Note 223.3 — Chapter XIII · Babylonian, Anatolian, and Aegean Ritual.

As regards the other race that dominated the early period of Anatolian history, the Hittite, we have the priceless evidence of the Boghaz-Keui monuments: these reveal a complex temple hewn out of and into the rocky ravine with a “Holy of Holies” and what appears to be a sleeping-chamber for the god.223.3 In Phrygia, the artificial shrine may have been late in supplanting the natural cavern or hole in the rock that was once the sufficient home of the cult of the great goddess.223.4 From the coast of Asia Minor we have no evidence concerning the site of any ancient temple that carries us back to the early period with which we are dealing.224.1 But the Homeric poems alone are sufficient proof that the Greeks, for whom they were composed, were beginning to be familiar with some architectural type of the deity’s habitation. Apollo Smintheus already has his shrine and professional priest.224.2 We hear of the temple and priestess of Athena in Troy,224.3 of her shrine at Athens, which she shared with Erechtheus,224.4 and the stone-threshold of Apollo at Delphi, that guarded already many treasures within it.224.5 And we also know from the excavations of the last few years that the Aryan invaders from the North, the proto-Hellenes, would find temples on some at least of the sites of the Minoan culture. Crete has preserved certain shrines of the second millennium; but except the temple-cave on Dikte all of them so far are found to be merely domestic chapels in the king’s palace, as though the king were personally responsible for the religion of the community: and so at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Athens, the oldest temples have been found on the foundations of “Mycenaean” palaces.224.6 But the temples of Hera on the public hill of Argos and at Olympia are now dated near to 800 B.C.224.7