Chambers for offerings are built on each side of the entrance passage, and this passage is turned to the north, as in the mastabas of the third dynasty and in the pyramids.
At this stage we are left within reach of the early passage-mastabas and pyramids.
About thirteen "stairway" tombs and thirty-seven mastabas were examined.
Another majūr lay at the bottom of a well in one of the great groups of mastabas which have been already described.
The brickwork may have been recessed, though this could not be ascertained, as its walls were only two bricks high, and the panelling in the other mastabas does not reach so near the ground.
This makes it seem likely that the stairway tombs here at El Kab are earlier in date than the mastabas with square wells.
The small late-Libyan graves lay between the mastabas of the time of Sneferu, not interfering with them, or dug through them, giving the impression that all were approximately of the same date.
The coarse pottery which lay in heaps over and near the mastabas of the IVth dynasty is identical with that found in some of the small Neolithic graves.
Several hundreds of these pots were found, heaped together, behind two mastabas to the north of the wall (PL.
But it may be that these stairway tombs are rather older than those mastabas which have square wells, and it seems best not to group them together.
The mastabas C, Ca, and D were contained in the same boundary wall.
And between the row ofmastabas to the north and the great wall were found the foot of an ushabti, perhaps of the XXVIth dynasty, and a pot (PL.
Under the Hid Dynasty we find the last brick mastabas built for royalty, at Bêt Khallâf, and the first pyramids, in the Memphite necropolis.
In nine cases out of ten, the stonemastabas are but outwardly regular in construction.
At Gizeh, the mastabas are distributed according to a symmetrical plan, and ranged in regular streets.
The earliest examples of the second kind are those found at Gizeh among the mastabas of the Fourth Dynasty, and these are neither large nor much ornamented.
Most mastabas contain but one; others contain three or four (fig.
In the few cases where the top remains perfect at Gizeh, the side ends in a parabolic curve which turns over into the top surface without any cornice or moulding; the tops of walls in the courts of mastabas are similar.
The brickmastabas are nearly always of homogeneous construction.
It is then to the early Chaldæan monarchy that we must assign these tombs, which so clearly betray ideas and beliefs practically identical with those that find their freest expression in the mastabas of the ancient Egyptian Empire.
The mastabas of Sakkarah will receive most of our attention, and in describing them we shall often have occasion to quote the words of Mariette.
The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect to each other is well shown in plates xiv.
The Tomb under the Ancient Empire The Mastabas of the Necropolis of Memphis The Pyramids § 3.
The personages and articles of food represented on the mastabaswere shadows of people and shadows of material sustenance, destined for the service and the food of a shadow, the double of the defunct proprietor of the tomb.
Around the space which was thus consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis.
Now these mastabasare constructed with care on their outsides alone.
The more carefully built mastabas are oriented according to the true astronomical north.
The mastabas of Sakkarah are not homogeneous constructions of masonry and cement, like the pyramids and most of the mastabas of Gizeh.
Like all the vases of this epoch, those which are found upon the roof of the mastabas are roughly made, pointed at the bottom and without handles.
Although not varying much from true orientation, the mastabas of Sakkarah are not arranged with the symmetry which distinguishes those on the south and west of the Great Pyramid.
Since the time of Jomard many of the mastabas have been changed by the excavations into mere formless heaps of débris, and yet the general arrangement can still be clearly followed.
Why then do we, as a rule, find the serdab only in the mastabasof the Memphite necropolis?
In the neighbourhood of the pyramids there are numerous mastabas of the court officials with fine sculpture in the chapels, and a few decorated tombs from the end of this centralized dynasty of absolute monarchs are known in Upper Egypt.
It is probable that if more mastabas had come down to us with their roofs intact we should find many instances of this kind of decoration.
The centuries which saw the building of the Pyramids and the mastabas of the Memphite necropolis had behind them a long and well-filled past.
The oldest mastabas that have been discovered have bas-reliefs upon their walls and statues in their mummy-pits.
Upon the walls of the mastabas we see them trotting in droves under the cries and sticks of their drivers (Fig.
The mastabaswith their sculptured walls were no longer constructed, and the most interesting hypogea of the middle Empire, those of Beni-Hassan, were decorated with paintings only.
All art is a translation, an interpretation, and, of course, the sculptors of the mastabas had their own individual ways of looking at their models.
A few works in very high relief have been found in themastabas (Fig.
In the mastabascolours are applied to figures in relief.
It is the favourite theme of the mastabas over again.
The general characteristics of these works in the round are repeated in the bas-reliefs of the mastabas at Gizeh and Sakkarah.
Thus we find in a tomb which, according to Lepsius, dates from the fourth dynasty, certain thickset sculptured forms, which contrast strongly with figures taken from mastabas in the same neighbourhood, at Gizeh.
In the mastabas sculptures in low-relief served to multiply the images of the defunct.
The nobles ranged their mastabas in a single line to the north of the pyramid; these form fine-looking masses of considerable size, but they are for the most part unfinished and empty.
A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.
Most of those which contain several rooms are ancient one-roomed mastabas, which have been subsequently altered or enlarged; this is the case with the mastabas of Shopsi and of Ankhaftûka.
They served him faithfully during their life, to repose finally in his shadow in the little pyramids and mastabas which clustered around him.
Those which I saw bore carvings of the same style as those on the beautiful mastabas of Dahshur.
The brick mastabas were carefully cemented externally, and the layers bound together internally by fine sand poured into the interstices.
Its inhabitants ceased to build those immense stone mastabas in which they had proudly displayed their wealth, and erected them merely of brick, in which the decoration was almost entirely confined to one narrow niche near the sarcophagus.
No one has noticed, I believe, that several of the mastabas constructed under Kheops, around the pyramid, contain in the masonry fragments of stone belonging to some more ancient structures.
In front of the immense sepulchre of the king, his wives or other relatives are buried in three small pyramids, and around them in mastabas the nobles of his court.
But the chief interest of the mastabas lies in the fact that they have preserved to us most of what we possess of early Egyptian sculpture.
It is worth remarking, however, that some of thesemastabas contain genuine arches, formed of unbaked bricks.
We must not expect to find on the plains of the Euphrates the rock-cut tombs, the mastabas or pyramids, of Egypt.
From the same point of view we shall begin to-day the study of the mastabas of Dahshour.
He took a few manuscript sheets from his portfolio and began simply: "We concluded, in our last lesson before the new year, the study of the oblatory paintings which have been found in the mastabas of Abu-Roash.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "mastabas" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
