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Tombs and Tomb Art
In some periods royal burials were accommodated
in pyramids, but nobles and officials had tombs. There were
variations in design over the centuries, but two basic architectural
types developed and survived the mastaba tomb and the rock-cut tomb.
Mastaba Tombs At first the mastaba tomb was used for royalty as well as for nobility, but when the kings began to build pyramids at the beginning of the Old Kingdom, the nobles and officials retained and developed the mastaba tomb. These were now grouped around the pyramid to form “royal courts.” The tomb’s main functions were to house the body and the funerary goods and to provide an earthly location where offerings could be brought to sustain the owner’s spirit. The belief that the tomb was a house for the deceased where he could continue to exist after death prompted the development of certain architectural features. The mastaba tomb had a superstructure above ground and a substructure below ground. The superstructure was rectangular and bench shaped, hence the term used by Egyptologists: Mastaba is the Arabic word for “bench shaped.” In earliest times (from c.3400 BC) it was built entirely of mud brick. This continued into Dynasty 4, but there was increasing use of stone: The core was now built of solid masonry or of rubble contained within a bench-shaped wall, and whereas the outside of the superstructure had once been covered with a mud brick paneled facade, this was now often replaced by smooth limestone facings. The superstructure marked the location of the tomb and protected the burial and also provided a place where food offerings could be brought. It housed the offering chapel or chamber (equivalent to the reception area in domestic architecture) where the family or priest brought the food offerings, and the serdab (closed room), which contained the owner’s statue through which his spirit could absorb sustenance and benefit from the offerings. There were also two false doors set into the east wall; decorated with relief sculpture, these provided the owner’s spirit access to the offerings and emphasized the appearance of the tomb as a dwelling place. The substructure housed the burial chamber and was the equivalent of the domestic bedroom. There was also sometimes a second chamber to accommodate the burial of the owner’s wife, and there were storage areas for goods and possessions. Access to the chambers was provided by shafts or stairways, and various devices were developed to attempt to protect the burial and funerary goods against robbers. These included deeper access routes, blocking internal doors with stone or bricks, or filling the shafts and stairways with gravel and rocks. The Egyptian name for the tomb was Hwt Ka (“House of the Spirit”). .
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Rock-Cut Tombs
Although rock-cut tombs had begun to appear by the end of Dynasty 4, it was in the succeeding dynasties that they became widespread. Some were constructed at Giza, but the most important development was in the provincial districts along the Nile where they were built in the desert cliffs for the provincial governors, who had assumed semi-independence. The rock tombs continued to flourish during the First Intermediate Period, a time of civil war between the provincial rulers, and also survived for nonroyal, wealthy burials during the Middle Kingdom. Each rock tomb cut into the mountainside or cliffs which border parts of the Nile in Middle or Upper Egypt included a portico with columns or a terraced courtyard which led into a columned hall. All the architectural features were cut out of the natural rock. The hall gave access to a small room or niche that contained the tomb owner’s statue, and offerings were presented here on his behalf. The burial chamber lay beyond the offering chapel, and access was frequently provided through an opening cut in the floor of the chapel. By the New Kingdom the kings themselves had abandoned pyramids in favor of rock-cut tombs in a bleak valley (Valley of the Kings) on the west bank opposite Thebes. Some queens and royal princes were buried in rock-cut tombs in the nearby Valley of the Queens, while the tombs of many courtiers and officials were scattered across several areas of the same necropolis. A king’s tomb usually consisted of a series of stairways and corridors interspersed by one or more rectangular halls that descended to a pillared hall. This hall contained a sarcophagus (stone coffin) that accommodated the burial. Several storerooms for the funerary goods led off this chamber. The tombs in the Valley of the Queens were similar and sometimes only slightly less elaborate. Nonroyal tombs typically consisted of an open rectangular courtyard behind which lay an inverted T-shaped offering chapel cut into the rock. A hidden shaft located at the rear of the chapel or in a corner of the forecourt led down to one or more subterranean chambers which accommodated the burial and tomb goods. Within the T-shaped chapel there was a niche at the far end that housed statues of the owner and his wife and sometimes a false door. .
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Wall Art
The introduction of stone for building and facing the offering chapel in the early Old Kingdom provided wall surfaces that could be carved and painted, and from Dynasty 3, the fully developed wall composition was in use, showing a large figure (the tomb owner) dominating a series of horizontal registers occupied by subsidiary figures. The purpose of these scenes, which represented aspects of food production and everyday pastimes, was to provide the owner with a series of activities that he could magically activate for his own benefit and enjoyment after death. Although some minor variations developed over the centuries, the main principles of tomb art remained the same. But when tombs were built in areas that did not have easy access to good quality stone, the artists developed techniques for painting scenes directly onto plastered surfaces prepared on top of mudstone walls. While nonroyal tombs of all periods were decorated with scenes of daily life, royal tombs in the New Kingdom depicted representations from the funerary “books” to enable the king to overcome the dangers he would encounter as he passed into the world of the dead. The two-dimensional art that decorates the walls of tombs and temples exhibits some puzzling features. Executed solely for reasons of sympathetic magic (so that the owner could “use” them) rather than for visual impact, these reliefs represent “conceptual,” or “aspective,” art rather than “perceptual,” or “perspective,” art. Heinrich Schäfer’s observations (AD 1919) on this art enabled him to identify its main principles (although the Egyptians themselves left no account of these), and his work remains the basis of modern interpretation of such religious scenes. .
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Tombs and Tomb Art
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