shaft, (3)
the sepulchral vault. If the latter was below the level of the chapel,
as in the time of the Ancient Empire, the communication was by a
sloping or vertical shaft.--A.B.E.

I.--Mastabas.

The most ancient monumental tombs are found in the necropolis of Memphis,
between Abu Roash and Dahshur, and in that of Medum;[27] they belong to the
mastaba type (Note 12). The mastaba (fig. 113) is a quadrangular building,
which from a distance might be taken for a truncated pyramid. Many mastabas
are from 30 to 40-feet in height, 150 feet in length, and 80 feet in width;
while others do not exceed 10 feet in height or 15 feet in length. The
faces are symmetrically inclined and generally smooth, though sometimes the
courses retreat like steps. The materials employed are stone or brick. The
stone is limestone, cut in blocks about two and a half feet long, two feet
high, and twenty inches thick. Three sorts of limestone were employed: for
the best tombs, the fine white limestone of Turah, or the compact siliceous
limestone of Sakkarah; for ordinary tombs, the marly limestone of the
Libyan hills. This last, impregnated with salt and veined with crystalline
gypsum, is a friable material, and unsuited for ornamentation. The bricks
are of two kinds, both being merely sun-dried. The most ancient kind, which
ceased to be used about the time of the Sixth Dynasty, is small (8.7 X 4.3
X 5.5 inches), yellowish, and made of nothing but sand, mixed with a little
clay and grit.

[Illustration: Fig. 113.--A Mastaba.]

The later kind is of mud mixed with straw, black, compact, carefully
moulded, and of a fair size (15.0 X 7.1 X 5.5 inches). The style of the
internal construction differs according to the material employed by the
architect. In nine cases out of ten, the stone mastabas are but outwardly
regular in construction. The core is of roughly quarried rubble, mixed with
rubbish and limestone fragments hastily bedded in layers of mud, or piled
up without any kind of mortar. The brick mastabas are nearly always of
homogeneous construction. The facing bricks are carefully mortared, and the
joints inside are filled up with sand. That the mastaba should be
canonically oriented, the four faces set to the four cardinal points, and
the longer axis laid from north and south, was indispensable; but,
practically, the masons took no special care about finding the true north,
and the orientation of these structures is seldom