“Its pylons reach heaven and the flag poles, the stars of heaven.”
“Its pylons reach heaven and the flag poles, the stars of heaven.” - Soleb TempleThe twin-towered pylon gateways of thedeveloped Egyptian temple are without a doubt the most distinctive architecturalfeature of these ancient religious structures. This type of pylon seems to havedeveloped in the Old Kingdom pyramid temples but may first have been regularly incorporatedinto temple design in the Middle Kingdom, though little archaeological evidenceof these early mud-brick pylons remains.The massive structure of the completedpylons clearly served a defensive and apotropaic function, not only physicallydefending the gateway from intruders, but also symbolically standing as abastion repelling the inimical forces of chaos and evil in the outer world. Thepylon’s usual Egyptian name, Bekhnet,appears with certainty only in the 18th Dynasty and seems to bederived from a verbal form meaning ‘to be vigilant’ relating to the watch-towerlike nature, if not actual function, of these structures.The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt Richard H. Wilkinson, 2000. -- source link
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