Talk:Mastaba

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Comments[edit]

Strong's Concordance seems to link the Egyptian "Mastaba" to the Hebrew "Messeba" ("Mats-tsebah"), meaning "Standing Stone" and, of course, having strong religious significance — cf. Genesis 28:22. This article does agree that the Egyptian word is a WEST-SEMITIC LOAN WORD... 24.143.68.244 05:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It may be my english that is not very good: but it is that right? "A cooler tomb (...) allowes the body to decompose"? I translate that like this: a body decomposes faster when is cool weather? But I think the opposite... is the hot weather that allowes a body to decompose faster?... Help me, and forgive me my bad english!

It would certainly seem reasonable that higher temperatures allowed for faster decomposition - where did this information come from? Mark Richards 20:31, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It is from the page of Wikipedia "mastaba", at the end of the 2nd paragraph... Is that right? Or am I misunderstanding (I don't know if this word exists...) that?

Well, yes, I see that it's from the page Mastaba, I was wondering where the orginal poster (Lir), got the information. I have left a message on his talk page. Thanks for noticing this! By the way, you can sign your posts using four tilde characters like this: ~~~~ , it results in something like this: Mark Richards 20:46, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! now I am logged in... I am writing the portuguese page of Mastaba and that information is usefull to me... ~~~~

Welcome! Re signatures - the nowiki tags turn off the tools, don't include them unless you are explaining the function to someone! Mark Richards 21:18, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

ok... thanks. Manuel Anastácio 21:20, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)~

If the temperature is hot enough, then water will evaporate. A lack of water will lead to mummification, instead of decomposition. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Isn't this essentially a function of Egypt's aridity? I mean, if you were to increase the heat in a tomb in a more moist climate, it would cause the body to decompose more quickly, wouldn't it? Maybe this is where the confusion here lies. Themill 10:02, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Relation to the Great Pyramids of Giza[edit]

From the design I see, wouldn't the Mastaba be an earlier example of the pyramids? (or present example, this is for a paper of mine) The sloping sides are the same, but the people who built the wonderful pyramids adapted to use stone instead of mud. Do you think they could have predicted that the stone would last longer?

4.156.99.109 00:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Possible vandalism?[edit]

At the bottom of the page is [[ČŏŎ|€Я]] which links to a non-existent page (ČŏŎ). Is this junk, or is it supposed to be readable in Egyptian or Unicode? Tocharianne 21:34, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, someone else thought it was junk and deleted it, so that's that. Tocharianne 15:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How old are they, what period, by whom and for whom?[edit]

What is the "ancient period"? I assume that's pre-OK, or is it early-OK? It's not defined in the wikilink. Who was building them for whom? Do they appear in clusters, like for a king and his family and servants, or are they single entities? SamuelRiv (talk) 03:20, 23 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A date would be nice. Even a century or range or best approximation. Nitpyck (talk) 18:06, 1 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mastabas originally were designed for living in it[edit]

Mastabas originally were designed as hiding places, or bunkers. The Great Pyramid was never proved to be a grave of a pharaoh, because it was built earlier (around 9000 BC). It was built to mark the place of Creation - the Tree of Life (might be anything from a real tree to a meteor that was supposed to be "infected" the Earth with life). At the time of Osiris (who was one of the kings before the big flood - that's why he was the king of the afterlife, underworld and the dead, because his realm were destroyed by the flood), before the flood, when the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid were built, people knew exactly what was going to happen - they world would be erased by a flood. The flood might be only a big flood of the Nile or regional, maybe bigger - noone knows. But they knew they needed to be prepared. Look at a "survivor bunkers" nowadays, those that are built by the end-of-the-world believers. They collect as much food and things they need to live underground as they can. These modern bunkers are also made the way like they can be closed hermetically to save the ones inside. This is the exact same way of thinking that led ancient "Egyptians" to do mastabas for themselves. Noone knows whether they actually used it during the flood - or floods (maybe the Nile was much larger and flooded their land periodically), but more than probably they did live in them for the short or longer peridos of flood(s). Maybe some of them even died in them - buried alive. But of course, this is just the origin of the mastabas. Later on the descendants of these people sticked to the habit and continued to build these mastabas even if the danger of a flood was not present anymore - and they used them as graves. But the fact that lately they used them as graves doesn't proves where this custom was originated from. 81.183.245.214 (talk) 09:05, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Please read Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Fringe_theories_and_pseudoscience, and fantasy. Khruner (talk) 20:33, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More general meaning, i.e. Palestinian "raised area"[edit]

It seems to actually translate to "raised area". In Palestinian traditional architecture, lower areas were considered "soiled" (contact with animals, outdoor dirt), whereas raised ones were kept "unsoiled", for sleeping etc. Spelled mastabeh or mastaba. Probably not just in Palestine, needs researching. Article should disambiguate. Arminden (talk) 04:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Architectural History[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 August 2023 and 8 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Tantallon99 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Tantallon99 (talk) 15:13, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]