Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. An ancient Egyptian tomb with a rectangular base, sloping sides, and a flat roof.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The earliest form of Egyptian tomb, a building oblong or square in plan and having sloping sides and a flat roof. It covers the sepulchral pit.
Wiktionary
- n. A wide stone bench built into the wall of a house, shop etc. in the Middle East.
- n. A rectangular structure with a flat top and slightly sloping sides, built during Ancient Egyptian times above tombs that were situated on flat land. Mastabas were made of wood, mud bricks, stone, or a combination of these materials. Some are solid structures, while others can contain one or more rooms, sometimes decorated with paintings or inscriptions.
GNU Webster's 1913
- In Mohammedan countries, a fixed seat, common in dwellings and in public places.
- A type of tomb, of the time of the Memphite dynasties, comprising an oblong structure with sloping sides (sometimes containing a decorated chamber, sometimes of solid masonry), and connected with a mummy chamber in the rock beneath.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an ancient Egyptian mud-brick tomb with a rectangular base and sloping sides and flat roof
Etymologies
- Arabic maṣṭabba, stone bench, from Aramaic misṭubbā, perhaps of Persian or Greek origin.
Examples
“Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba.”
Simon & Schuster: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
“And there is in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found.”
“A mastaba is a flat-roofed, rectangular tomb with outward-sloping sides.”
“I pass through a fake mastaba, fashioned after massive structures slaves built above tombs in Saqqara and Giza.”
“It's giving her nightmares of beehive tombs, the subway system as a mastaba, too tight a fit for her.”
“Sculpted berms here, geometrically-patterned rows of exhaust stacks there, mastaba-shaped radar facility right over there, chalked footpaths everywhere.”
“It's truly Damascene with the low benches and cushions, almost like a mastaba, but with a craftsman-style wood pergola above.”
“Outside the Old Kingdom mastaba tomb of Mereri at Saqqara there is a false door of his wife Nebet aka Ibi, a priestess of Het-Hert.”
“Yes – I haz seen the Great Pyramids before, and krawled through a very small tunnel in a mastaba (raised burial site) that pre-dates the pyramids (like, it be really OLD!)”
alienz be aductin meh! - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
“And how did a mastaba turn into the revolutionary pyramid structure?”
Ten Thousand Men, One Million Stone Blocks, and a Couple of Sleds
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