Mastaba

The Arabic word for 'bench', a mudbrick superstructure of Egyptian tombs, mainly of the Archaic Period and Old Kingdom, including the royal tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty. It was a low, rectangular building with a flat roof and vertical or slightly inclined walls that enclosed the shaft to the underground burial chamber. Later versions were reinforced with stone and more elaborate. It often contained a chapel, a statue of the deceased, and sometimes large numbers of rooms. The pyramids were a direct development from them. At first, kings as well as their nobles and officials were buried in mastabas, but from the 3rd Dynasty, pharaohs had pyramids and the mastabas of their eminent subjects were built around the pyramids.

[Arabic: ‘bench’]. The name given to the low rectangular superstructures which mark many tombs of the Egyptian Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom. Nobles and court officials were buried in tombs of this type, sometimes adjacent to the royal burial place. Initially made of mud-brick, the larger mastabas of more important individuals were in later times reinforced with stone, the latter material also being used on occasion to line the underground burial chamber.