10.5281/zenodo.17801772

This study reconstructs the geometric and optical principles that shaped ancient architectural thought. Modern scholarship often treats ancient structures and texts as isolated artifacts, but this approach overlooks the visual logic that governed how early civilizations understood space, authority, and the divine. By examining light behavior, shadow geometry, alignment, and projection in architectural forms, this work argues that ancient builders intentionally employed optical effects to create meaning, reinforce ritual environments, and encode cosmological models within physical structures. Through an interdisciplinary method combining geometry, optics, archaeology, and intellectual history, the paper proposes a framework for interpreting ancient architecture not merely as construction, but as deliberate visual instruments designed to shape perception, convey cosmological knowledge, and formalize social and religious power.