Architectural mythology means the symbolism in real-world architecture, as well as the architecture described in mythological stories.[1] In addition to language, a myth could be represented by a painting, a sculpture, or a building. It is about the overall story of an architectural work, often revealed through art.Mythology and symbolism has been a channel for architects to inject a deeper meaning for an indissoluble amount of time. The power of ancient myths and symbols is controlled to create a bridge between the past and the future. Mythology in architecture is a deliberate strategy, they try to design something timeless and universally relatable. The value of a built environment, therefore, is a conglomerate of its actual physical existence and the historical memories and myths people attach to it, bring to it, and project on it.
Not all stories surrounding an architectural work incorporate a level of myth. These stories can also be well hidden from the casual viewer and are often built into the conceptual design of the architectural statement.
The value of a built environment, therefore, is a conglomerate of its actual physical existence and the historical memories and myths people attach to it, bring to it, and project on it.
Before 600 BC worship was done in the open, but when the Greeks began to represent their Gods by large statues, it was necessary to provide a building for this purpose. This led to the development of temples.[3]With the greek god of architecture being Hephaestus (fire, metalworking, craftsmen, sculpture, metallurgy and volcanoes) and the greek goddess associated with architecture being Hestia (architecture, the hearth, and domesticity). The role temples are intended for worship to celebrate their god and receive comfort. But, Ancient Greek temples were meant to serve as homes for the gods and goddesses of that community. Their homes were the finest and came with a staff of servants.
Part of the Parthenon's eastern frieze
The ancient Greek temples were often enhanced with mythological decorations from the columns to the roof. The architectural functions of the temple mainly concentrated on the cella with the cult statue. The architectural elaboration served to stress the dignity of the cella.These statues of the god or goddess were usually represented standing up or sitting down in the central space of the temple. The early statues were made of wood and then were transitioned to be made out of stone or cast bronze. Two of the finest statues for temples built was the statue of Zeus at Olympia or Athena at the Parthenon, they were both a combination of gold and ivory with Zeus been considered as one of the seven wonder of the ancient world.
The Parthenon is a greek temple located in Athens that was built in dedication to the greek goddess of wisdom, war, handicraft, and practical reason Athena.The Parthenon was a symbol of the Athenians' devotion and gratitude to her. At a time when the Athenians wanted to showcase their strength, civilization, and heroism to the world, the Parthenon’s sculptural reliefs reinforced these ideals. The South, West, and North sides of the Parthenon frieze show a procession of human figures.[4] The East side contains Greek gods in various positions. The gods on the left side of the frieze tend to have stronger associations with the underworld while the gods on the right reside over spheres of fertility and optimism. This creates a story of life and death across the East Frieze.[4]
Ancient Egyptian Architecture
Sphinx guardian of ruler Ramses II
The great pyramids are an architectural feat constructed as a means to house the remains of ancient Egyptian rulers. Inscribed on the interior pyramid walls are hieroglyphic texts describing the afterlife and ancient Egyptian mythology.[5] There are as many as 900 individual compositions in each pyramid.[5]The pyramid's smooth, angled sides symbolized the rays of the sun and were designed to help the king's soul ascend to heaven and join the gods, particularly the sun god Ra. It was believed by ancient Egyptians that when a king died part of his spirit remained in his body and later mummified to care for the spirit. The Spetted pyramid became known as the royal burial grounds.
The sphinx was a mythical creature with the body of a lion and head of a man wearing a pharaoh headdress. The lion symbolizes strength, power, and the protection give nature to the pharaohs, it is considered a powerful guardian of the scared and royal realms. The human head symbolizes wisdom and intelligence. The position of the sphinx facing east towards the rising sun symbolizes the pharaoh’s role as the mediator between the gods and the people, and his connection to the sun god Ra. Sphinx statues were commonly found in or near ancient Egyptian temples and tombs. Sphinx statues were commonly found in or near ancient Egyptian temples and tombs. The sphinx was thought to be a guardian for the ancient rulers of Egypt.[6] These sphinxes like the pyramids had inscriptions on their bases and bodies. These inscriptions were references to the Egyptian gods such as Horus, Nekhbet, Wadjet and many others.[6]
- Horus: Egyptian deity and pharaoh who represented the sky, sun, kingship, healing, and protection
- Nekhbet: Egyptian goddess who protected the pharaohs, queens, children, pregnant people, and the dead
- Wadjet: Goddess of serpents, the Nile Delta, the land of the living, and protector of Egyptian kings
Ancient Roman Architecture
Interior view of the Pantheon showing the oculus of the building
Many ancient Roman temples were constructed for religious purposes. The most influential example is the Pantheon. Pantheon is a Greek adjective meaning “honor all Gods”, in fact it was first built as a temple to all gods. According to Roman legend, the original Pantheon was constructed on the very site where Romulus, their mythological founder, ascended to heaven. However, most historians attribute the first Pantheon, built in 27 BC, to Agrippa, a close associate of Emperor Augustus. The Pantheon serves as the final resting place for the famed artist Raphael, as well as several Italian kings and poets.
While there is very little surviving written information about the building historian Cassius Dio remarked:
Perhaps it has this name because, among the statues which embellished it, there were those of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion on the origin of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it actually resembles the heavens[7].
1 2 Hays, Harold M. (2012), "Introduction", The Organization of the Pyramid Texts (2 vols.), Typology and Disposition, Brill, pp.1–16, JSTOR10.1163/j.ctt1w76tzs.10, retrieved 2023-12-02
1 2 Wegner, Jennifer (2015). The Sphinx That Traveled to Philadelphia. University Museum Publications. pp.193–237. ISBN9781934536766.
Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals that formed an integral part of ancient Egyptian culture. It centered on the Egyptians' interactions with many deities believed to be present and in control of the world. About 1,500 deities are known. Rituals such as prayer and offerings were provided to the gods to gain their favor. Formal religious practice centered on the pharaohs, the rulers of Egypt, believed to possess divine powers by virtue of their positions. They acted as intermediaries between their people and the gods, and were obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain Ma'at, the order of the cosmos, and repel Isfet, which was chaos. The state dedicated enormous resources to religious rituals and to the construction of temples.
Horus, also known as Hor in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history, and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists. These various forms may be different manifestations of the same multi-layered deity in which certain attributes or syncretic relationships are emphasized, not necessarily in opposition but complementary to one another, consistent with how the Ancient Egyptians viewed the multiple facets of reality. He was most often depicted as a falcon, most likely a lanner falcon or peregrine falcon, or as a man with a falcon head.
A sphinx is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle.
In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of medicine.
In Egyptian mythology, Wepwawet was originally a deity of funerary rites, war, and royalty association, whose cult centre was Asyut in Upper Egypt. His name means opener of the ways and he is often depicted as a wolf standing at the prow of a solar-boat. Some interpret that Wepwawet was seen as a scout, going out to clear routes for the army to proceed forward. One inscription from the Sinai states that Wepwawet "opens the way" to king Sekhemkhet's victory.
Wadjet, known to the Greek world as Uto or Buto among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient Egyptian local goddess of the city of Dep or Buto in Lower Egypt, which was an important site in prehistoric Egypt. Wadjet's worship originally started in the Predynastic period, but evolved over time from a local goddess to a patron goddess.
Buto, Bouto, Butus or Butosus was a city that the Ancient Egyptians called Per-Wadjet. It was located 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. What in classical times the Greeks called Buto, stood about midway between the Taly (Bolbitine) and Thermuthiac (Sebennytic) branches of the Nile, a few kilometers north of the east-west Butic River and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake.
Nekhbet is an early predynastic local goddess in Egyptian mythology, who was the patron of the city of Nekheb. Ultimately, she became the patron of Upper Egypt and one of the two patron deities for all of Ancient Egypt when it was unified.
The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak, comprises a vast mix of temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued into the Ptolemaic Kingdom, although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut and the main place of worship of the 18th Dynastic Theban Triad, with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes, and in 1979 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List along with the rest of the city. Karnak gets its name from the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, 2.5 kilometres north of Luxor.
Articles related to Egypt include:
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret is the protective goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, the limbs and paws of a lion, and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven", "Mistress of the Horizon", "She Who Removes Water", "Mistress of Pure Water", and "Lady of the Birth House".
The Uraeus or Ouraeus is the stylized, upright form of an Egyptian cobra, used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity and divine authority in ancient Egypt.
The Eye of Ra or Eye of Re, usually depicted as sun disk or right wedjat-eye, is an entity in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as an extension of the sun god Ra's power, equated with the disk of the sun, but it often behaves as an independent goddess, a feminine counterpart to Ra and a violent force that subdues his enemies. This goddess, also known with the theonym Wedjat, can be equated with several particular deities, including Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Raet-Tawy, and Mut. The eye goddess acts as mother, sibling, consort, and daughter of the sun god. She is his partner in the creative cycle in which he begets the renewed form of himself that is born at dawn. The eye's violent aspect defends Ra against the agents of disorder that threaten his rule. This dangerous aspect of the eye goddess is often represented by a lioness or by the uraeus, or cobra, a symbol of protection and royal authority. The disastrous fury and rampages of the eye goddess and the efforts of the gods to appease her are a prominent motif in Egyptian mythology.
The pschent was the double crown worn by rulers in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians generally referred to it as Pa-sekhemty (pꜣ-sḫm.ty), the Two Powerful Ones, from which the Greek term is derived. It combined the White Hedjet Crown of Upper Egypt and the Red Deshret Crown of Lower Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, which emerged sometime in prehistory. Deities represented natural forces and phenomena, and the Egyptians supported and appeased them through offerings and rituals so that these forces would continue to function according to maat, or divine order. After the founding of the Egyptian state around 3100 BC, the authority to perform these tasks was controlled by the pharaoh, who claimed to be the gods' representative and managed the temples where the rituals were carried out.
The Temple of Edfu is an Egyptian temple located on the west bank of the Nile in Edfu, Upper Egypt. The city was known in the Hellenistic period in Koine Greek as Ἀπόλλωνος πόλις and in Latin as Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief god Horus, who was identified as Apollo under the interpretatio graeca. It is one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt. The temple was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. The inscriptions on its walls provide important information on language, myth and religion during the Hellenistic period in Egypt. In particular, the Temple's inscribed building texts "provide details [both] of its construction, and also preserve information about the mythical interpretation of this and all other temples as the Island of Creation." There are also "important scenes and inscriptions of the Sacred Drama which related the age-old conflict between Horus and Seth." They are translated by the Edfu-Project.
In Ancient Egyptian texts, the "Two Ladies" was a religious epithet for the goddesses Wadjet and Nekhbet, two deities who were patrons of the ancient Egyptians and worshiped by all after the unification of its two parts, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt. When the two parts of Egypt were joined together, there was no merger of these deities as often occurred with similar deities from various regions and cities. Both goddesses were retained because of the importance of their roles and they became known as the Two Ladies, who were the protectors of unified Egypt.
Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
The Vulture crown was an ancient Egyptian crown worn by Great Royal Wives and female pharaohs. It was depicted as a headdress in the shape of a vulture draped over the head, with its wings hanging down on the sides. It was a symbol of protection associated with the vulture goddess Nekhbet, who often wore this crown when depicted in a human form. These crowns were frequently worn by the Great Royal Wife, high ranking priestesses, and female pharaohs. These crowns were also sometimes equipped with the Uraeus to symbolize Wadjet, representing both Upper (Nekhbet) and Lower Egypt (Wadjet).
The Regalia of the Pharaoh or Pharaoh's attributes are the symbolic objects of royalty in ancient Egypt. In use between 3150 and 30 BC, these attributes were specific to pharaohs, but also to certain gods such as Atum, Ra, Osiris and Horus. In Egyptian mythology, these powerful gods were considered the original holders of royal power and the first rulers of the Nile Valley.
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