Volume I Part 17 (1/2)

”The brick-built sepulchres are of two kinds also The more elaborate are of black brick, while a yellowish brick is used for the others

The yellow bricks are a mixture of sand and pebbles with a little clay; the black bricks are of earth and straw The former are always small (88 in x 44 in x 28 in); the latter are coe (152 in x 72 in x 56 in) Both kinds are dried simply in the sun The yellow bricks seeins and ends with the Ancient Empire The black bricks, on the other hand, appear for the first tih the fourth dynasty At first they were rarely ehteenth dynasty and those which followed it, they came to be exclusively used”

[Illustration: FIG 109--The Mastabat-el-Faraoun]

All these ligence in their construction which is astonishi+ng Considering the ideas which the Egyptians had formed of a future life, the chief preoccupation of their architects should have been to give a stability to their sepulchres which would have insured their perpetuity, and, with it, that of the deposit coe The whole of our description will be pervaded by accounts of the minute precautions devised to that end ”Now these mastabas are constructed with care on their outsides alone The core of their walls is coled with the flakes struck off by the ive it coherence The eneous constructions of masonry and cement, like the pyramids and most of the mastabas of Gizeh They are confused heaps of ill assorted th of their covering of solid stone

”At Sakkarah the outward faces of the htly set back froently inclined from the perpendicular

”There are mastabas of all sizes That of Sabou measures 172 feet by 84; that of Ha-ar, 149 by 74; that of Ra-en-ma 169 by 81, and that of Hapi no ht they vary less The highest are not h, the smallest about 12”

[Illustration: FIG 110--Entrance to a Mastaba at Sakkarah

Mariette]

The roof of the ularity of any kind; but the soil above it is sprinkled with vases buried at a slight depth These vases are pretty evenly distributed, but they are rather more nus of the chauide him in his excavations Like all the vases of this epoch, those which are found upon the roof of the hly made, pointed at the bottom and without handles They each contain a thin film of yellow clay deposited by the water hich they were filled They were placed in their curious position under the notion that the water which they contained would quench the thirst of the dead man below

The mouths of the jars were covered with flat stones, and the water would last long enough to satisfy at least the immediate necessities of the inhabitant of the tomb

”The principal face of the mastaba is turned to the east In four cases out of five the entrance to its chaeneral arrangement is, almost always, as follows: 1 At a few le we coh and very narrow, in the depths of which those long vertical grooves which distinguish the steles of this epoch are carved upon the actual masonry of the tomb For this recess an unimportant stele, with or without inscription, is occasionally substituted, or (2) we find, at a few le, either a deeper, larger, and more carefully built recess, in the depths of which a lyphs is placed; or a regular architectural facade in miniature with a door in the centre When the recess is found near the southern angle of the eastern face, the toins and ends there It has no internal chamber, or rather, the recess acts as substitute for one But when, instead of the niche or recess, we ularly completed tomb The name of its proprietor is often carved upon the lintel Several of these lintels, of a peculiar shape, are to be seen in the Louvre

[Illustration: FIG 111--Lintel of the tomb of Teta, 6th dynasty

Louvre]

”Next after the eastern face, in relative importance, comes that which is turned to the north When the entrance is in the northern wall the door is invariably at the back of a kind of vestibule, in front of which are twothe architrave which, in turn, supports the roof

”Still more seldom than in the northern face, the entrance is occasionally found upon that which is turned to the south This exceptional arrangement is, in most instances, caused by some local circumstance which may readily be perceived When the entrance is on the south its arrangement is sometimes the one, sometimes the other, of the thich we have described

”As for the western face, we have no evidence that it ever played anythe inclosure It is always destitute of both openings and ornaments”

We have thus explored, with Mariette, the outside of the eneral aspect, we have noticed the materials of which it was constructed, the principles upon which it was oriented, and its average size We have explained, too, how this single type of sepulchre was repeated ht variations, until, upon the plateau between Meradually arose aIt ree blocks ofthe cha itself; we shall afterwards penetrate, by the paths which es and the depths of the soil, to those recesses of the tomb which were meant to be for ever inaccessible

The interior of a mastaba is composed of three parts--the chamber, the _serdab_, and the well The last-na Many of the mastabas are, in fact, solid In the represented merely by one of those external niches which Mariette has described

This arrange as the mastaba continued to be built, the less ambitious tenants of the necropolis were contented to reproduce it But in these pages, as in a natural history, it is important to study the species when fully developed and provided with all its organs When we have clearly established a general type nothing is nise and point out its variations It suffices to say here that so in one, so and uses we shall attempt to determine, and that, in a few, they are of an unaccustomed importance

It is natural that we should first turn our attention to the charound upon which the quick and the dead could meet, the fors

”The interior of a mastaba may be divided into several 'chaenerally there is only one

It is entered by the door in the middle of the _facade_

”These chaht, but there are a few instances in which they are lighted fros in the roof A reement is to be seen in the tomb of Ti, where the innermost chahted from the roof

”The chamber is sometis such as those whose character andwe have already pointed out At its further end, and always facing eastwards, stands the inscribed tablet or stele There are soraved, but there are none where the walls are carved and the stele plain”

[Illustration: FIG 112--Plan of the tomb of Ti]

[Illustration: FIGS 113, 114--Mastaba at Sakkarah, from Prisse]