The Egyptian temple
An axial New Kingdom temple: pylon, open court, hypostyle hall with a clerestory, and sanctuary, the floor rising and the roof falling towards the god.
The rules it illustrates
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.
Crown the wall with a gorge. Finish every Egyptian wall, gate and shrine with a torus roll and, above it, a deep cavetto (the gorge) curving outward under a flat band.
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.
Raise the central aisle and light it from above. In a great columned hall make the columns of the central aisle taller than the rest, and fill the difference in height with stone grilles, so that light enters high up over the side aisles.
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 styles Ancient Egyptian.
In the chapters Post and Lintel, The Ancient World.