Mastaba

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Mastaba

Distinguish from masturbation
Masturbation

Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation, especially of one's own sex organ , often to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by other types of bodily contact , by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods....
.

A mastaba was a kind of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
ian tomb

Tomb

For the New York prison see The Tombs.A tomb is a repository for the remains of the death. The term generally refers to any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes....
in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular with outward sloping sides that marked the burial site of many eminent Egyptians of Egypt's ancient period

History of Egypt

The history of Egypt is the longest continuous history, as a unified state, of any country in the world. The Nile valley forms a natural geographic and economic unit, bounded to the east and west by deserts, to the north by the sea and to the south by the Cataracts of the Nile....
. Mastabas were constructed out of mud-bricks or stone.
word Mastaba comes from the Arabic word for bench, because when seen from a distance it looks like a bench.

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Encyclopedia

A mastaba was a kind of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
ian tomb

Tomb

History of Egypt

Structure

The word Mastaba comes from the Arabic word for bench, because when seen from a distance it looks like a bench. Inside the mastaba, a deep chamber was dug into the ground and lined with stone or bricks. The body would be placed in this deep, sealed chamber. Because the remains were not in contact with the dry desert sand, natural mummification

Mummy

A mummy is a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness, very high humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs....
of the remains could not take place. In order to preserve the remains, the ancient Egyptian priests had to devise a system of artificial mummification.

The mastaba structure was constructed directly over the underground shaft holding the remains of the deceased. The above ground structure was rectangular in shape, had sloping sides, and was about four times as long as it was wide. This above ground structure had space for a small offering chapel equipped with a false door

False door

A false door is a common architectural element in the tombs of Ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptians believed that the false door was a threshold between the world of the living and the dead, and through which a deity or the spirit of the deceased could enter and exit....
to which priests and family members brought food and other offerings for the soul of the deceased.

History

The mastaba was the standard type of tomb in early Egypt (the predynastic and early dynastic periods) for both the pharaoh and the social elite. The ancient Egyptian city of Abydos was the location chosen for many of these early mastabas.

When a mastaba was built for the burial of the Third Dynasty king Djoser

Djoser

Netjerikhet or Djoser is the best-known pharaoh of the Third dynasty of Egypt. He commissioned his official, Imhotep , to build the first of the pyramids, a step pyramid for him at Saqqara....
, the architect Imhotep

Imhotep

Imhotep , 27th century BC was an Egyptians polymath, who served under the third dynasty of Egypt king, Djoser, as chancellor to the pharaoh and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis ....
enlarged the basic structure to be a square, then built a similar, but smaller, mastaba-like square on top of this, and added a fourth, fifth, and sixth square structure above that. The resulting building is the Step Pyramid

Pyramid of Djoser

The Pyramid of Djoser , or step pyramid is an archeological remain in the Saqqara necropolis, Egypt, northwest of the city of Memphis, Egypt....
, the first of the many pyramid tombs which succeeded it. Thus the mastaba is the first step towards the more famous Pyramids.

Even after pharaohs began to construct pyramids for their tombs, members of the nobility continued to be buried in mastaba tombs. This is especially evident on the Giza Plateau, where hundreds of mastaba tombs have been constructed alongside the pyramids.