Maspero’s _Life in Anc. Egypt and Assyria_, pp. 198–200. Footnote 252: _Ibid._, p. 204. Footnote 253: _Ibid._, p. 220. Footnote 254: Roberts’s _Oriental Illustrations of the Scriptures_, p. 148 f. Footnote 255: Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 731. Footnote 256: See McDowell’s “A New Light on the Chinese,” in _Harper’s Magazine_ for Dec., 1893, with illustration of “The Gods of the Threshold.” Footnote 257: Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 117, 273. Footnote 258: Wilkinson’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, I., 362 f., and note. Footnote 259: See Tertullian “On Idolatry,” and “On the Soldier’s Chaplet,” in _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, XI., 164 f., 353. Footnote 260: Tr. Rowan, in “Ximenes,” p. 183; cited in Spencer’s _Descrip. Soc._, II., 22. ----- II. EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR. 1. FROM HOUSE TO TEMPLE. A temple is only a more prominent house. As a house was the dwelling of the earlier priest of his household, who was in covenant for himself and his family with the guardian deity of that household; so, afterwards, a temple was a dwelling for the deity guarding an aggregation of families, and for the priests who stood between him and the community. This is no new or strange truth; it is obvious. “In the Vedas, Yama, as the first man, is the first priest too; he brought worship here below as well as life, and ‘first he stretched out the thread of sacrifice.’”[261] The fire-altar of the home was first the center of worship in the family in India;[262] as later the fire-altar was the center of the worship of the community. The same cuneiform characters in old Babylonian stand for great house, for palace, and for temple;[263] as similarly, in ancient Egypt, the same hieroglyph represented house or temple,–a simple quadrangular enclosure, with its one doorway.[264] The oldest form of an Egyptian temple known to us through the inscriptions of the Ancient Empire indicates that the prehistoric houses of worship in that land were mere hovels of wood and lattice-work, over the doors of which was a barbaric ornamentation of bent pieces of wood.[265] The private house became the public temple. “The design of the Greek temple in its highest perfection was ... a gradual development of the dwelling-house.”[266] Palace and temple were, indeed, often identical in ancient Greece.[267] Strictly speaking, there were no temples in ancient Persia, any more than in early India. But the fire-altars that were first on the home hearth, or threshold, were made more and more prominent on their uplifted stepped bases, until they towered loftily in the sight of their worshipers.[268] It is the same Hebrew word, _ohel_, that stands for the “tent” of Abraham, and for the “Tent” or Tabernacle of the congregation of Israel.[269]