Egyptian... "bench"
View of Shepseskafa's mastaba
His confidants plotted against him for the murder of the priest's son Jehoiada and killed him in his bed. He died and was buried in the City of David, but not in the royal tombs.
2 Chronicles 24:25
2 Chronicles 24:25
Another expedition to the ancestors. Why such a strange epigraph? Simply because it contains the word "tomb". And this word is important in this case, since today we will talk about ancient Egyptian tombs, which existed long before the pyramids and did not disappear with their appearance. The Arabs who came to replace the Egyptians called them "bench", in Arabic "mastaba". And the reason why they called them that was, apparently, their shape, since the mastaba most resembled a truncated pyramid with sloping walls or a "bench for giants".
Schematic diagram of the mastaba
They were all built according to roughly the same plan, although they differed from each other in small details. Usually, a mastaba consisted of two parts: underground and above ground, which had the shape of a "bench", "brick" or "gold bar". The entire above-ground part was practically a single monolith, made of stone blocks, usually limestone. True, it also had two small rooms. In one - a prayer room - there was a statue of the deceased, to the foot of which gifts were usually brought. In the other - a warehouse for burial inventory.
In addition, a vertical shaft went underground from the mastaba, at the bottom of which was a burial chamber. Depending on the size of the mastaba, it could be located at a depth of two or 20 meters. Moreover, after the burial, this shaft was usually filled to the top with stones. And one can imagine the truly amazing amount of soil extraction from the shaft that robbers had to do if they wanted to get into such a mastaba. After all, the soil and stones had to not only be extracted, but also put away somewhere far away, so that the pile of stones growing next to the tomb would not show the guards of the "city of the dead" that someone was trying to get to its burial chamber.
Schematic diagram of the mastaba with explanations
So the mastaba was a very tough nut to crack for grave robbers. Although, since these were tombs for the nobility, they could not help but attract them. The main thing is that mastabas existed before the pyramids, at the same time as the pyramids and… after the pyramids!
A piece of the "city of the dead"
It should be noted that Egyptologists are not particularly interested in the pyramids themselves. Yes, they are an impressive monument, an interesting engineering structure, which by its very existence speaks of the high level of development of the Egyptian state. But that's all! What can they tell us about the lives of both noble and ordinary Egyptians? About their joys and sorrows, about whether they knew how to make wine from grapes or not, show what their cattle, plow, granary, market looked like... In a word, can the pyramids immerse us in ancient Egyptian life?
No, they can't. Because inside they are very... poor in decoration. Polished stone, short notes from workers, colored tiles, and even mystical texts of the pyramids - that's all that is actually found in them. Well, maybe in the Djoser pyramid they found a piece of a mummified hand and a whole bunch of alabaster vessels, both broken and whole. But that's probably all. Besides, there are few pyramids, although 108 are known today. Few - compared again with the same mastabas, of which several hundred are known and which are much more "talkative" than the pyramids!
There could have been mastabas like this, with “courtyards”...
It is interesting that the situation with them is exactly the same as with knights' armor: all mastabas seem to be similar, but you will not be able to find two absolutely identical ones! In addition, they were different in size, and some were very large. For example, inside the mastaba of Ptahshepses there were 40 rooms, and these were by no means small rooms!
Reconstructed Mastaba for Tourists
It is clear that all the mastabas had already been robbed in ancient times. Which implies close cooperation between the guards of the "city of the dead" and the robbers. Because without "support" no one could have done such a volume of excavation work. But... What the robbers could not take away were the frescoes painted on the walls of the burial chambers. The walls of the prayer rooms, by the way, were also decorated with frescoes and painted reliefs. And these were real "comics" telling about the earthly or afterlife of the owner of the mastaba. In the smallest detail, they depicted the work of farmers, household chores, musicians, dancers, various games, hunting, military campaigns and even the afterlife as it seemed to the Egyptians. Moreover, the images themselves were accompanied by explanatory texts. That is, they give us exhaustive information, unlike the polished walls of the interior of the pyramids.
Berlin Museum. Entrance to the Mastaba of Merida
Although mastabas are also a source of many mysteries. Or rather, not mastabas, but only one of them – the mastaba of Pharaoh Shepseskaf, who, after building the three great pyramids in Giza, decided for some reason to build himself not a pyramid, but a mastaba, but of enormous size.
Mastaba of Neferbauptah. Giza Plateau
Shepseskaf himself was the last pharaoh (~2500 BC) of the IV dynasty of the Old Kingdom. It is possible that he was the son of Pharaoh Menkaure by a concubine or secondary wife. There is also a version that he was married to the daughter of Menkaure by the main queen Khentkaus - his half-sister, which helped him take the throne. Although the origin of Shepseskaf and family relations with other representatives of the IV dynasty have not been fully clarified. There is a hypothesis that he came from a side branch of the dynasty, originating from the pharaohs Djedefre and Bak.
A certain G. Zhekye began studying the Shepsekaf mastaba at the beginning of the last century, and published a corresponding report about it in 1928.
According to the Turin Papyrus, he wore the Double Crown of Lower and Upper Egypt for only four years and a few months, although Manetho assigned him a seven-year reign. The Palermo Stone contains a description of the ritual for choosing a place for his burial. And if the translation of the badly damaged inscription about sacrifices specifically for Menkaure is correct, then in the very first year of Shepseskaf's reign there were severe disasters, for the relief of which he made numerous sacrifices to Menkaure [or rather, to his posthumous cult]. However, Shepseskaf's reign itself can hardly be called quiet. It is believed that during his reign there were religious unrest in the country. That is, Akhenaten was not the first pharaoh in Egypt to encroach on the power of the priests of the traditional gods.
Scheme of the Mastaba of Shepseskaf and adjacent buildings
The fact is that the influence of the priests of Ra had been growing steadily since the reign of Khufu and Djedefre, and by the time Shepseskaf came to power it had reached its apogee. It is clear that, trying to protect his power from the priests of Ra, Shepseskaf decided to rely on the priests of the funeral cult of his predecessor god and also on the priests of other gods, such as Ptah. And he began to elevate the priesthood of Ptah, hoping in this way to create a counterweight to the priesthood of Ra.
Mastaba Shepseskafa from afar
Be that as it may, he built his tomb away from the three great pyramids. It is located in South Saqqara, between North Saqqara and Dashur. From it, and best of all from its top, the pyramids of all these necropolises are clearly visible, and in good weather even the pyramids of Giza. The Arabic name of this monument is "Mastabat el-Faraun", which means "the mastaba of the pharaoh". The Egyptian name is different: "Kebehu Shepseskaf" ("Shepseskaf is pure"). That is, it is obvious that he is "pure" before the gods, that is, after death he is guaranteed to get into the kingdom of Osiris.
Her corner…
The length of the Shepseskaf mastaba was quite decent, about 100 m (from north to south), the width was 75 m, and the height was 18 meters, with a slope of about 70°. It consists of 10 rows of masonry made of reddish limestone, and it suffered greatly from erosion. The wind and sand worked on it like sandblasting! By the way, the builders used exactly the same limestone on the neighboring "Red Pyramid" of Pharaoh Sneferu, the father of Khufu. The study of the remains and fragments of its cladding at the foot gives grounds for the conclusion that the mastaba was also faced with red granite, just like the pyramid of his father Menkaure. And also partially with white Tura limestone, like the pyramids in Giza.
She's nearby...
Moreover, the chambers inside it are not inferior in complexity to the chambers of the Khufu pyramid. Thus, both the first and second chambers are almost equal in size and are made of granite blocks. The ceiling is gabled, but it is unclear why it was processed under a semicircular vault, which required a lot of work. However, in the chamber of the Menkaure pyramid, the vault of the burial chamber is made in the same way. But the floor in both chambers is very uneven. Moreover, in some places it even fell below the level of the masonry of the walls themselves. And another interesting circumstance: the surfaces of the walls are also very poorly processed. Although they are made of granite blocks in the same way, and granite is difficult to process.
View of the mastaba cemetery near the great pyramids. The black dots on the rectangles of the tombs are the openings of the shafts leading underground…
It is clear that we will not get an answer to “why is everything like this” from this mastaba, which looks more like a pyramid on the inside, and like a mastaba only on the outside. There are no paintings or reliefs in it…
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