As early excavators of mastabas such as Reisner, Junker, Bisson de la roque and others have noticed, apart from rare examples built in more or less solid masonry, a mastaba is usually a composite structure made of a mass of rather loose building material, but layered and enclosed by a peripheral ‘wall’, or rather embankment that belongs to the nucleus, and an accretion called the ‘casing’. Such a massive construction, even if not of a considerable height, is subject to gravity and its two effects, creep and collapse. ‘Creep’ is an internal phenomenon of mass compression which produces a widening of the base of a structure. collapse is an external phenomenon that degrades the faces of a mass and lops off its edges. Even if the ancient architects were not experts in the physics of gravitational forces, they were obviously aware of some of their effects. heoretically, they could mobilise three main principles in order to obtain building stability:
1. Enclosure of the filling by one or several retaining wall(s);
2. Partitioning the mass by dividing walls;
3. Stratification of the mass by homogenous layers.
Although these principles are known individually in
Mastaba construction, they are not recognised as part of a whole system. Partitioning for example, is a well-known building method in early mud-brick mastabas which were designed with a chequered plan; although some of the ‘rooms’ therefore created were used as magazines, or, at a lower level, burial apartments, most were simple casemates to ensure the stability of the large mass of the building.61 construction in stone, from an evolutionary perspective, is considered to have replaced the casemate type building by the retaining wall and filling system of large tombs, where only careless stratification seems to be in play and no partition needed. Hence our surprise to discover a more complex picture at Abu Rawash, where elite mastabas of the fourth dynasty could be investigated.
He Abu Rawash project was initially focused on an historical perspective, namely to demonstrate that this forgotten site, cemetery ‘F’, was the Royal necropolis of king Djedefre, who was buried in a pyramid 1.5km further west.62 Very soon however, the mastabas were also scrutinised in order to understand their very structure. Observations were made possible by the poor state of preservation of the superstructures, which, after some minor clearance, revealed important data on the core structure and building process. As mentioned above, a major additional factor was the mastaba type. Because the tombs under consideration dated primarily to the fourth dynasty, they display the normal solid superstructure typical of the period, only interrupted by a small interior chapel and the two shafts leading to the burial apartments.63 he core proper is therefore the main component of the superstructure and has received, as one may have guessed, special treatment to stabilise its imposing mass. Additionally, the mastabas of this cemetery are of large size, because the area is devoted to the elite of the kingdom, especially to the King’s sons. All the conditions for a detailed investigation were therefore gathered, and some of its results are briely given in this short paper; comparative data will be reduced to its minimum, as our aim is primarily concerned with presenting fresh data.
World History
