge there were five. Strabo,
speaking of the temples of the Egyptians, describes the
most ancient as being of vast extent, but of rude work¬
manship, without elegance, without grace, and without
embellishment of any sort. What could this have been
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1 Coll, de Iteb. Hil. tom. ii. p. 211.