Glossary · P
Pylon
The monumental gateway of an Egyptian temple: two massive battered towers, crowned with a cavetto cornice, flanking a lower portal. Its outline recalls the hieroglyph for the horizon, the sun rising between two hills.
See also: Batter, Cavetto cornice
Rules that use the word
Batter the walls. Make the outer faces of pylons, enclosure walls and mastabas lean inward as they rise, so that the wall is thickest at its foot; mark the corners with a torus roll.
Along the axis: floors rise, roofs fall, light fades. Arrange the temple on a single axis (pylon, open court, hypostyle hall, sanctuary) so that at each threshold the floor rises, the roof descends and the light diminishes, until the god’s shrine is reached in darkness.
The obelisk: a ray of the sun in stone. Cut the obelisk from a single block of granite, square in section, tapering to about two-thirds of its base width, capped by a pyramidion, and about ten times as tall as it is wide; set them in pairs before the pylon.
Where it appears in the book
In the chapters The Ancient World.
A feature of Ancient Egyptian architecture.
Nearby in the glossary
Pseudisodomum · Pseudoperipteral · Purlin · Pycnostyle · Pyramid · Pyramidion · Qibla · Quadrant vault