Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An ancient Egyptian tomb with a rectangular base, sloping sides, and a flat roof.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The earliest form of Egyptian tomb, a building oblong or square in plan and having sloping sides and a flat roof. It covers the sepulchral pit.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- In Mohammedan countries, a fixed seat, common in dwellings and in public places.
- (Egyptology) A type of tomb, of the time of the Memphite dynasties, comprising an oblong structure with sloping sides (sometimes containing a decorated chamber, sometimes of solid masonry), and connected with a mummy chamber in the rock beneath.
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.
- noun architecture A rectangular structure with a flat top and slightly sloping sides, built during Ancient Egyptian times above tombs that were situated on flat land. Mastabas were made of wood, mud bricks, stone, or a combination of these materials. Some are solid structures, while others can contain one or more rooms, sometimes decorated with paintings or inscriptions.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun an ancient Egyptian mud-brick tomb with a rectangular base and sloping sides and flat roof
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E. L. Konigsburg 1967
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Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E. L. Konigsburg 1967
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Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E. L. Konigsburg 1967
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Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba.
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler E. L. Konigsburg 1967
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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 Ignatius Donnelly 1866
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A mastaba is a flat-roofed, rectangular tomb with outward-sloping sides.
Egyptology News 2009
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I pass through a fake mastaba, fashioned after massive structures slaves built above tombs in Saqqara and Giza.
The Memory Palace Mira Bartók 2011
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It's giving her nightmares of beehive tombs, the subway system as a mastaba, too tight a fit for her.
Texas David Woodruff 2011
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I pass through a fake mastaba, fashioned after massive structures slaves built above tombs in Saqqara and Giza.
The Memory Palace Mira Bartók 2011
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Sculpted berms here, geometrically-patterned rows of exhaust stacks there, mastaba-shaped radar facility right over there, chalked footpaths everywhere.
qms commented on the word mastaba
The kings that the Nile gods anoint
Had tombs that were flat-topped but quaint
Long gone now, mastaba,
Near far-off Aqaba
As pyramids made more a point.
April 24, 2017