Organized by continent, Amazing Temples of the World offers the reader an intimate portrait of some spectacular and unusual places of worship dating from the fourth millennium BCE to the present. Ornate or spartan, immense or intimate, from the Middle East to California, this book features such impressive places of worship as the Mahabhodi Temple, India, built in the location where Buddha is thought to have achieved enlightenment; the fifth-century BCE Temple of Confucius in Qufu, China, the largest Confucian temple in the world; Abu Simbel, in southern Egypt, the great carved monument to the Pharaoh Ramses II; the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, the spiritual home of the world's 25 million Sikhs; and the Shri Swaminarayan Temple in Neasden, London, the biggest Hindu temple outside India. Illustrated with 180 photographs, Amazing Temples of the World includes more than 150 places of worship, from Ancient Greece and Rome, through traditional synagogues to modern Buddhist, Taoist, and Sikh temples.

"A popularly written account of life as led by the inhabitants of ancient Thebes"--Preface.

An all-encompassing portrait of the design and architectural elements of ancient Greek monuments summarizes the latest thinking on temple building while offering insight into the historical and cultural contexts of key constructions, in a volume complemented by a gazetteer of all known colonnaded temples.

The only up-to-date illustrated account of one of the most intriguing and influential buildings in history. The Temple of Solomon has been the focus of profound spiritual reverence for over three thousand years. From its Bronze Age antecedents in the portable shrines of nomadic tribes, through countless permutations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the idea of the Temple of Solomon—a place of communion between God and man—has proven endlessly alluring. The sacred building itself was destroyed more than once, on the last occasion by the Romans in AD 70, yet the great church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Templars, and numerous medieval cathedrals were all conceived as symbolic re-creations of Solomon's original. Medieval magicians practiced magic to harness the demons who were believed to have constructed the Temple, and mystics of all faiths had visions of a celestial Temple, mirroring that on earth, where divine secrets would be revealed. Solomon's Temple draws on holy texts and mystic writings, works of art and architecture, modern reconstructions, and photographs to reveal the myriad ways in which the Temple and the sacred ground on which it stood have inspired mankind through the ages. 200 illustrations, 130 in color.

Luxor stands on the site of ancient Thebes, Egypt's opulent New Kingdom capital. It encompasses the spectacular temples of Luxor and Karnak on the east bank of the Nile, and on the west bank the vast necropolis, which includes the Colossi of Memnon, the famed Ramesseum, Queen Hatshepsut's magnificent funerary temple, and the Valley of the Kings, riddled with royal tombs, among them the fabled resting place of Tutankhamun. The splendor and profusion of pharaonic monuments at Luxor justifies its reputation as the greatest outdoor museum in the world. Reaching beyond Luxor, this book also covers all the major sites of Upper Egypt, including Abydos, Dendera, Esna, Edfu, and Kom Ombo. Special attention is given to Aswan, one of the most beautiful places in Egypt, with its nearby island temple of Isis at Philae. The climax of this informed and richly illustrated book comes with the remarkable temples at Abu Simbel, with their colossal figures of Ramesses II and his lovely wife Nefertari cut from the living rock.

In this book devoted exclusively to temples and perceptions of the divine presences that inhabit them, Michael B. Hundley focuses on the official religions of the ancient Near East and explores the interface between the human and the divine within temple environs. Hundley identifies common ancient Near Eastern temple systems and examines issues that include what temple structures communicate, how temples were understood to function, temple ideology, the installation of divine presence in a temple, the connection between presence and physical representation, and human service to the deity. Drawing on architectural and spatial theory, ritual theory, theories of language, art history, archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, and comparative studies, Hundley offers a single interpretive lens through which to view temple worship. Features: A close examination of temples in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Hittite Anatolia, and Syria-Palestine An interdisciplinary treatment of architecture, language, ritual, and art A dual focus on how a deity's divine presence connects to space and art and how human service to the deity maintains the deity's active presence