Introduction

The ideal Egyptian tomb comprised two basic elements: the actual burial place of the body and the offering place, where the worlds of the living and dead coincided, and where items of sustenance could be provided for the deceased. Architecturally and decoratively, the two elements were for much of Egyptian history distinct, and it is important to bear this in mind whenever analysing a given funerary monument. Indeed, these elements could be separated by considerable distances; nevertheless, they still formed part of the same whole.

The structure or structures forming such a monument ideally lay in the desert on the western bank of the Nile, so that the progression from the entrance was towards the west, the home of the dead. The focus of the offering place would be on a western wall to provide for the optimum interface with the beyond. However, in some areas, topographical considerations meant that cemeteries had to be placed on the east bank. In some cases, the reversed orientation seems to have been simply ignored, but in others adjustments were made to normal plans to ensure that the cult could be carried out facing west, even if this resulted in a very awkwardly arranged monument (e. g. at the Fraser Tombs at Tihna: Dodson and Ikram 2008: 156-7).

Topographic issues also influenced the overall form of the tomb. On ‘‘flat’’ sites in the Nile valley, the classic tomb-type was the brick - or stone-built bench-shaped mastaba (or - for kings and queens - the pyramid), with its offering place either against or within its eastern side. Later, this was replaced by structures that were essentially freestanding chapels, often resembling miniature temples, albeit sometimes with elements that harked back to the mastaba prototype. Burial chambers would in both cases be cut in the bed-rock or compacted desert gravel - in the latter case usually lined and roofed with brick or sometimes stone.

At sites where foothills or cliff-faces dominated, the tomb would be largely or wholly rock-cut. Although, on occasion, the bedrock could be cut away to produce an apparently free-standing mastaba core (e. g. in the Central Field at Giza, or the Fraser

Tombs), most such sites simply cut the offering place into the flank of the hill or cliff. The burial apartments remained in the bed-rock.

In the Delta, very different conditions prevailed from the Nile valley, with at best sandy mounds (gezira) rising above the alluvium, on which both settlements and cemeteries had to be placed. Rock-cut elements of any sort were thus out of the question, and burial chambers thus had to be built out of brick or stone and sunk as deep as practicable into the gezira, bearing in mind the proximity of the water table. A chapel would then be built above, using the substructure as a foundation. This approach was also used for intra-urban interments in the valley, for example within the city of Memphis.

In all cases, however, the purpose of the tomb remained constant: to act as a magical machine to translate the dead person from this world to the next - and maintain them there, free from hunger, for eternity.