Ancient Ideas About the Architecture of the Universe, Their Modernization in Antiquity, and Archaization in the Middle Ages

The article describes in general terms the concept of the world that dominated the imagination and was embodied in the creative activity of man in ancient times. Emphasis is put on the biomorphism of the primordial beings that make up the Earth and Sky and on the most important mythological theme of their separation and distancing one from another, which required special supports. Thus, architectural attributes of the image of a great cosmic structure started to take shape, in which the Earth was seen as a flattened bottom and the sky as a vaulted shell floating above it. The vertical axis of the world, organizing the rotation of celestial bodies, acquired essential importance. Further, the author describes how the ancient natural philosophers saw at the heart of the structure of the Universe the natural distribution of the elements vertically depending on their weight. At the same time, they recognized the fact that the surface of the Earth is not flat but convex. This led to the discovery of the spherical shape of the Earth and the sky. Aristotle's geocentric model provided the basis for Ptolemy's work, which had practical applications throughout the Middle Ages. However, the advent of the Christian era was marked by a sharp criticism of antique self-consciousness and a programmatic return to archaic cosmological views in their ancient formulation, which provided a basis for the typical features of Christian church architecture as a likeness of the God-created world edifice. Thus, the direct continuity of the development of ancient traditions of architectural forms, increasingly abstracted under the influence of religious creationism, was