The details are of infinite variety. The inscriptions run to a less or greater length according to the caprice of the scribe; the false door loses its architectural character, and is frequently replaced by a mere stela engraved with the name and rank of the master; yet, whether large or small, whether richly decorated or not decorated at all, the chapel is always the dining-room--or, rather, the larder--to which the dead man has access when he feels hungry.
On the other side of the wall was constructed a hiding-place in the form of either a high and narrow cell, or a passage without outlet. To this hiding-place archaeologists have given the Arab name of "serdab." Most mastabas contain but one; others contain three or four (fig. 130). These serdabs communicated neither with each other nor with the chapel; and are, as it were, buried in the masonry (fig. 131). If connected at all with the outer world, it is by means of an aperture in the wall about as high up as a man's head (fig. 132), and so small that the hand can with difficulty pass through it.
Up to the time of the Sixth Dynasty, the walls of the vault are left bare. Once only did Mariette find a vault containing half-effaced inscriptions from The Book of the Dead. In 1881, I however discovered some tombs at Sakkarah, in which the vault is decorated in preference to the chapel. These tombs are built with large bricks, a niche and a stela sufficing for the reception of sacrificial offerings. In place of the shaft, they contain a small rectangular court, in the western corner of which was placed the sarcophagus.
[2].--THE PYRAMIDS.
[For the following translation of this section of Professor Maspero's book I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, whose work on The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, published with the assistance of a grant from the Royal Society in 1883, constitutes our standard authority on the construction of these Pyramids.--A.B.E.]