Nile Cruise - Philae temple
As you advance into the Egyptian temples, you walk through colonnaded courtyards and then through doors in large walls called pylons into the next courtyard. I suppose the idea is that you gradually approach the most holy part of the temple where only the Pharoah and the priests were allowed to go.
The carvings in the stone are Ancient Egyptian in style showing the Pharoah, who was in fact a Greek ruler called Ptolemy, offering gifts to Osiris and Isis in their different guises. The Greeks tried not to upset the people they had conquered too much and would say they could continue to worship their own gods. The Pharoah is wearing the double crown symbolizing the union of Upper and Lower Egypt. The columns in the courtyard at Philae are narrow and Greek in style. You can see the difference when you vist the earlier Egyptian temple of Karnak in Luxor, where the columns are massive.
