"The _mastaba_ is a massive structure, rectangular on plan, with four faces of plain walling, each being inclined at a stated angle towards their common centre. This inclination has led some people to assert that it is nothing more than an unfinished pyramid. Such an idea is refuted, however, by the fact that the divergence from the perpendicular is in some cases so slight that, were the walls prolonged upwards, their ridges, or _arêtes_, would not meet for some eight or nine hundred yards. The mastaba might be more justly compared to the space comprised between two horizontal sections of an obelisk, supposing the obelisk to have an oblong base. [Illustration: FIG. 106.--Actual condition of a mastaba. The tomb of Sabou. Drawn by Bourgoin.] "The major axis of the rectangle upon which these structures are planned, always runs due north and south, and at the pyramids of Gizeh, the necropolis of the west, they are arranged upon a symmetrical plan so as to resemble a chess board on which all the squares are strictly oriented.[165] The more carefully built mastabas are oriented according to the true astronomical north. All the others show the same intention, and, in those instances where an error of a few degrees is to be discovered, it is to be clearly attributed to carelessness on the part of the builder, a common fault in these tombs, and not to a difference of intention. We often find that the northern face is not strictly parallel to the southern, nor that on the west to that on the east. [165] The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect to each other is well shown in plates xiv. and xviii. of Lepsius's first volume (map of the pyramids of Gizeh and panorama taken from the summit of the second pyramid). [Illustration: FIG. 107.--Three mastabas at Gizeh. Perspective view, after the plan of Lepsius. (_Denkmæler_, vol. i. pl. 24.)] "Although not varying much from true orientation, the mastabas of Sakkarah are not arranged with the symmetry which distinguishes those on the south and west of the Great Pyramid.[166] They are sprinkled about in a rather haphazard fashion. Here we find them well interspaced and there actually placed one upon another. It follows that the chess-board arrangement which is so conspicuous at Gizeh is not here to be noticed. Even at Sakkarah there were streets between the rows of tombs, but they are so irregularly placed, and they are often so narrow, many of them being nothing more than blind alleys, that the inexperienced visitor may well fancy himself in a maze.