In Guatemala, in Central America, “the god of houses” is called Chahalka; and the blood of sacrifices to him is sprinkled on the door of the houses as an assurance of his protection.[[260]]

It was much the same in the Old World as in the New. In ancient and in modern times, and in widely different portions of the world, there are indications that the threshold of the home was the primitive altar; and that the side-posts and lintel of the doorway above the threshold bore symbols or inscriptions in proof of the sacredness of the entrance to the family home, and in token of an accomplished covenant with its guardian God, or gods.

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]]