The Parthenon – Its Shape and Design
The world of classical Greece must postdate the Temple of Solomon and the Parthenon is the most famous classical monument. The Parthenon appears to break with any simple modeling of the Earth’s size. In brief, it is a rectangular shape with proportions 4 to 9. Wooden temples preceded it, destroyed by fire. The Greeks had a tradition of building a Hekatompedon, a hundred footer. Whilst the shortest side of the Parthenon is indeed one hundred root canonical feet [of 0.01146 (1762/1752) feet], it has an area of 100 by 100 square cubits (cubits and feet being interchangeable) and it is the area that defines it as a Hekatompedon.
Figure 4.20 Of the Parthenon and its 4:9 relation to a Hekatompedon
To adapt a 100 cubit square to the shape of the Parthenon requires the transformation shown in the figure where the cubit itself can be used to (a) reduce one dimension by 50 feet and then (b) increase the other dimension by 50 cubits. This only works because 50 feet is 1/3 of 100 cubits (=150 feet) and extending by this in the other dimension will add the same area . (As mentioned earlier (in chapter 4), when a rectangular number is calculated as in area calculations, the units themselves should be seen as being squared.)
The sides, in feet, have the formula 2.3.52 (150).
Reducing one side to 2/3 leaves 22.52 (100).
Increasing the other side by 3/2 leaves 32.52 (225).
The Parthenon is 100 feet by 225 feet.
& Its area is 22.52 times 32.52 = (2.3.52)2 feet – 100 cubits square, the area of the Hekatompedon
The resulting rectangular temple appears to be defined around other ideas than the older monuments based upon the size of the Earth. Saxons in England were known to organise according to hundreds, administrative regions containing one hundred fighting men, one hundred of which would represent a myriad and therefore, notionally, a nation or city state perhaps – a likely use for the Parthenon is likely as a storehouse for Athenian gold, i.e. as a treasury - and this could be its symbolism. This gold, to Incas the “sweat of the Sun”, was previously stored at Delos, along the Apollo line.
Another possible symbolism behind the Hekatompedon is the fact that the lunar orbit is divided by 10,000 time units equal to the time taken for the Earth to catch up the Sun each day, and 10,000 is the area of the Hekatompedon. It is also of interest is that the squares of Two, Three and then Five (in the tiles of 25 square) are in use.
However, the main point could be the use of geometry for symbolism rather than objective representation of cosmic facts. In other words, Sacred Geometry might be a phenomenon developing in the historical period that could have culminated in works such as the Gothic cathedrals (see chapters 7 and 8) in which a set of cosmological ideas are being set to geometry since it was the Greeks that developed cosmological ideas within their buildings.
In the vertical golden mean rectangles abound in the design, as is common in classical facades, see figure 4.21, almost defining Classicism itself, popular ever since as a core cultural value for the West.
I found this interesting web book, The Keys of Atlantis by Peter Wakefield Sault with a Chapter 2 on the Parthenon. He shows both how the 4:9 shape might be derived from a vesica and also proposes that the overlapping circles, with radius half a Stadium long, could define a chain that follows a great circle - according to an Atlantis type hypothesis this circle touches somewhere significant. Anyway, I combined Google Earth with some Visio graphics to show off a view from the air of the geometry:
