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Updated: May 18, 2025
We could point to tomb-chambers where every wall is thus inlaid to the extent of one quarter of its surface. The preliminary work being done, the whole was covered with a thin coat of fine plaster mixed with white of egg, which hid the mud-wash or the piecing, and prepared a level and polished surface for the pencil of the artist.
The actual tomb-chambers are excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times, but a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging to the tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht's tomb is similar.
Here and there one sees a dip in the sand, out of which rise four walls of great bricks, forming a rectangular chamber, half-filled with sand. This is one of the royal tomb-chambers of the Ist Dynasty. That of King Den is illustrated above. A straight staircase descends into it from the ground-level above. In several of the tombs the original flooring of wooden beams is still preserved.
There were no mountains in whose sides tomb-chambers could be cut, and in the loose permeable soil of the plain it would have been practically impossible to establish pits that should be at once spacious and durable. We shall find, no doubt, in almost every country, sepulchres constructed above the soil like palaces and temples.
In Southern Palestine the well-made tomb-chambers, such as are to be seen in great numbers around Jerusalem, are all post-exilic. There is an immense variety in plan, some tombs being single chambers, others complications of several chambers. The late excavation absurdly called the 'Tombs of the Kings' at Jerusalem is quite a labyrinth of rockcut chambers.
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