* “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 Saqqara, there is a temple of gigantic proportions in the shape of a ’mastaba.’The inhabitants of the neighbourhood call it ‘Mastabat-el-Faraoun,’ 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 Saqqara plateau, are more or less miniature copies of the ’Mastabat-el- Faraoun.’Hence the name of mastabas, which has always been given to this kind of tomb, in the necropolis of Saqqara.”

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 facade 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 Sabu 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 Papu is only 19 ft. 4 in. by 29 ft. long, and that of KMbiuphtah 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.

[Illustration:  006.jpg THE GREAT SPHINX OF GIZEH PARTIALLY UNCOVERED, AND THE PYRAMID OF KHEPHREN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil 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 Debats.

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.*