A mastaba is the burial place of many Egyptian figures mainly during the Archaic Period of Egypt.

During the time of the Old Kingdom of Egypt, pharaohs began to be buried in pyramids, instead of mastabas, although they continued to be used for other figures for more than a thousand years.[1]​.

The location of the tombs was very important, since they had to be located out of reach of the Nile floods, and they had to be in the western area of ​​this river, in the desert, where the Sun set at sunset, which was where the deceased began their journey to the Beyond because, according to their beliefs, the entrance to the underworld, or Duat, was located to the west, the spirits of the deceased being called "western."

Contenido

Las mastabas se construyeron en un principio con adobes (ladrillos de barro) y posteriormente de piedra, generalizándose entre los faraones y sus esposas principales durante la dinastía III, después de que Imhotep erigiera en piedra el complejo funerario de Saqqara para el faraón Dyeser (Zoser).

first graves

The oldest were pits dug into the ground divided into several rooms with adobe walls. The central room was reserved for the deceased, and in the others the funerary trousseau and provisions for the afterlife were placed. In some, there are graves outside with the bodies of slaves sacrificed for the service of their master in the afterlife. Once the body was deposited, access was blocked. The way these graves are covered is unknown; It was possibly a low-rise adobe and wood structure.

I chewed her

This construction has two levels: the underground, with the sepulchral chamber, which was accessed through long vertical wells that were blocked after depositing the mummy, and the upper level, in which was the chapel, which imitated the house of the deceased, where relatives could go to deposit offerings, with one or several "false doors" decorated with reliefs, located in the eastern part, which served to indicate the spirit, the of the deceased. (called ), the place where you had to exit or enter the building. The most sumptuous had several richly decorated and serdab...