ON PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. 213 
‘ More than 400 tombs were dug and recorded: they were singularly 
uniform in type and cover but a small period in time. Four were of 
the First Dynasty, and the rest of the Second and Third. Intrusive 
burials of later ages were confined to two periods, that of Thotmes ITI. 
and (probably) late Ptolemaic, and were unimportant.’ 
‘In what follows we will confine ourselves to the Second and Third 
Dynasties :— 
‘ These tombs were most varied in size, but uniform in plan. One 
was 50 métres long and 30 wide, but the one I have chosen as a type 
was no more than 14 métres long, and even originally not 1 métre 
high. It consists of a hollow oblong of unbaked brickwork filled in 
with gravel and stone chip, plastered and whitewashed externally. 
On the east side are two niches, the southern one being the larger and 
the more important. Below the mastaba was a small stairway and a 
subterranean chamber. The smaller tombs were often built in rows, 
and their position parallel with the sides of the larger ones suggested 
that they belonged to the servants or relatives of the great men. 
“One tomb showed very clearly the origin of the later type in 
stone. The niche has been withdrawn into the body of the building 
and protected by a door. A small chamber is thus formed, and the 
sides of this were, no doubt, decorated with paintings; later, when 
stone replaced the crude brick, the scenes were made in low relief. 
This is the form of most of the mastabas published by Mariette; the 
more complex plans of the large tombs that have been left open are 
_ exceptional. 
‘The paths between the tombs were very narrow, hardly wide 
enough for one man to pass, and among the larger tombs, where there 
were walls 3 métres and more high, must have formed a perilous 
maze. They were much used; offerings of minute quantities of food 
were brought on every feast day and placed before the false doors in 
little vases like egg-cups and saucers. Piles of these pots are found 
thrown away near some of the tombs. 
“Very little stone-work was found. Small tanks 20 centimetres 
or so long occasionally remained before the niches, and in two cases 
an inscribed stone panel depicting the deceased seated before his table 
of offerings had escaped the search for lime. This panel appears in 
the middle of the later stele of the Fifth Dynasty, of which it was 
evidently the most important part. 
“The sides of the niches may have borne painted decoration— 
probably did so—but no trace of this remained. 
‘In one mastaba, a very large one, the wall was double: the two 
niches were carefully built in both the inner and the outer walls, 
evidently in order that the inner one might retain its magical value, 
even if the outer one were destroyed. 
‘The space inside the four walls was generally filled with gravel 
and with stone chip from the subterranean chamber, but in some of 
the larger tombs the filling contained also a great number of coarse 
vases, many crushed by the overlying gravel, but many also unbroken. 
These we thought at first might have been the jars used by the work- 
men for food, but some of them were of unbaked clay, and could hardly 
