The mastaba became a solid brick block with retaining walls and a rubble core. A staircase led to these storage chambers and the burial chamber. Though the first mastabas had storage chambers, storage moved to the substructure during the course of the First Dynasty. First-dynasty mastabas had plastered and painted exteriors, though this feature apparently did not continue into the Second Dynasty. The mastabas built during the First and Second Dynasties were decorated with the palace façade motif derived from the enclosure wall of the contemporary royal palace as well as the funerary enclosures of kings in this period. Mastabas of Dynasties One, Two, and Three. The type remained the basic burial architecture for the region around Memphis used by the wealthy into 3100 b.c.e. At first they built them of mud brick, but later switched to stone. It was only during the first two dynasties (3100–2675 b.c.e.) that the Egyptians began to build superstructures over pit graves called mastabas. These simple linings were the precursors of coffins. In the Nagada II Period (3500–3300 b.c.e.), the Egyptians dug more rectangular pits for graves and sometimes lined them with basket-work, reed matting, or wood. These graves were unmarked, but the grave goods show that from the earliest period the Egyptians believed that people needed supplies to take with them to the next world. From the Nagada I Period (3800–3500 b.c.e.), grave goods such as pots, tools, and weapons were included in the grave along with the body. In the very earliest periods, Egyptians buried their dead in oval-shaped pits in the desert. In fact all the functions that a person performed in life-sleeping, eating, dressing, receiving friends-were performed in the tomb by the deceased. A deceased person could even receive mail at the tomb just as mail could be delivered to a person in this life. Not only did the ba and the ka spend time with the mummy and the statue of the deceased in the tomb, but also supplies that a person would need in the next life were stored in the tomb, just as there were storage facilities in a house. The soul divisions included the ba that could travel between the mummy and the next world, the ka that could inhabit a statue of a deceased person, and the akh that was transformed in the tomb into a spirit that could live in the next world. One name that the ancient Egyptians gave to tombs was per djet, "house of eternity." The Egyptians thought of the tomb as one of the places in which their souls would live after they died. Such benches are often located in front of houses. The mastaba tomb's name comes from the Arabic word meaning "bench," for its resemblance to a mud brick bench sitting on the desert sand. Mastaba Tombs of the Old Kingdom House for Eternity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |