Mastaba

Description of a traditional mastaba

Outside, a mastaba is a rectangular construction with the raw brick walls or slightly tilted stones cut towards the interior as the base of a pyramid. A door generally gives access to a funerary vault. The walls of this part, parallel with the walls external of the mastaba, can be covered with scenes of the daily life of the late one. On the wall vis-a-vis the door a false door is engraved which carries out symbolically towards the Royaume of dead the. This door is designed to facilitate the return of late in the kingdom of the alive ones. A well, on the basis of the top of the mastaba, penetrates the earth (until more than 20 m of depth according to the importance of late) and gives on the funerary Chambre where the late one in its Sarcophage rests.

Intermediate size of a mastaba :

Length: 30 m,
Width: 15 m,
Height: 6 Mr.

There exists with the Musée of Louvre to Paris the reconstitution of the vault of the mastaba of noble the Akhethétep, whose ruins are still visible on the plate of Saqqarah.

Etymology

The word mastaba comes from the Arab مَصْطَبَة maṣṭabaʰ (that one can also transcribe maṣṭaba ), and means “stone bench”. It is the name which to these buildings the Egyptian workmen of Auguste Mariette gave. It would seem that the Arab word, in last analysis, is a loan with the Araméen miṣṭubbā , which would have in its turn borrowed from the old Greek στιϐάς stibás , “reads of grass”, or στύπος stúpos , “trunk”.

Origin

The mastabas are an evolution of the funerary hillocks ( Tumulus ) high above the pits where were deposited the late one and its funerary equipment with the predynastic time. This hillock, which represents the paramount hillock from which was born the sun according to the mythology héliopolitaine, was to be surrounded by a stone belt.

The mastabas were used at the beginning of the Ancient Empire. Initially made believed bricks, the stone and in particular limestone gradually replaced them during the more recent periods. Initially exclusively held to the Pharaons, the mastabas little by little will be democratized, in particular when the Pharaons turn to the burials in form of Pyramide.

The mastabas are often family tombs and one thus finds several wells there, and even sometimes several caveaux, in the same well, dug with various depths. The depth of the vault was a sign of power.

Functions

The mastaba is at the same time a burial for the carnal envelope of late and the place of residence of sound Ka. For this reason the form of the mastaba points out that of a palate.

Mastabas with the pyramids

The mastabas evolved/moved during the Ancient Empire to become pyramids with degrees which are the first architectural forms of pyramidal type. Always wishing to reach increasingly important heights to express the importance and the power of late (Pharaon S), the first mastabas, on single floor, first of all evolved to mastabas on two floors making it possible to accommodate new funerary structures, the second stage being less broad and less higher than the first.

With the beginnings of (towards -2700 to -2600), the mastabas became pyramids with degrees, consisted of several successive stages having the total form of a gigantic staircase rising towards the sky. The most famous first and of these pyramids to degrees is the pyramid of Djéser to Saqqarah, whose architect was Imhotep. Imhotep wanted to set up a pyramid with degrees rising, a such gigantic staircase , towards the sky in order to symbolize the rise of late “underground world” towards the “Skies”.

The following stage of the evolution of the pyramids to degrees was the construction by the king Snéfrou of a pyramid known as rhomboïdale on the site of Daschour. The Pyramide rhomboïdale is an intermediate stage between the pyramids with degrees and the pyramids with smooth faces. The pyramid rhomboïdale is a pyramid whose smooth faces constitute a slope per pieces from which the slope is different. The fact that the slope is not uniform throughout the pyramid, but Rhomboïdale, comes from what the architects at the origin of this pyramid thought that the initial slope was too much pronounced and weakened construction; they thus transformed it according to the form described previously.

This type of pyramid is thus the last stage leading to the ultimate stage of the evolution of the Pyramides of Egypt towards the pyramids with smooth faces of (towards -2573 to -2454); among most famous one finds the pyramids of Khéops, Khéphren, and Mykérinos, with Gizeh with the Cairo.

See too

Mastaba de Khentika

External bonds

the mastaba of Akhethétep
Pyramids and mastabas (simple and on two floors) under and S

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