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The stele

in maştabas.

one yellowish, and the other black; both sorts were sun-dried only. The bricks of a yellowish colour seem to have been used entirely during the earliest dynasties, and the black ones only appear with the second half of the IVth dynasty. However carefully the outside of the maṣṭaba was built, the inside is composed of sand, pieces of stone thrown in without design or arrangement, rubble, rubbish, etc., and but for the outside walls holding all together many of them must have perished long since. The eastern face of the mastaba is the most important, for, four times out of five, the entrance

is in it; it is sometimes, but very rarely, bare. Some yards from the north-east corner is, at times, a very high, narrow opening, at the bottom of which the masonry of the mastaba itself assumes the form of long vertical grooves, which distinguish the stela of this epoch; a stele, with or without inscription, sometimes takes the place of this opening. At a distance of some feet from the south-east corner is generally another opening, but larger, deeper and more carefully made; at the bottom of this is sometimes a fine inscribed calcareous stone stele, and sometimes a small architectural façade, in the centre of which is a door. When the eastern face has the opening at the south-east corner which has just been described, the maṣṭaba has no interior chamber, for this opening takes its place. When the maṣṭaba has the façade in the place of the opening, there is a chamber within. When the entrance to the maṣṭaba is made on the north side, the façade is brought back to the end of a kind of vestibule, and at the front of this vestibule are set up two monolithic columns, without abacus, and without base, which support the architrave, which supports the ceiling. The entrance to the maṣṭaba is

[graphic]

7. The upper chamber, the
pit, and the sarcophagus
chamber of a Maṣṭaba.

sometimes made from the south, but never from the west; the top of the maṣṭaba is quite flat.

chamber.

The interior of the complete maṣṭaba consists of three The parts, the chamber, the serdâb, and the pit. Having entered mastaba the Chamber by the door in the side, it is found to be either without any ornamentation whatever, or to be covered with sculptures. At the bottom of the chamber usually facing the

[graphic][merged small]

east, is a stele, which, whether the walls are inscribed or not, is always inscribed. At the foot of the stele, on the bare ground, is often a table of offerings made of granite, alabaster, or calcareous stone; two obelisks, or two supports for offerings, are often found at each side of this table. Besides these things the chamber has no furniture, and it rarely has a door.

B. M.

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Not far from the chamber, oftener to the south than to the north, and oftener to the north than to the west, is a lofty but narrow nook hidden in the thickness of the masonry, and built with large stones; this nook is called the Serdâb. Sometimes the serdâb has no communication whatever with the other the scrdâb. parts of the maṣṭaba, but sometimes a rectangular passage, so

Use of

[graphic]

9. Figures in relief in a Maṣṭaba at Gizeh. Vth dynasty.

narrow that the hand can only be inserted with difficulty, leads from the serdâb into the chamber; in the serdâb statues of the deceased were placed and the narrow passage served

1A serdab,, strictly speaking, is a lofty, vaulted, subterranean chamber, with a large opening in the north side to admit air in the hot weather.

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10. West wall of a chamber in the tomb of Ptah-hetep. Vth dynasty.

The mastaba pit and sar

chamber.

to conduct to them the smoke of incense or perfume. The interior of the serdåb is never inscribed, and nothing but statues, inscribed with the names and titles of the persons whom they represented, have ever been found in them. Statues were at times placed in the court in front of the maṣṭaba. The pit, square or rectangular in form, but never round, leads to the chamber where the mummy was laid; it is situated in the middle of the greater axis of the mastaba nearer to the north than the south, and varies in depth from 40 to 80 feet. The top part of the pit where it passes through the platform on which the maṣṭaba stands, is built of cophagus fine large stones. There was neither ladder nor staircase, leading to the funereal chamber at the bottom of the pit, hence the coffin and the mummy when once there were inaccessible. At the bottom of the pit, on the south side, is an opening into a passage from four to five feet high; this passage leads obliquely to the south-east, in the same direction as the upper chamber, and soon after increases in size in all directions, and thus becomes the sarcophagus chamber. This chamber is exactly under the upper chamber, and the relatives of the deceased in standing there, would have the deceased beneath their feet. In one corner of the lower chamber stood the rectangular sarcophagus made of fine calcareous stone, rose granite or black basalt; the top of the cover was rounded. The upper chamber contained no statues, ushabtiu figures, amulets, canopic jars, nor any of the numerous things which formed the furniture of the tomb in later times; in the sarcophagus were, at times, a pillow or a few vases, but little else. When the body had been placed in the sarcophagus, and the cover of the sarcophagus had been cemented down on it, the entrance to the passage at the bottom of the pit was walled up, the pit itself was filled with stones, earth and sand, and the deceased was thus preserved from all ordinary chances of disturbance.

Characteristics

of the earliest

The tombs of the maṣṭaba class stop suddenly at the end of the first six dynasties; of tombs belonging to one of the first three dynasties, M. Mariette found 4 at Sakkârah; of mastabas. the IVth dynasty 43; of the Vth dynasty 61; and of the VIth dynasty 25. The mastabas of the first three dynasties

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