<P> Several other rooms neighbored the sanctuary . Many of these rooms were used to store ceremonial equipment, ritual texts, or temple valuables; others had specific ritual functions . The room where offerings were given to the deity was often separate from the sanctuary itself, and in temples without a barque in the sanctuary, there was a separate shrine to store the barque . In late temples the ritual areas could extend to chapels on the roof and crypts below the floor . Finally, in the exterior wall at the back of the temple, there were often niches for laymen to pray to the temple god, as close as they could come to its dwelling place . </P> <P> Hypostyle halls, covered rooms filled with columns, appear in temples throughout Egyptian history . By the New Kingdom they typically lay directly in front of the sanctuary area . These halls were less restricted than the inner rooms, being open to laymen at least in some cases . They were often less dark as well: New Kingdom halls rose into tall central passages over the processional path, allowing a clerestory to provide dim light . The epitome of this style is the Great Hypostyle Hall at Karnak, whose largest columns are 69 feet (21 m) tall . In later periods, the Egyptians favored a different style of hall, where a low screen wall at the front let in the light . The shadowy halls, whose columns were often shaped to imitate plants such as lotus or papyrus, were symbolic of the mythological marsh that surrounded the primeval mound at the time of creation . The columns could also be equated with the pillars that held up the sky in Egyptian cosmology . </P> <P> Beyond the hypostyle hall were one or more peristyle courts open to the sky . These open courts, which had been a part of Egyptian temple design since the Old Kingdom, became transitional areas in the standard plan of the New Kingdom, lying between the public space outside the temple and the more restricted areas within . Here the public met with the priests and assembled during festivals . At the front of each court was usually a pylon, a pair of broad, flat towers flanking the main gateway . The pylon is known from only scattered examples in the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but in the New it quickly became the distinctive and imposing façade common to most Egyptian temples . The pylon served symbolically as a guard tower against the forces of disorder and may also have been meant to resemble the hieroglyph for "horizon", underscoring the temple's solar symbolism . </P> <P> The front of every pylon held niches for pairs of flagpoles to stand . Unlike pylons, such flags had stood at temple entrances since the earliest Predynastic shrines . They were so closely associated with the presence of a deity that the hieroglyph for them came to stand for the Egyptian word for "god". </P>

What is the gateway of an egyptian temple that leads to a series of pillared halls or courts called