Nissen Templum in Cassirer Symbolic Forms

In the Ernst Cassirer Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1925, we can find mentioned some considerations that Heinrich Nissen proposed in his Das Templum, 1869. Cassirer is referring to Nissen in the section entitled “Space and Light. The Problem of Orientation”. In fact, Cassirer is using the Nissen’s belief of Das Templum without any critical approach. However, before Cassirer, the Nissen’s theory of the roman templum has been criticized by I. M. J. Valeton. In his De Templis Romanis, Valeton demonstrated the several pitfalls in Nissen’s approach. And Valeton was not the only one that criticized Nissen. Using an expression by Jeremia Pelgrom, 2018, that we can find in his work about the Roman colonial landscape, let us tell that the Nissen’s templum belief acceptance by Cassirer was “determined by aprioristic assumptions derived from socio-evolutionary paradigms”. We will also stress that the Nissen’s belief of the templum arrived almost unrecognized in today archaeoastronomy regarding the roman world.