Guest Lecture by Pier Vittorio Aureli

March 4, 2025

The Temple and the Storage

Within some civilizations, temples were sacred spaces, but not necessarily places of worship. Temples were often storage of all kinds of goods and information. Temples were the epicenter of what J. Makkay has defined as the ‘Temple Economy’, the earliest known forms of accurate managerial power at a considerable scale. Trying to understand the building and role of temples in antiquity may offer some clue about the origins of our discipline.