6 THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGES
of studies specific to the art or science that it professed. In addition, for
each novitiate degree, students were subjected to trials of initiation the
purpose of which was to ensure them a vocation and which added to
the mysteries whose teaching was hidden from the public. It must be
assumed that architecture, like all other sciences, was taught in secret.
Louis Hautcoeur writes:
The first architects known in Egypt, in Asia Minor, performed
sacred duties independent from their role as builders... Imhotep,
who built the first large stone complex in Saqqarah, was counselor
to the pharaoh Sozer (circa 3800 B.C.), but was also priest of the
god Amun. Sennemut, architect of Queen Hatseput, was the head
of the prophets of Monthu in Armant and controller of the gardens
and domains of Amun. Dherti was the director of buildings and a
high priest. In the Louvre there are seated statues of Goudea, who
was both a patesi, meaning a governor representing the gods, and
an architect.... The architects seem to have been inspired by the
gods they served.^3The Books of I Kings (5:13 ff and 7:13, 14) and II Chronicles (2:
and 4:11) inform us that in Judea during the construction of the Temple
of Jerusalem, under the direction of master builder Hiram of Tyre and
Adoniram, Solomon had 70,000 men to carry loads and 80,000 to
carve the stones from the mountains, not to mention those who had
managed each job, who numbered about 3,300 and gave orders to the
workers. Though we have no actual historical information on the sub-
ject, this story reveals that among the artisans busy on the construction
of the temple there was a professional hierarchy and an organization, if
not a corporation.
In Greece, professional organizations were known as hetarias. One
of the laws of Solon (593 B.C.), the text of which was preserved for us
by Gaius in his De Collegiis et corporibus (Digest), allowed the various
colleges or hetarias of Athens to make rules for themselves freely, pro-
vided none of these rules went against the laws of the state.
Although the sacred nature of the builders appears to have become
somewhat blurred among the Greeks, it survived all the same, notably