214 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1914. 
have been used at all. In other cases, too, these vases had been 
placed in orderly rows; in one the whole desert floor between the 
walls of the tomb and the edge of the shaft had been covered with 
these vases, with clods of black clay placed between them. It would 
seem, then, that these were deposits intended to supplement the 
furniture of the subterranean chamber. 
“In the case here shown there can be little doubt. Below the 
filling, hidden beneath 3 métres of gravel, we found a shallow trench 
4 métre wide, once roofed with wood. Inside it were two rows of 
jars or model barns, each 30 centimétres high, made of unbaked clay, 
and containing a brown organic powder, probably decayed corn. The 
trench is lined with brick, and from it a tiny tunnel, a handbreadth 
wide and high, leads to the mouth of the shaft. This, surely, was a 
secret supply of food for the dead man. 
‘In three of the large tombs a still more elaborate provision was 
made. A row of brick chambers, or tanks, was sunk in the floor of 
the tomb, filled with jars, and covered with a course of brick. What 
the jars contained is not clear; a very light organic matter, probably 
a fat, filled the lower half of a few, but most of them were empty when 
found. These chambers, or tanks, must, however, have once contained 
something of value, for in one tomb they had been laboriously robbed. 
A shaft had been sunk through the filling—in this case composed of a 
very tough, dried mud—into one of the chambers, and from this 
tunnels had been forced, sometimes through the walls, sometimes 
above them through the mud filling, till all the eight chambers had 
been rifled. The labour must have been considerable and the risk not 
trifling: there was nothing to show how it had been repaid. 
‘We now leave the structures above ground and come to the shaft. 
‘This was nearly always in the form of a stair, sloping down 
from the north or east to the chamber mouth. The stair often starts 
from the east, near the north niche, and bends at a right-angle half- 
way down; this would be practically useful while the digging was 
going on, as it would stop a falling stone before it acquired an 
awkward velocity. The shafts, like the tombs, vary much in size. 
Some are 12 métres deep, some so small—l métre or less—that 
the steps would be of no practical use. 
‘Tn the larger and deeper tombs the steps are cut in the rock, are 
of reasonable size, and evidently served their purpose in the excavation 
of the chamber below; but in many of the moderate sized mastabas, 
those 4 to 5 métres long, the steps are of brick, and are too narrow 
and fragile for a man to stand on them. Shafts and steps in the 
small tombs, and presumably also in the large ones, were carefully 
plastered and whitewashed for the funeral ceremony. In small tombs 
a low skirting wall a few inches in height was built round the shaft, 
and this, too, was whitened. The upper part, the mastaba, was built 
after the funeral. But in larger tombs this was not practical; the 
works above and below ground had to go on together, so the stair 
was fenced in by a separate wall. 
‘Shafts were generally filled with gravel, the portcullis being relied 
on to secure the mouth of the chamber; but in large tombs they were 
