Some of the wealthy class had their tombs cut out of the mountain-side; but the majority preferred an isolated tomb, a “mastaba,” * comprising a chapel above ground, a shaft, and some subterranean vaults.
* “The Arabic word ‘mastaba,’ plur. ‘masatib,’ denotes the
stone bench or platform seen in the streets of Egyptian
towns in front of each shop. A carpet is spread on the
‘mastaba,’ and the customer sits upon it to transact his
business, usually side by side with the seller. In the
necropolis of Saqqâra, there is a temple of gigantic
proportions in the shape of a ‘mastaba.‘The inhabitants of
the neighbourhood call it ‘Mastabat-el-Farâoun,’ the seat of
Pharaoh, in the belief that anciently one of the Pharaohs
sat there to dispense justice. The Memphite tombs of the
Ancient Empire, which thickly cover the Saqqâra plateau, are
more or less miniature copies of the ‘Mastabat-el-
Farâoun.‘Hence the name of mastabas, which has always been
given to this kind of tomb, in the necropolis of Saqqâra.”
From a distance these chapels have the appearance of truncated pyramids, varying in size according to the fortune or taste of the owner; there are some which measure 30 to 40 ft. in height, with a façade 160 ft. long, and a depth from back to front of some 80 ft., while others attain only a height of some 10 ft. upon a base of 16 ft. square.*
* The mastaba of Sabû is 175 ft. 9 in. long, by about 87 ft.
9 in. deep, but two of its sides have lost their facing;
that of Ranimait measures 171 ft. 3 in. by 84 ft. 6 in. on
the south front, and 100 ft. on the north front. On the
other hand, the mastaba of Papû is only 19 ft. 4 in. by 29
ft. long, and that of KMbiûphtah 42 ft. 4 in. by 21 ft. 8
in.
The walls slope uniformly towards one another, and usually have a smooth surface; sometimes, however, their courses are set back one above the other almost like steps.
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey,
taken in the course of the excavations begun in 1886, with
the funds furnished by a public subscription opened by the
Journal des Débats.
The brick mastabas were carefully cemented externally, and the layers bound together internally by fine sand poured into the interstices. Stone mastabas, on the contrary, present a regularity in the decoration of their facings alone; in nine cases out of ten the core is built of rough stone blocks, rudely cut into squares, cemented with gravel and dried mud, or thrown together pell-mell without mortar of any kind. The whole building should have been orientated according to rule, the four sides to the four cardinal points, the greatest axis directed north and south; but the masons seldom troubled themselves to find the true north, and the orientation is usually incorrect.*
* Thus the axis of the tomb of Pirsenû is 17° east of the
magnetic north. In some cases the divergence is only 1° or
2°, more often it is 6°, 7°, 8°, or 9°, as can be easily
ascertained by consulting the work of Mariette.