Beginning with such natural caves or such humble huts, the Temple assumes larger proportions and more beautiful decorations with the increase of art and the growth of kingdoms. Especially, as we see in the tomb-temples and pyramids of Egypt and Peru, does it assume great size and acquire costly ornaments when it is built by a powerful king for himself during his own lifetime. Temple-tombs of this description reach a high point of artistic development in such a building as the so-called Treasury of Atreus at Mycenæ, which is really the sepulchre of some nameless prehistoric monarch. It is admirably reconstructed in Perrot and Chipiez.
Obviously, the importance and magnificence of the temple will react upon the popular conception of the importance and magnificence of the god who inhabits it. And conversely, as the gods grow greater and greater, more art and more constructive skill will constantly be devoted to the building and decoration of their permanent homes. Thus in Egypt the tomb was often more carefully built and splendidly decorated than the house; because the house was inhabited for a short time only, but the tomb for eternity. Moreover, as kings grew more powerful, they often adorned the temples of their ancestors with emulous pride, to show their own greatness. In Egypt, once more, the original part of all the more important temples is but a small dark cell, of early origin, to which one successive king after another in later dynasties added statelier and ever statelier antechambers or porches, so that at last the building assumed the gigantic size and noble proportions of Karnak and Luxor. This access of importance to the temple cannot have failed to add correspondingly to the dignity of the god; so that, as time went on, instead of the early kings being forgotten and no longer worshipped, they assumed ever greater and greater importance from the magnificence of the works in which their memory was enshrined. To the very end, the god depends largely on his house for impressiveness. How much did not Hellenic religion itself owe to the Parthenon and the temple of Olympian Zeus! How much does not Christianity itself owe to Lincoln and Durham, to Amiens and Chartres, to Milan and Pisa, to St. Mark’s and St. Peter’s! Men cannot believe that the deities worshipped in such noble and dimly religious shrines were once human like themselves, compact of the same bodies, parts, and passions. Yet in the last instance at least we know the great works to be raised in honour of a single Lower Syrian peasant.
With this brief and imperfect notice of the origin of temples, which will indirectly be expanded in later portions of my work, I pass on from the consideration of the sacred building itself to that of the Idol who usually dwells within it.
Where burial prevails, and where arts are at a low stage of development, the memory of the dead is not likely to survive beyond two or three generations. But where mummification is the rule, there is no reason why deceased persons should not be preserved and worshipped for an indefinite period; and we know that in Egypt at least the cult of kings who died in the most remote times of the Early Empire was carried on regularly down to the days of the Ptolemies. In such a case as this, there is absolutely no need for idols to arise; the corpse itself is the chief object of worship. We do find accordingly that both in Egypt and in Peru the worship of the mummy played a large part in the local religions; though sometimes it alternated with the worship of other holy objects, such as the image or the sacred stone, which we shall see hereafter to have had a like origin. But in many other countries, where bodies were less visibly and obviously preserved, the worship due to the ghost or god was often paid to a simulacrum or idol; so much so that “idolatry” has become in Christian parlance the common term for most forms of worship other than monotheistic.
Now what is the origin and meaning of Idols, and how can they be affiliated upon primitive corpse or ghost worship?
Like the temple, the Idol, I believe, has many separate origins, several of which have been noted by Mr. Herbert Spencer, while others, it seems to me, have escaped the notice even of that profound and acute observer.
The earliest Idols, if I may be allowed the contradictory expression, are not idols at all—not images or representations of the dead person, but actual bodies, preserved and mummified. These pass readily, however, into various types of representative figures. For in the first place the mummy itself is usually wrapped round in swathing-cloths which obscure its features; and in the second place it is frequently enclosed in a wooden mummy-case, which is itself most often rudely human in form, and which has undoubtedly given rise to certain forms of idols. Thus, the images of Amun, Khem, Osiris, and Ptah among Egyptian gods are frequently or habitually those of a mummy in a mummy-case. But furthermore, the mummy itself is seldom or never the entire man; the intestines at least have been removed, or even, as in New Guinea, the entire mass of flesh, leaving only the skin and the skeleton. The eyes, again, are often replaced, as in Peru, by some other imitative object, so as to keep up the lifelike appearance. Cases like these lead on to others, where the image or idol gradually supersedes altogether the corpse or mummy.
Mr. H. O. Forbes gives an interesting instance of such a transitional stage in Timorlaut. “The bodies of those who die in war or by a violent death are buried,” he says; “and if the head has been captured [by the enemy], a cocoanut is placed in the grave to represent the missing member, and to deceive and satisfy his spirit.” There is abundant evidence that such makeshift limbs or bodies amply suffice for the use of the soul, when the actual corpse has been destroyed or mutilated. Sometimes, indeed, the substitution of parts is deliberate and intentional. Landa says of the Yucatanese that they cut oft the heads of the ancient lords of Cocom when they died, and cleared them from flesh by cooking them (very probably to eat at a sacrificial feast, of which more hereafter); then they sawed off the top of the skull, filled in the rest of the head with cement, and, making the face as like as possible to the original possessor, kept these images along with the statues and the ashes. Note here the usual preservation of the head as exceptionally sacred. In other cases, they made for their fathers wooden statues, put in the ashes of the burnt body, and attached the skin of the occiput taken off the corpse. These images, half mummy, half idol, were kept in the oratories of their houses, and were greatly reverenced and assiduously cared for. On all the festivals, food and drink were offered to them.
Mr. Spencer has collected other interesting instances of this transitional stage between the corpse or mummy and the mere idol. The Mexicans, who were cremationists, used to burn a dead lord, and collect the ashes; “and after kneading them with human blood, they made of them an image of the deceased, which was kept in memory of him.” Sometimes, as in Yucatan, the ashes were placed in a man-shaped receptacle of clay, and temples or oratories were erected over them. “In yet other cases,” says Mr. Spencer, “there is worship of the relics, joined with the representative figure, not by inclusion, but only by proximity.” Thus Gomara tells us that the Mexicans having burnt the body of their deceased king, gathered up the ashes, bones, jewels, and gold in cloths, and made a figure dressed as a man, before which, as well as before the relics, offerings were placed. It is clear that cremation specially lends itself to such substitution of an image for the actual dead body. Among burying races it is the severed skull, on the contrary, that is oftenest preserved and worshipped.
The transition from such images to small stone sarcophagi, like those of the Etruscan tombs, is by no means a great one. These sarcophagi contained the burnt ashes of the dead, but were covered by a lid which usually represented the deceased, reclining, as if at a banquet, with a beaker in his hands. The tombs in which the sarcophagi were placed were of two types; one, the stone pyramid or cone, which, says Dr. Isaac Taylor, “is manifestly a survival of the tumulus”; the other, the rock-cut chamber, “which is a survival of the cave.” These lordly graves are no mere cheerless sepulchres; they are abodes for the dead, constructed on the model of the homes of the living. They contain furniture and pottery; and their walls are decorated with costly mural paintings. They are also usually provided with an antechamber, where the family could assemble at the annual feast to do homage to the spirits of departed ancestors, who shared in the meal from their sculptured sarcophagus lids.
At a further stage of distance from the primitive mummy-idol we come upon the image pure and simple. The Mexicans, for example, as we have seen, were cremationists; and when men killed in battle were missing, they made wooden figures of them, which they honoured, and then burnt them in place of the bodies. In somewhat the same spirit the Egyptians used to place beside the mummy itself an image of the dead, to act as a refuge or receptacle