mastaba

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

  • noun An ancient Egyptian tomb with a rectangular base, sloping sides, and a flat roof.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

  • noun A wide stone bench built into the wall of a house, shop etc. in the Middle East.

Examples

  • 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.

    Atlantis : the antediluvian world

  • A mastaba is a flat-roofed, rectangular tomb with outward-sloping sides.

    Egyptology News

  • It's truly Damascene with the low benches and cushions, almost like a mastaba, but with a craftsman-style wood pergola above.

    Lazy Environmentalist

  • "Engineering an Empire: Egypt" had a comprehensive re-creation showing the different construction phases of Djoser's tomb starting out as a moderate mastaba (a one story, rectangular burial structure with slanting sides) and evolving into the large step pyramid still standing today.

    Ten Thousand Men, One Million Stone Blocks, and a Couple of Sleds

  • As Margaret passed under the lintel of the outer door, which led into a quiet courtyard, of Hadassah Ireton's house, a Nubian servant rose from the stone _mastaba_ -- the guards' seat -- upon which he had been lying half asleep; he conducted her with the silence of a shadow to the gate of the inner or women's courtyard.

    There was a King in Egypt

Note

The word 'mastaba' comes from Arabic 'maṣṭabba' ('stone bench').