The Egyptian Mastaba

A mastaba was a flat roofed, mudbrick, rectangular building with sloping sides that marked the burial site of many eminent Egyptians of Egypt's ancient period.

Mastaba comes from the Arabic for bench, because they look like a mud bench when seen from a distance. In a mastaba, a deep chamber was dug out and lined with stone, mud bricks or wood. Above ground, the mud was piled up to mark the grave, oblong in a shape with a length approximately 4 times its width. Although this provided a much grander tomb, it was also a much cooler tomb. This upset the early priests as it allowed the bodies to decompose due to the fact that water no longer evaporated, preventing desiccation of the bodies.

The Mastaba was the standard tomb type in early Egypt (the predynastic and early dynastic periods.)