What is the name of the historical order that becomes the Templars' predecessor in Assassin's Creed Origins?

The Order of the Ancients is the historical organization that serves as the Templars' predecessor in Assassin's Creed Origins. It operates in the first century BCE and seeks powerful relics and political control across the Mediterranean world.

Bayek and Aya oppose the Order after discovering that its masked members helped cause the personal tragedy driving their investigation. The order is not yet called the Templar Order in Origins; instead, the game presents it as an earlier organization whose methods and ideology foreshadow the later Templar tradition.

Origins also introduces the Hidden Ones, founded by Bayek and Aya as an early form of the Assassin Brotherhood. This distinction is a frequent source of mix-ups: the Hidden Ones are the protagonists' organization, while the Order of the Ancients is their enemy. In later games, the Cult of Kosmos fills a related but separate role in ancient Greece.