Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/257

The Tomb under the Ancient Empire. 167 has sent us of the tomb of Sabou (Fig. 106). The other mastabas figured by us have all been more or less restored. " The mastaba is a massive structure, rectangular on plan, with four faces of plain walling, each being inclined at a stated angle towards their common centre. This' inclination has led some people to assert that it is nothing more than an unfinished pyramid. Such an idea is refuted, however, by the fact that the divergence from the perpendicular is in some cases so slight that, were the walls prolonged upwards, their ridges, or aretes, would not meet for some eight or nine hundred yards. The mastaba might be Fig. 106. — Actual condition of a mastaba. The tomb of Sabou. Drawn by Bourgoin. more justly compared to the space comprised between two hori- zontal sections of an obelisk, supposing the obelisk to have an oblong base. " The major axis of the rectangle upon which these structures are planned, always runs due north and south, and at the pyramids of Gizeh, the necropolis of the west, they are arranged upon a sym- metrical plan so as to resemble a chess board on which all the squares are strictly oriented.^ The more carefully built mastabas are oriented according to the true astronomical north. All the others show the same intention, and, in those instances where an error of a few degrees is to be discovered, it is to be clearly - The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect to each other is well shown in plates xiv. and xviii. of Lepsius's first volume (map of the pyramids of Gizeh and panorama taken from the summit of the second pyramid).